In honor of Elijah being an amazing six months old already (oooh, that made me a little tearful!) I'm going to list the six things that you should know about him.

1. Eli likes to eat. He nurses during the day every three to four hours and he screeches at the slightest interruption to his meals including when they end. He's been sampling homemade baby food in the evenings for a couple weeks now and is about ready to have food added to his breakfast as well. So far his favorite is bananas, followed by pears. He grudgingly ate carrots and applesauce. Sweet potatoes are up next.

2. Eli likes to chew. Andrew jokes that we should buy him puppy teething toys. He will gnaw on anything that he can get to his mouth. After months of not having to worry about little pieces of things I'm suddenly scanning the floor to make sure there's nothing that he can grab and put in his mouth that will hurt him. If he is having a "good chew&q ...

I made potato soup for dinner tonight. I don't need to use the recipe card anymore, but the official name of the recipe is: Potato Soup--Gram's Way. I washed the potatoes with one hand, the other arm around the baby on my hip. I did put Eli down briefly when it came to chopping the potatoes. Our knives are dull and I wasn't in the mood to slice through my finger. I'm squeamish about stitches. After the potatoes were in the pot though he was back up on my hip while we stirred and seasoned.

It just made me wonder how many generations of women in my family had made this recipe and stood cooking dinner with a baby on their hip. It was a nice homey thought that made me both happy for carrying on a family recipe and tradition and ridiculously homesick at the same time.

I'm sure my mom has cooked this potato soup recipe while holding one of us girls when we were small. There were four of us, after all, wonder woman she may be, but I think only the touch of our Lord co ...

Jamey: "Ben, what makes you happy?" (We talk about happy and sad a lot.)

Ben: "Jesus. And Daddy."

What he did not say, but was clearly inferred was, "Mom, you are chopped liver!"

Ben loves anything that we call "big". One day I was teasing him and I said, "Wow! Look at that big belly you have!" He stopped running around and looked down at his tummy and got a huge smile on his face and said, "Yeah! It IS big!" Now he routinely will stop during the day and ask us if he has a big belly and becomes very excited when we assure him that his belly is big. He's also learned how to stick it out so now he'll come up to us and pull his shirt up, slouch down and shove his stomach out while saying, "See how big my belly is?" He thinks it's great. Of course, the first time he tells someone *else* that ...

I have heard my all-time favorite radio commercial while living in California this time around. Favorite. Ever. It makes me laugh out loud and can turn my frown upside down...anyway, you get it, I like the commercial.

So, who is the marketing genius behind this commercial? Is it a cell-phone commerical that has a much better and less annoying jingle than "Can you hear me now?" A famous spokesperson with a slogan catchier than "Just Do It"?

It is none of those, in fact I would bet that this commerical sprung straight from the mind and the lips of the owner of this business. It's a mom and pop operation, no big think tanks necessary. They're just telling how about their family....shooting range. Seriously.

Every few months I guess in order to boost business they have a Family Fun Day at the shooting range. It seems like now would be a good time for a mother-in-law joke, but I LOVE my mother in law (Hi, Peggy ...

Yesterday when Ben was outside playing I found him eating dirt and with a "mud beard" from where he apparently didn't like dirt and spit it out. We just bought him a book that shows a little girl eating sand so I guess he thought he should try it out. Anyway. Today, I look out the back door and see a very dirty Ben with his fingers in his mouth.

Jamey says, "Don't eat dirt, honey."

Ben: "I'm not, mommy."

Jamey: "Okay, well, take your hand out of your mouth it's all dirty."

Ben: "Dirt is yucky." He takes his hand out of his mouth and looks at his finger. "Can you take this?"

Jamey: "What is it?"

Ben: "A booger. I was eating it."

Ben can sing "Jesus Loves Me", "The B-I-B-L-E" and "Jesus Loves the Little Children". **Good Mama**

I like my Hinder CD a lot and it's very b-a-d...sometimes it still takes me awhile to realize just how dirty some of the lyrics are and I still like it a lot. **Bad Mama**

I don't listen to it if I have Ben in the car. **Good Mama**

I do listen to it, loudly, if I only have Elijah in the car. **Bad Mama**

Result: TIE

Hey, at least I have my own interests, and tastes, right?!

You know you're a mother when the baby's playgym is in your not big enough master bathroom from the last time that you took a shower, but that was last week and you still haven't moved it because if you have to step over it every time you need to go to the bathroom doesn't that count as exercise?

You know you're a mother when instead of being aggrevated that you have to load the dishwasher you realize that you've got some serious dishwasher loading skills and you experience a small burst of pride at the number of dishes you can get to fit in.

You know you're a mother when you've realized that just stepping over the playgym isn't going to return your thighs to their prepregnant state and so you start to exercise for real and even though you only need twenty minutes of time to yourself to do this you find yourself either a) holding the baby while you use a step and justify it as resistance weight inste ...

Elijah is upstairs napping. Ben and I have draped the ottoman with a towel and are sharing a bowl of Multigrain Cheerios each with our own spoon as we watch the Today Show. It's a sweet little moment as we eat and talk and it makes me happy that I can stay home with him. I look over and tell him that I love him and he dutifully says, "yeah". Then he smiles at me and says no and I tickle him and he laughs.

Then he looks at the tv again and they're doing an interview segment. He says, "I see ladies." I say yes. He says, "I see a black man. Two white ladies and a black man." I say, what? He repeats himself, "two white ladies and a black man".

I'm thinking about my sister in law's kids that are "mixed". I'm envisioining the sibling group that my sister and brother-in-law are in the process of adopting. I'm thinking about the desire of my husband a ...

These are some funny incidents that happened this month that didn't get their own blogs.

One day we let Ben take his nap in our bedroom. We heard him thumping around up there as Andrew got home from work (I was feeding Elijah) and so he went upstairs to get him. He found Benjamin covered in a very slick substance. His hair was matted down, it was streaked down his cheeks, and his eyelashes were stuck together. Closer inspection of the bedroom led us to some empty KY Jelly bottles. He had dumped them over his head!

The other day Andrew was putting Ben's shoes on him and was talking to him about the things that they needed to do before they could go outside for a walk.

Ben: Huge yawn

Andrew: "Sorry, Ben. Am I boring you?"

Ben: "Yeah."

We also had our first & ...

I spend a lot of time (too much time) thinking about what kind of mom I am based on what I'm doing at the moment. Here's a recent moment I had:

We're watching the news and Ben looks up from playing and see President Obama. "President Obama!" he says and suddenly I'm a good mom.

I turn the TV on at 10:00 am and we hear theme show music. Ben says, "Oh, Ellen is on" and runs over to watch. I decide this makes me a cool mom.

I sit down to nurse Elijah after his nap and turn the TV on. Ben looks up at the talk show and says, "Dr. Phil." And this makes me a bad bad mom!

(In my defense we only get one channel so it's not like I can just switch to something better...)