Happy Birthday Ben!

10:55am, February 15, 2006, Benjamin Stephen was born and changed our lives forever. He is such a great kid and he had a really great year. I've said it before, but he was a difficult 3 year old. When he turned 4, everything seemed to ease up - he matured, cared about his sisters and just enjoyed playing peacefully. I'm not saying he never disobeyed or that we didn't go through rough patches, but on the whole, 4 was a great age for Ben. I am looking forward to seeing what 5 brings for us!

We started out the day by taking Ben to the doctor for his 5 year check-up (I know, worst mother for making him go on his birthday). It all went very well, until he had to get a shot. He got so upset, that he hid under the chair when the nurse came in. He cried way more than Juliette did when she got her shots and the nurse felt so badly for him that she even teared up seeing him so upset. Again, not my best mothering moment, but I told him a few weeks ago he would get a shot and he has been upset and anxious about it ever since. Lesson learned...from now on I will tell him that I do not know if he will get a shot until we get there - at least he won't have the anticipation, which is worse than the actual shot! Besides the shot though, he did great. His blood pressure was good, he got his finger pricked for a blood sample (which he wasn't happy about, but none of us realized it was happening until it was over), and gave a urine sample, which he found to be pretty funny. So, on to his stats...43.5 inches tall and 45 pounds, which put him in the 75th-80th percentile. He has consistently been in that percentile, so that was good. As a side note, he has always been around 75th percentile, Abbey has been 50th percentile, and Juliette is our little jelly bean being in the 10th-20th percentile, so we got all our bases covered on sizes. Juliette also went in for her 18 month appointment today, but that will be a later post. OK, back to Ben...

After the appointment, we went to McDonalds for lunch and he was happy to play in the indoor playground and get his new toy. Later, we had spaghetti for dinner (his favorite) and then sang to him again while he blew out candles on his cupcakes.

Then he very sweetly unwrapped one of the cupcakes and gave it to Juliette...what a great big brother!

Abbey enjoyed her cupcakes...

Then it was time to open more presents! Again, being the awesome big brother that he is, he let Abbey help him open the presents when she started to get upset that she didn't have any to open! As a side note, with all the commotion of Ben's birthday this week, Abbey has taken to planning her birthday party (which isn't until July). She knows exactly what kind of cake she wants and what she hopes to get as presents.

HAPPY 5th BIRTHDAY BEN!!! WE LOVE YOU!!!