Dear Bently,

I love you kid! No seriously I do! You are the cutest thing in the entire world! The following examples will prove that you are just that, completely adorable.

Example #1: No matter how badly my day is going you always find some way to make it better! The other day I was having a horrible day. I finally just dropped to my knees and started to pray. For some reason me sitting there, on my knees, with my eyes shut was hilarious to you! You let out a screech and a giggle then come running over and jump on top of me while trying to poke my eyes out with your little fingers. I couldn't help but smile and scoop  you up into the biggest bear hug I could muster! :)

Example #2: You have started doing this thing where you talk all the time. Most of it is things I can't understand but you don't let that stop you. The funny thing is you will randomly say something and then laugh about it! I can't wait to be in on the joke! It sure sounds funny! :)

Example #3: You found some old sunglasses in my room. I'm on the computer and you bring them to me all the while saying, "glasses glasses" in your little baby voice. I immediately put them on you and you just grin from ear to ear! You then run around the house giggling. It sure made me laugh watching you run around in your sunglasses!

Example #4: You have just barley learned to talk on the phone. Before you would not talk back or you would push it away. Now you actually enjoy talking on the phone and will usually jabber away for long periods of time! You are especially good at talking to your Dad! You get all excited when it's him on the phone and will actually take the phone from me and walk away. The other day I hear your Dad on the phone say "I love you!". Then you in a high excited voice say "love you!". It was adorable and pretty much melted my heart. I still have a hard time believing you are old enough to talk! Crazy!! :)

Example #5: Okay this is the last one. Today your Dad brought you to come visit me at work. As soon as you see me you point to me with a huge smile on your face and yell out "mama" while reaching for me! I loved it! I love that you love me! That you want to be with me! That you are almost as excited to see me as I am to see you! :)

Bently I love you so much! Thank you for making me so incredibly happy! I don't know what I would do without my little man! You have made some horrible days all that much more bearable! :) I love you my little man!

Mom

Dear Bently,

When you were in my tummy I decided to sing to you. Almost every night before we fell asleep your Dad and I would sing a verse from the song, "My Wish" by Rascle Flatts. When you were born you seemed to remember the song. Whenever we sung it you would come straight down and be content. Now that your 18 months old we still incorporate singing to you on a regular basis. Every night before we lay you down we have a tradition that goes like this. I hold you and you lay your head on my shoulder. Daddy then comes up behind me and puts his arms around both of us. I then sing to you a song of my choosing. Either, "My Wish", "I am a Child of God" or "Think of me". It's one of my favorite traditions. I love holding you close when you are tired and snugly. I love feeling your Dad's arms around me and I love the little moment we get to have as a family! It's seriously my favorite moment ever. I look forward to it every night as it approaches bed time. It makes me sad that you won't remember this when it's so important to me. I hope you always know how loved you are! I hope we can continue our little night time tradition for a long time! I love you with my whole heart!
Mom

Dear Bently

Happy 18 months birthday little guy! I try and stop myself from calling you my baby because you sure aren't a baby anymore. Though to me, you'll always be my baby! Love you more then you'll ever know!

Mom

Dear Bently

I don't know if our house is boring or if you're just like me and like to be out doing things, but you love it when we go bye bye. The past two evenings I haven't wanted to be in the house so you and I went to the park. The park is within walking distance so I decided to walk both nights. The first night I let you walk with me. You had a blast. You had to stop and bang on everything. You loved touching the leafs and running your hand along the chain link fence. You loved strutting around like a big boy. And you did look like a big boy because you are. You are no longer my baby anymore. You are a big boy who can walk himself to the park. I can't even believe it! But it sure saves my arms!

You love to park. You love to climb and bang on things and shake things, and go down the slides, and run, and swing. That last one surprised me a little. You go through phases of liking to swing and being terrified of it. Lately you can't get enough. We swing then we go play on something else. Then we come back and swing. It's exhausting but so fun watching you have a blast. You love love love it! And I love watching you have fun! :) Today as I pushed you on the swing you laied your tiny baby head back and just grinned as you felt the air rushing past you. Looking up at the sky with your cute grin I couldn't help but be envious of you. Your carefree. You don't have any stress or worries. Then I was sad. Because I know these days will eventually end. Eventually you will be older and have worries and stress. I want you to know I am always here for you! And I am always here to remind you that sometimes you have to throw your head back and just enjoy life. Because believe me, it rushes by too fast. Thank you for reminding me of that. For reminding me how beautiful and wonderful life truly is. So much of the beauty in my life comes from you little man. You seriously make me so incredibly happy. You have pulled me through some rough times. But you are always there, with your big hugs, cute smiles, and contagious giggles! :) Both nights when it was time to leave you cried. I feel so bad stopping your fun. But it gets cold and dark too quickly these days!

We have had some great moments together! I love getting to spend more time at home with you. You are always moving! I don't understand how you do! It's exhausting! With all this movement comes lots of trouble. You play in the toilet, you play with syrup, you take things out of the trash, you get lotion all over again, you bang on the keyboard and the mouse, you pull the canned food off the shelf, you climb up on the table, on the stroller, on basically anything and everything that can hurt you if you fall off. Today I caught you standing on the stroller and trying to pull the magnents off the fridge. Another one of your favorite activities. I just looked at you and said "Bently do you want to get hurt?" Hahaha! You sure do keep me on my toes! I get exhausted by the end of it! But you are worth it!

I love you Bently and literally treasure every moment with you. Today I just held you and gave you about a million kisses. You have learned to mostly block me out when I do this and act like nothing is happening. But I treasure each kiss I get to give you! I love you my little man! I love you more than you'll ever know! :)

Mommy 

Dear Bently,

Since Daddy is working full time and going to school we have been spending lots of time together! Lots of mommy and Bently time. Something that never happened very much in the past. I love it! I love spending time just us two bonding! We go to the park and run errands and I let you get into lots more trouble then Daddy did! We have dance parties and watch your favorite TV show the backyardigans. You love it! You hear the theme music start playing and you laugh and clap your hands. Adorable! We read book after book. You love to read books! We take walks to the trash and talk about cars. We spend hours playing with the alphabet refrigerator magnets. You have recently become obsessed with letters! Every where we go you point out letters to me! You now recognize H and M almost all the time. You are so proud of yourself when you can recognize a letter! It's adorable!
It's hard to watch you grow up but it's also so fun watching you want to be more independent. Today I was feeding you when you grabbed the fork from me and didn't want to give it back. Things like that tell me how much bigger my little boy is getting. You now want to do things for yourself. I snuck home for a second on my break tonight. I just needed to see you. I slowly opened the door and crept over to your crib. There you were. Spread out with your baby hair all a mess. As I watched you sleep I suddenly realized, you are not a baby. Not even a littel. I kept telling myself you were turning into a toddler. Little did I realize it has already arrived. You are a toddler. You are the big kid now! You don't have to walk holding onto my hands and you can feed yourself and you know what I mean when I ask you to go get your shoes. I can't believe my little baby is so big. I can't believe how fast it has all gone. I can't believe what joy and love you have brought into my life. More than I ever thought possible! Being your mom is the very best job in the world!!! :) I seriously love it! I can't wait till I can do it 24 hours a day 7 days a week!
Little man I hope you always realize how much I love you! I hope you always feel it. No matter where you go in life or how far away we might be from each other I will never stop loving you ever! Thank you for choosing our family to come to! Thank you for changing my life and making me happy every single day!
I love you always!
Mom

Dear Bently,

There are so many things I want to write about, but then when I go to actually do it, they all slip from my brain like water running through my fingers! Ugh! I am such a slacker mommy. I feel like I haven't written about all the fun things you do in forever. Let's just get started shall we and we'll see where it leads! :)
You have turned into a little parrot. You repeat most everything we say. I love it! I love making you say silly words, or words I know are pretty much impossible for you to say right now! But there are always those rare moments where you actually say a really hard word crystal clear. I always am shocked and amazed and end up hugging and kissing you like crazy cause my mommy pride is exploding! :)

1-Mama
2-Dada
3-Cracker
4-All gone
5-Amen
6-Dog (mostly when we ask you to say dog you just bark! It's adorable!)
7-Duck
8-Papa (Started consistently saying this one today!)
9-Car (You say this one all day every day! It get's a little annoying sometimes!)
10-Plane (Mostly sounds like pa. It's adorable! whenever you hear one you point at the sky and say plane! :) You also said it today when you saw some balloons floating in the sky! We'll have to teach you balloon next!)
11-Home

Here's the list from before and I'll add the ones you can say now!
12. Chicken
13. Annie
14. Grandma
15. Melissa
16. Milk
17. Eat
18. dinasaur (This one is hilarious! You just say it so cute!)
19. Amublance
20. H (As in the letter H. We have magnetic letters on our fridge and every letter is H no matter how many times we tell you otherwise! :)
21. Bye bye
22. Hello or Hi
23. Cheese (You pick up our digital camera, Point it at yourself and say cheese! It's pretty much the cutest thing in the world!)
24. Bath
25. Night night

There are more but I can't think right now! I love that you can talk! It's the cutest thing ever! Everytime you say a new word I get so excited! You can't even imagine how happy it makes me!
We bought you your very own potty awhile back. No I have no intentions of potty training you yet because you are not ready. But I read this neat article about preparing your child for potty training and that is a part of it. You love sitting on your potty. It's pretty cute! :) I can't wait for the day I don't have to change diapers!
You have a weird reaction to sirens. We have 2 firestations within 1 or 2 miles of our home so we hear a lot of sirens. You have 1 of 2 reactions. The first reaction is your terrified. You will run and cling to us and snuggle down and get the scared look on your face that is adorable. You will stay that we long after there gone! Or two you look up with big eyes and imitate the sirens making a little wooing noise! I love it! That one always makes me laugh! Whenever I hear a siren I always automatically look to you to see what you're going to do! It's quite entertaining!
You have become very giggley lately! You love being chased. I will growl and you will automatically go running towards Dad! You squel with anticipation and hide your face in his legs! We then of course have to tickel you. You are so ticklish! I love making you laugh! You also laugh when I make silly faces at you! I probably look like a nerd as I munch my breakfast down making the craziest faces I can muster for your enjoyment! :) It's worth it to hear your sweet baby giggle! :)
Every night I check on you when your sleeping. I quietly sneak into your room and look into your crib. You are the sweetest sleeper ever. You are always snuggled down in some crazy upside down position with Dog dog wrapped tightly under you arm. Or Dog dog is under your belly or beneath your head, but mostly you just hold him tight as you sleep! It's incredibly adorable! I have never seen a child actually sleep with a stuffed animal until you! I just sit there and stare at you, taking in every single little detail! I whisper I love you, wrap a blanket around you and sneak back out. As soon as I shut the door I wish I had one more second with you. I always want as much time with you as possible. I miss you when your sleeping! :)
You love dancing. It's hilarious. I would like to give the credit to me. I am always having crazy dance parties by myself in the kitchen. I should say I used to because now you will usually join me for my dance parties! Before all you could do was rock your head back and forth. I'm happy to report your skills have much improved! You now can spin in a circle and bend your knees and bounce. I love it! We turn on music just to watch you dance. You are picky when it comes to the music you like though. It has to have a good beat or you will ignore it. Oh I should also mention when you spin in a circle you make yourself dizzy. Again, hilarious! :)
I'm sure there were more things I wanted to talk about but of course they have all dispeared! I hope you always know how much I love you! How much your smiles mean to me when I am having a bad day. I love getting Bently hugs. Today we just layed in my bed and snuggled and played. It was one of those moments that I wish could last forever! I am one lucky Momma to have you for a son! :)
Love,
Mommy

Dear Bently,

On Wednesday 09-05-2012 I took you to daycare for the first time. I was nearly in tears just walking up the door. But I knew I had to be strong for you. It didn't help that I was so tired! The whole reason you go to daycare is so I can sleep after working all night long. I put you don't and you eagerly went and started to play with the toys. You seemed fine so I quickly left before I lost it. I made it down the street before I started to cry. I cried the whole way home. I later come to find out that you were absolutely okay the whole time. You called out for me once and that was it. I was so proud of my big boy! I have so much mommy guilt for putting you in daycare. It's the best option for us right now but that doesn't mean I like it. I love you more than you know!
Mom