It's been a really great month here in the Ahumada house. Our Benjito is now smiling and so much fun to play with. He even laughs, too! Except...he's a bit of a stinker. So far I have heard him laugh only a few times: once each with my friends Nellie and Natalie, once with Sebasthian, and a couple of times in his sleep. But try as I might, I can NOT get him to laugh for me! He will smile and coo, but I guess he's already trying to tell me that I'm just not funny. I've taken up reading Laffy Taffy wrappers to try to get a more refined sense of humor.
Earlier this month the temperature plummeted low into the sub-zero category, and somehow this made the power go out. I'm not sure how these are connected but I usually just believe what the professionals tell me. Anyhow, the three of us spent the morning in bed to stay warm but Benji kept getting hungry and I wasn't producing enough milk to keep up. I was starting to weigh the likelihood of him starving or freezing to death, and I didn't like either option. Here's the part where I'm super dumb. I thought that because we had no power, we had no hot water. Thus, having no hot water, we would have no way to warm up some water for formula (it was ice cold!)..and Benji would surely starve! Luckily we had a brilliant idea - we have a gas grill. Yes, we got a pot and put in some water and barbecued it until it was hot enough to warm some milk. Genius? We thought so! Until Sebasthian had to get ready for his afternoon classes and washed his face in the sink...discovering that we'd had hot water for the past eight hours. We felt pretty awesome. Right after, the power turned back on and we never even took advantage of our new-found resource. haha! c'est la vi! All in all, the day was a pretty good learning experience, not to mention that Benji is probably the first two-month old to eat a barbecue'd meal!
The rest of our Christmastime has been wonderful!! We have lots of fun as our little family and have made some great Christmas traditions. We made sugar cookies and decorated them to bring to friends! ...but then they ended up being rock hard so we threw them all away (seriously, I've made about eight batches of cookies this fall and I don't think we've been able to eat any! I can't make cookies.). And we tried to learn Feliz Navidad on our guitars, but gave up shortly afterwards because we didn't want to be too talented and overwhelm people (or, it wasn't going well. You decide.) However, even with our silly mistakes, this has been a great season and we've really focused on keeping Christ in our Christmas.
This year we spent a family night watching Mr. Krueger's Christmas (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AG2xdsKNXy8) and wrote letters to ourselves with how we felt about the year, our testimony, and one gift that we would give the Savior in the next year through improving ourselves in some way. We put the letters in the tree so that when we take it out next year we can read them again.
On Christmas Eve we ate bread bowl soup (a family tradition) and read the story of Christ's birth. We also got to Skype with both families to celebrate with them! Christmas is a wonderful time for family and we are grateful to have such fun and supportive parents and siblings. Sadly Benji has been sick throughout the week and so he wasn't able to join in on much of the fun. :/
Christmas morning....or should I say afternoon? By the time I dragged my two boys out of bed it was almost twelve! Sebasthian will have to enjoy this while he can because I am SOO excited for when our kids come wake us up at six in the morning to open presents. Anyways, it was really great and I was spoiled rotten! We all got some great gifts, and we tried to convince Benji that he would like his toys but he was still pretty out of it.
Sebasthian picked out this present for him, he wasn't impressed.
However these next two definitely drew his interest...
Overall it was a pretty fantastic day and we are excited to ring in the new year together soon!
Merry Christmas to our family and friends and may you have joy and happiness throughout 2014!
You have no idea how much we enjoyed reading your post. Is nice to know your new experiences as parents, and how Benji is growing. We love the video of our little grandson. He is CUTE! Thank you for sharing :) We love you.
ReplyDeleteI love this! It makes me feel more like I know what is going on with y'all! I miss you so much, all of you. I wish we were closer so we could watch Benji grow in person but it is good we can at least see him here. ---- Mamacita
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