Ben at 11 Months

So, what is Ben like at 11 months?

Does this give you an idea?

Or maybe this is better?

Ben is a full-time handful! He is into everything. We had to do some emergency baby-proofing this weekend since he would not stay away from the gas knobs on the stove or keep his fingers out of the electrical outlets.

No fair! No fun!

He's even figured out how to open the knob-less cabinets, so now we need knobs with baby-proofing on top of that.

His favorite game is ball. He'll play with somebody or by himself.

Note the nice shove he's giving Sam.

Sam is starting to understand that he can actually play with Benny now.

Though Ben doesn't always do exactly what he wants.

It's a good thing his pretty little face just makes us melt.

Ben weighs 20 lbs 4 oz. We know because we had to take him to the doctor last week for an ear infection. Just his right ear, but he's teething too, so he's extra irritable.

Ben is surprising us with all of the words he's picking up. He says Mama, Dada, ball, uh-oh, up, down, and dog all the time. He's said apple, book, light, water, and Cleo once or twice. He says these words at day care too, but if you're not around him every day you probably wouldn't understand what he's saying. He is pointing so there is usually a point that goes along with ball, dog, up and down. Everyone can understand uh-oh. Of course, he says uh-oh even when he drops something on purpose.

He's not interested in the walker at all. He'd rather hold onto our pants while we are walking. He's still sleeping through the night, even letting us sleep in until 8:30 on the weekends. He's starting to try more table foods, but he'd really rather not be stuck in the highchair. He prefers to crawl around the table and have you poke in a few bites here and there. Sound familiar? We also have to make sure Cleo's food is out of reach when he's on the move. That's way too tempting for any baby to stay away from!

Big temper? You wouldn't guess it from this picture, but his temper rivals Sam's for sure. Try to change his diaper. Go on, I dare you. You've never seen so much kicking, hitting, and screaming.

Did I mention that I think he's the cutest thing ever? Even though he's keeping us on our toes, he also makes us laugh a lot. It's fun to see him growing up. I just can't believe he's almost one year old.

Here's a video of Ben dancing, crawling, and playing ball.

African Cichlids

This is my new obsession. It's a 75 gallon aquarium in our living room. I read all about fish for close to two months before I actually decided what to get. I have 14 African Cichlids so far and I hope to get some more soon.

I let the tank run for about a week before I got the fish. Of course I decided I didn't like how I set it up, rearranged everything, and made the water really cloudy right before I put the fish in. I started with 15 fish but one of them was killed on the way home. Notice I say killed and not died. Cichlids are kinda aggressive.

Sam was fascinated the first few days and wanted to feed them all the time, but he's over it already.

They all crowded in this corner of the tank when they were released.

Here's a picture of the front of the tank about a week later.

All of the cichlids that I started with are Lake Malawi Mbunas. They love to hide in any little hole they can find.

I got lots of driftwood and Texas holy rock and a few fake plants.

This one rock weighed about 40 lbs so Chris had to lift it for me.

This is a picture looking at it from the side.

The yellow fish is a Labidochromis Caeruleus (Yellow Lab). The striped fish is a Psuedotropheus Elongatus Chailosi.

The white fish is a Pseudotropheus Socolofi Albino (Snow White Albino).

The orange fish are Metriaclima Estherae (Red Zebra).



Feeding frenzy. The tan fish in the top middle is a Pseudotropheus Flavus (Dinghani). They are all juveniles so they haven't gotten as colorful as they will get. They started out about an inch long. There adult sizes are between 3 and 5 inches depending on the species. My intention was to get one male and two females of each species, but you can't really sex them when they are that young. As they are getting bigger, I can already tell that I definitely didn't get the ratio I wanted. There are a lot of males in there and they are starting to get territorial. It's time to shake things up a bit and get some more fish.

Here is the tank a few weeks later. It's done cycling and it's ready for more fish. The rocks are starting to grow some algae too.

This guy is the king of the tank for now. His spot is front and center. I wonder what's gonna happen when all the other fish are bigger than he is.

Of course I can't do a post without a few pictures of the boys. Here is Sam with donuts -- his favorite breakfast.

Ben is having a breakfast bar and is doing his best to unwind the silly straw.

More Bedtime and Bathtime Photos

Happy Birthday Daddy!

Hello Blog. It's me again. It's been a long time, but we've been busy with work and dorkin' with fish (more on that later).

Mr. Chris Conner turned 37 last week. No big celebration just some cupcakes with the kiddos.

Goofy Sam licking beaters.

Maybe red velvet wasn't the best idea in the world.

Yummy ... yes it was.

No cupcake is complete without sprinkles in Sam's world.

Ben is a cupcake pro. He's been crashing birthday parties since he was a few months old.

Oh yeah, that's a great look!

Ben liked the cupcake, but didn't love the icing on his fingers.

Mmmm ... stuff for the grill.

Playing out in the back yard before dinner.

Ben loves to swing.