8 months

Benjamin - 8 months old!

Benjamin James is growing into such a fun, happy, energetic little boy. He loves people and is very friendly to everyone who wants to play with him. In fact, sometimes he can be a little too friendly :) His favorite way to show you that he loves you is by eating your face off. He dives toward your face with his mouth wide open, leaving you feeling very loved and very slobbery :)

We always find Benjamin sleeping in the funniest positions. His favorite is to sleep on his side with his little body arched arched and his neck tilted so far up that the back of his head lies almost flat against his back! It does not look comfortable at all to me, but he loves it! When he does sleep on his back, he always has both arms raised with his hands behind his head...he looks exactly like his Daddy! It is so adorable when I find them sleeping side by side in the exact same position.

Lately Benjamin's favorite sound to make is growling like a lion. He does it all of the time! So, of course, we decided we had to dress him up as a lion for Halloween. Ammon and I decided to dress up as the Scarecrow and Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz so we could all match! Benjamin was the most adorable lion ever! He didn't love the mane, but put up with it long enough for us to get some cute photos :) We even got the whole family to go along with the theme with us: Grandpa was the Wizard, Gigi was the Wicked Witch, Jared was the Tin man and Justin was a Munchkin. Haha, I was so happy (and surprised) that my brothers agreed to dress up! Benjamin has them wrapped around his little finger, and they are so sweet with him!

Benjamin loves his cousins! Especially Celecta Rose - she is definitely his favorite. Whenever she walks into the room, he get's the biggest, happiest smile on her face. Last week in church, we sat behind Celecta Rose and he kept wanting to play with her. She turned around and leaned over the bench toward him, and he grabbed her face and gave her a big, slobbery "eating your face" kiss! :) He adores her so much!

Benjamin's new favorite game is knocking down towers! We were trying to figure out a way to motivate him to army-crawl across the room, and we quickly discovered this passion of his. Whether it's blocks, or books, or stuffed animals, as soon as we stack more than 2 on top of each other, Benjamin can't rest until he manages to knock them down! He'll wriggle his little body all the way across the room to get to it, if he has too. It's a great way to get him to practice crawling, and we can tell that he is getting more and more mobile already!

My absolute favorite new Benjamin-ism is one that I hope he will never stop doing! His new smile is the most adorable thing I have ever seen. Whenever he is happy he squints his little eyes, lifts his chin high up to the ceiling and gives you the cutest, smirky smile! It melts my heart and makes me burst out laughing at the same time. How is it possible to love this little guy so much???