Loving Ben

I greatly treasure the evenings we have with just Ben. The craziness of the day is easy to get sucked into with all these littles and their long list of needs - so much that sometimes I feel like I have reached the end of the day and 1. not sat down once and 2. had far too little face time with any one of them. In an effort to remedy this - we are getting a dishwasher. I hereby admit that hand washing dishes does in fact take longer than loading/unloading a dishwasher, and so our home will come one step further out of the land of in desperate need of a remodel. 

Also, I officially retract my last statement about the girls ignoring Ben. I think perhaps the fun of Mimi and Tia being here was just too distracting for them to give Ben much thought. But they officially love him. Even Ana. Overwhelmingly Zoe.

         

Last night as I was putting the girls to bed Z, who likes for me to lay Ben down on her bed with her so she can cuddle him, was telling Ben all the people in his life who love him. "Mimi loves you, and Tia and momma and daddy and ana and zoe and amira and brandon... but not strangers. Strangers don't love you." This is probably a pretty important lesson for him to learn. Big sister wisdom from an early age, very important. 

While Z enjoys just being in the company of Ben (for instance, if she is listenning to her cd books in our room and Ben is the only one in there with her, sleeping on our bed - she doesn't like for me to take him out of the room because she says she likes for him to be with her, however docile), Ana prefers to try to meet his needs. She is ever aware of where his bottles are and constantly hands them to me insisting he wants "me-elk" - which is how she prounouces milk because I guess she is growing up in the south? She also gets really excited when I tell her I need to pump (she screams "pump!!" with utmost glee/joy and runs to the room) and will always follow me to change his diaper. She has also been known to find her baby and the baby "me-elk" bottle to feed her baby alongside me. 

One of my favorite things so far happened this very morning. Getting ready for church, Matt got up with the girls and I took on Ben duties. When the girls finally came in our room I had put Ben in his pac-n-play so I could get dressed. Both girls crowded around the edge and excitedly said, "Hi Ben! Hi!" and proceeded to converse with him as if he could answer. I heard "your shirt is so cute!" "are you ready to go!?" and, my personal fav, Z asking, "Ben, do you like my dress?" I think it was in that moment that I realized just how loved this little guy is by his two big sisters!