Busy Busy Bees

January and February have been going by so quickly- I can’t believe we’re almost halfway into February!
Lots of updates for you this time, but unfortunately no pictures as I haven’t uploaded them from the camera yet (soon!). John cut his first two teeth about a day after he turned 8 months. He continues to be a hungry hungry little boy who can’t get enough food. Even before he got those teeth he was gumming just about any food we would give him. It’s so funny how different two kids can be. Hazel was content to nurse for pretty much the first year of her life with the occasional solid meal thrown in for fun every now and then. John would much, much rather eat. That boy has three solid food meals a day. Usually he eats some whole milk plain yogurt with bananas or apple/pear puree in the morning, some mornings he’ll have some warm cereal (oatmeal, rice, millet that kind of thing). Before his afternoon nap he eats again- usually some sort of avocado or other veggie and small pieces of bread, banana, rice, potato, other leftovery types of foods. For dinner he is how eating mashed up or cut up versions of whatever we eat. We had these curried lentils about a week ago that he went crazy over- he ate nearly as much as Hazel did!
Here’s a little pic of our guy enjoying a pancake this past Saturday…

Hazel is doing very well- she continues to surprise us and make us laugh with her ever-growing vocabulary. Recently she has started telling us make believe stories about all sorts of imaginative things. This morning she told me about a monster that was riding a horse through the “deep dark gloomy forest.” She’s loves all things spooky and scary (witches, monsters and the like) and she likes to be delightfully frightened. We recently got her enrolled in a preschool that is a bit closer to our house than her current school. We’ll be able to walk her to school next year! She continues to love going to school and this morning her class will be exchanging valentines. Next week the school is putting on their Valentine’s show where they will sing songs and perform a little play. I will take video so you can see all of the cute songs they are learning. Hazel does a stunning rendition of skinamarinkydinky dink (just wait for the video).

Ok, baby John is ready for breakfast- must run for now. Pictures coming soon!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I have gotten really bad about blogging lately- and I have no excuses for you, just the simple realization that I’ve given myself permission to focus more on being with my family instead of getting stressed about documenting it all. But of course we have pictures from Christmas… And that is what today’s post is all about.

We had a wonderful lead up to Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Starting in December Hazel got to open a pocket a day on her advent calendar. My mom made these calendars for my brother, sister and me when we were little and now one of them has been passed on to Hazel. This is not your ordinary calendar, this thing is about 4 feet by 3 feet and has 23 little houses and one church- each house a pocket that gets filled each night. Hazel loved it. She got a slinky, some little costume jewelry, sweets, etc. etc. Every morning she would run into our room and beg to go downstairs to open her “pocket.” On the 24th she got a special bracelet to wear to church on Christmas Eve. She was thrilled.

In addition to the advent calendar we also celebrated St. Nikolaus day on December 6th- Hazel put a plate out on our door step and it was magically filled for her and John. Oranges, nuts, a book and a little snow white doll magically appeared a few hours after she set out her plate. Oh the magic!

We were given the book, “The Christmas Rose” by Grammy a few years ago and this year we began reading the story every night starting on December 6th. The book is a great story with traditional German illustrations. By the second night Hazel was already reminding us that we needed to read our daily page in the story before bed that night. We usually read the page at dinner time by the light of the candles on the advent wreath that we made at church.

We went and picked out a Christmas tree together this year and put it up as a family adding to the Christmas cheer at home. Later that weekend we also attended the annual Yorktown Christmas parade where we got to see Santa, and a lighted boat parade down on the river.

About a week before Christmas Oma arrived from Germany and Aunt Sarah and Uncle Andrew arrived from Colorado. Visiting with them was a lot of fun, and Hazel loves talking with Oma and saying in a silly voice, “Ja, ja, Ja!” John has enjoyed having his Oma around and is completely smitten with her. This is the second time she has seen him (the first time she arrived from Germany the day he was born!) and she can’t believe how much he’s grown already.

A few days before Christmas we went to Christmastown at Busch Gardens with Hazel and left John with my mom and Oma. While there Hazel got to ride her first carousel among other kid amusement park rides. We saw penguins, a Sesame Street Christmas show and lots of Christmas trees and lights. She lasted almost 4 hours and it was cold. We had a great time and can’t wait to take both kids back next year!

Now for the pictures… (thanks for your patience!)
All of these are from Christmas Eve/Christmas Day.
We spent Christmas Eve at my mom’s house and stayed until about 8:30 when we headed home to put the kids to bed (in their Christmas pajamas of course). Before we left, Hazel and John opened a few gifts from Aunt Sarah and Uncle Andrew..




Hazel got lots of twirly ImaLeema dresses, which just made her pleased as punch!


We went home, left cookies and milk for Santa, hung our stockings and went upstairs to read The Night Before Christmas. Once all the kids were tucked into their beds Mama and Papa got to go downstairs and enjoy a few cookies while setting the stage for Christmas morning. Words can’t describe how incredible it was to create our own Christmas for our kids, and I can’t tell you how excited I was for Christmas morning. Christmas is more fun now than it ever was as a kid- exponentially better.

We were up before the sun…





Hazel was so patient opening each gift and then handing out gifts to everyone else. She especially enjoyed helping John-O open his presents.

She gave him some of her “baby” books for Christmas and was very excited for him to see what she had wrapped up for him…




Having a baby to snuggle while watching everyone open presents was an extra treat for me…

John also thought we got him a cat especially for Christmas…


Hazel was content to open each present and then play with it for a while before wanting to open “another one, and another one and then one more, okay?!”



John really liked Hazel’s new Ariel doll…

John and Jered opening a present from Santa

I know I’m his mama and I’m biased, but isn’t he the cutest little guy ever?



And this one… she’s captain of the enthusiasm team!

The headgear kept multiplying

Omi and Oma came over a little later in the morning

The headband I made for Hazel went over well until her head got hot and she had to switch back to her crown


Crowns, purses, new dresses… what more could a girl want?

Santa Papa

One of the favorite gifts of the day

Hazel said to John, “One day when you olda, Ima teach you how to SPPPIIIIN around, okay, okay baby John??



I made the kids wear their new hats and headbands in the house (if I’d just waited another day- it snowed over a foot the day after Christmas!)

Happy kiddos

John with one of his favorite Christmas gifts

We hope you have had a wonderful holiday season and a good start to your New Year. I’m not making any resolutions to update more, but I will tell you that I’ve resolved to take more pictures and post them when I can without driving myself crazy. We are so fortunate and grateful for our family and we are having more fun now than we have ever had in our lives. This is what it’s all about.

Sibling Love

A preview of things to come…

Yesterday we met with some friends of ours to do a holiday photo shoot in Colonial Williamsburg- it was their 1 year wedding anniversary and we both wanted photos for the holidays (cards coming your way soon!)- so we headed out to Williamsburg to frolic in the foliage. What a gorgeous day it was for taking pictures, too!

Me and my cute as a button John…

The weekend before last we headed out to the Outer Banks for Jered’s marathon. We had a great time hanging out by the beach with our friends and watching Jered run. I even joined in and ran in a 5k on a whim! It was a great family weekend and a fun first mini-vacation for us to the Outer Banks. We found a great vacation rental that we will be going back to often, so if you ever want to come out and visit we might just have to take a mini-trip to the beach while you’re here!

In other exciting news, we will be celebrating Thanksgiving at home this year with Omi, Uncle Clayton and our neighbors (the same neighbors we celebrated Diwali with- lots of fun festivities going on in our neighborhood!). After T-Day we will be getting ready for Christmas at home. Oma will be visiting from Germany on the 16th of December and Aunt Sarah and Uncle Andrew fly in on the 17th, it’s going to be a great holiday season!

All of these festivities call for plenty of caffeine to keep mama and papa up and running… lately even John has been trying to get a sip!

A few fun photos

We had an incredible Halloween- Hazel floored us all by making it through 2 hours of non-stop trick or treating. She actually had to come home an hour and a half in to change her ruby red slippers because her blisters were getting bloody- yeah, she was that dedicated! We kept asking her if she wanted to go home and have a piece of candy (the rule was, no eating candy until we get home) and she kept saying, “nope, gotta do more houses mama!” Before we knew it it was 8 pm and she had a pile of candy to rival ones Jered and I had when we were 9 or 10… I think she gets trick or treater of the year- Mama and Papa are enjoying the disposal of some of the false positive razor blade/poison screened candy items. If we had known the key to getting more candy at Halloween was having an energetic 2 year old, we would have found ourselves one years ago!

Little John on Halloween morning

We all went and voted together today- John’s first experience and Hazel’s second.

We love Fall!

Today was the fall festival at Grace Day School (Hazel’s school) and we had an absolute blast! Hazel decided about a month ago that she wanted to dress up like Buzz Lightyear for Halloween and we were set to make her a Buzz costume. Well, enter our new friend Indecision. Oh, you haven’t met him? He seems to be Hazel’s new best friend- almost everyday we have some sort of interaction with our dear friend Indecision. Me: Hazel do you want milk or water with breakfast? Hazel: Water. Me: Ok, here’s your water. Hazel: NOOOOOO!!!! I want milk!!! (there are inevitably tears) Me: But you said you wanted water. Hazel: I want to drink milk. Me: (mentally only of course) *arghhhhhhhh grrrrrr aaaaargh!!*
So, Indecision visited us about Hazel’s Halloween costume when she saw Dorothy at the Yorktown Day parade last week. And Mama decided Hazel only got to change her mind once, so Dorothy she is.
Hazel and her friend from school and her teacher Ms. Janice.





She’s so darn pretty…


Hula Hoop!!



Needless to day, we had a great time today. John was napping, and Jered had taken the morning off to come to the festival with us, so he and John met up with us later on in the morning. Believe it or not, John was not sad in these pictures, just cold and sucking on his bottom lip, which makes him look adorably pitiful!




Proof that I was there too (since I’m never in pictures)

We’ve got a lot of fun planned this weekend- tomorrow morning is Hazel’s last swim lesson, and then we have an afternoon of pumpkin carving ahead of us. We got four pumpkins last weekend at the pumpkin patch and apple orchard. Here are the pictures I forgot to post from last weekend’s trip. I love this time of year!






My boys…






So grown up!


We ended the evening with our friends Anne, Mike and Kirsten and had a great dinner and a dessert picnic to celebrate Jered’s birthday





And finally, our Lazy Sunday Morning…

And some pictures of Hazel looking sweet (and a little silly)

More videos from this summer

It’s been a while since we’ve uploaded videos from our camera, so this is a hodge-podge bunch of movies from the last 2-3 months.

John babbling in July…

July 2010- Noises! from esther benoit on Vimeo.

Hazel and mama shucking peas in July…

Shucking Blackeyed Peas from esther benoit on Vimeo.

Hazel climbing in John’s bed…

Hazel crawls in John’s bed from esther benoit on Vimeo.

This Beautiful Life

It is amazing how little time I find to update this blog now that we have two kiddos. Life is so full right now- and when I say full, I mean full in the fullest, richest most rewarding sense. We are busy from the moment we wake up until the moment we finally shut our eyes at night, but we are so full. Full of laughter…



Full of sweetness…



Full of silliness…





Full of fun…


Full of zzzz’s…


Life is so good!

A long time coming

I can’t believe it’s been over a month since I last posted an update. Life has certainly been busy and full of excitement around here lately. We headed out to Kansas for Will and Meagan’s wedding over labor day weekend- boy what a learning experience that was! We rented a van for the trip out there and braved the 23 hour drive (one way!) with our two little ones in tow. Hazel did great- she is such a trooper in the car. She entertained herself by reading, singing, occasionally sleeping and asking us tons of questions. John, on the other hand, did not have such an easy time traveling. Because he’s such a long and large baby he is pretty scrunched up in his carrier style car seat which made for a very uncomfortable trip out to Kansas. The second day he cried off and on all day long… the poor little fellow was not a happy camper. Once we got to Kansas we were pretty frazzled (who wouldn’t be after two days in the car with a crying baby?) and I decided to go ahead and get John a convertible car seat so that he would hopefully have a bit more room to stretch out. We knew we were going to have to buy another convertible car seat eventually anyway, but we definitely didn’t think we’d be getting one so soon! The switch in seats definitely made a difference and we were able to drive down to Wichita without a problem (we spent our first day in Kansas City as we needed a little break from the road before making the last leg of the trip!).
Once in Wichita we had a great time with the family- the wedding was beautiful and it was so good to see everyone. Hazel and her cousin Peter had a blast together, and they both had some pretty impressive dance moves! I am embarrassed to say that we took our camera with us on the trip but didn’t get it out even once to take a single picture while we were out there!! I guess that just goes to show how whirlwind the trip was and how much fun we were having.
I do, however, have plenty of pictures from the last month or so. They are a varied bunch- taken here and there and everywhere. Included are some shots taken back in August, a few of Hazel and John together, and some of Hazel’s first day of “school” and John lounging around in a diaper this morning. We’ll see if my updates get more regular- I recently learned that I’ll be teaching part time at Thomas Nelson in addition to my class at William and Mary, so my schedule will be getting a bit busier. In the mean time, we’ll continue taking as many pictures and updating as often as we can!

Hazel decided she needed 100 bandaids for her head when she bumped it… glad she just used stickers!

First day of school!

This is John’s Gangsta look…

This morning while we had breakfast…

Little John

Today was John’s 2 month well baby appointment. Boy has our little guy grown! He weighed 14 pounds 6 ounces, was 25 inches long and his head circumference was in the 95th percentile (as were his weight and length)- not so little anymore! John tolerated the actual shots fairly well- he cried a bit and then fell promptly asleep on my shoulder. He seemed fine all afternoon until he woke up from a nap and realized how sore his little legs were. He was not a happy camper and we had to spend quite some time before he calmed down enough to take some baby tylenol and get a little milk drunk. Thankfully he’s sleeping soundly now, and hopefully by tomorrow morning he will be feeling back to his usual self.

Hazel spent the last two days at Omi’s house enjoying a few nights of sleepover fun while mama and John had the house to ourselves to clean and hang out. It was nice to be able to get so much done in the house and it was great to spend some time alone with John, but we missed Hazel so so much while she was gone and we’re glad to have her crazy little self back in the house. She is such a little firecracker and she has become so funny. The things this kid says are hilarious- my favorite phrase right now is, “How ‘Bout Me?!” whenever she hears about something that she wants to do/have too. Instead of me too she says, “How ‘Bout Me!?” It is so funny… she also says “What happened?” whenever something isn’t quite the way she remembers it, or whenever something isn’t the way it should be. Hazel is really into Toy Story right now, and she is in love with Buzz Lightyear. John was given a Buzz Lightyear plush toy when he was born, and Hazel has it on permanent loan right now. She has even mentioned “Get Married with Buzz” a few times… what can I say? the girl is in Love!

Here are a few pictures from the last month or so, including pics from when Grammy and Grampy came out to visit. We had such a nice visit with them and are excited to see everyone again in about a month when we head out to Kansas!

and a couple videos just for fun…