Just wanted to share with you that I have been doing really well with my food blog: For the Love of Food. I have over 200 recipes now posted. If you get a chance, you should check it out at it’s new address: http://forfood.rezimo.com

Benjamin is now 8 months old and is getting his first 3 teeth in!

The teeth are the 2 in the middle on the bottom jaw and the right big tooth on the top jaw.
Benjamin enjoys the company of other babies quite a lot. However, they (as most babies are) are very aggressive and like to grab him a lot, but he is quite laid back and is more of an observer. He likes to say mama and daddy a lot - when he wakes up he usually calls out “dada” or “dai-dai” so Jacob will come to him. When he wants his diaper changed or he’s hungry, then he calls out “mama”. He also like to call to Amilia “gata” (Spanish for cat), but calls Captain Picard “mama” sometimes - he really likes Captain, too bad Captain really cannot stand him.

Benjamin cannot crawl yet, but when he’s on his tummy he will slide around backwards and spin himself. He can also scoot himself around backwards when he’s sitting on the floor since we have laminate flooring. His favorite toys are the telephone, the remote control to the stereo, Jacob’s cell phone, his bath-time rubber ducky, a bath-time water squirting whale, spoons of all sizes, and anything made of paper. He has other toys that he likes too, but each week it seems he likes certain ones are more interesting than others.

He now rides in his stroller facing the world instead of facing us, but he still panics when he wakes up in his stroller and does not see someone he recognizes.

He eats two meals a day and the rest is breast milk. For lunch he has a fruit or vegetable, and for dinner he has rice cereal with a little bit of fruit mixed in. His favorite fruits are banana, mango, pear, and apple (in that order). And, his favorite vegetables are zucchini and pumpkin, but he’s allergic to pumpkin. He’s tried carrot, parsnip, and potato and does not like them one bit! Today he ate potato for the first time and just could not figure out how to swallow it without gagging. So, I mixed in 60mL (~2oz.) of breast milk, but he still couldn’t figure it out. We will put off potatoes until another day.

There are tons of new pictures of Benjamin here!

I also made some videos of Benjamin yesterday:

Nicole has been video taping Benjamin whenever she gets a chance. We finally got the equipment to transfer our “old-fashioned” videos to digital form. Now, there are more videos, but they still need to be digitally processed. Once I get them all up, I’ll be sending out a big email. So, if you’re checking this out on your own and haven’t gotten an email from us yet, don’t worry, we haven’t forgotten you! Some of the videos that will be showing up within the week will be of Benjamin when he was younger and more resent videos.

You will also be happy to know that Benjamin ate carrots for the first time yesterday - yuk! - and we also got that on video, but we still have to transfer it to the computer. We will get to it - I promise!

For those of you unfamiliar with how YouTube works, just click on the middle of the video and it will start to play. I’m pretty new to it myself, and I know there are ways to make the video show up really large, but I currently couldn’t tell you how to do that. Once I know, I’ll pass it on!

So, here are the first 4 of 10 videos - 6 more left to work on!

Enjoy!

Oh, and from the non-grandparents: this may be super boring for you - some of the video is just watching him to nothing.

The video/audio quality is not too great - and Nicole is speaking Spanish most of the time.

Benjamin sucking his thumb:

Benjamin & his play station:

Benjamin & his daddy:

Benjamin & his car:

Tomorrow (Monday, August 13th), Benjamin will turn 6 months old!  It’s hard to believe that it’s been that long!

We’ve uploaded almost 100 photos of him - so enjoy!  Featured in the newest photos are Jacob’s parents arriving from the US, our trip to Hamburg to visit Johannes and Kerstin, our trip to Rostock to visit the FInks,  a first visit to see Benjamin’s newest friend Siri Alexandra, and a failed attempt at taking this years Christmas photos.

As always, you can find Benjamin’s pictures here!

Guess who’s teething!

Here are Benjamin’s latest photos!  Benjamin’s Photo Gallery.

Here we are on our way to Munich to go to the US Consulate for Benjamin’s passport and SSN.

Here you will find some pictures of Benjamin and his first trip to Austria (Nicole’s first trip there too)!  Our Austria Gallery.

Just want to let everyone know that you can find more pictures of Benjamin in our Garden photo Gallery.   These are photos that we have taken at the inter cultural garden that we participate in here in Fuerth.

Enjoy!

I know it’s been a really really long time since we’ve put up any new photos, but we’ve finally gotten around to it!  So, click on the gallery link here and enjoy!

My mom brought us a new camera that we bought so we have been going crazy taking a lot of photos, but we haven’t been able to put them all up, so bear with us until we do, they will all get up there eventually! Also, thank you to everyone who sent my mom with gifts for Benjamin, all that extra clothes/blankets/towels/bibs/etc has really come in handy!

Keep checking back here for more updates! I think the next one will be around Easter!

The photos can be found here, but for some reason they are all showing up as the image of a “broken window”, but if you click on the “broken window” you will see the photos and just click “next” from there and you will see all our photos. Jacob will look into fixing whatever the problem is on the weekend.