Benji is a person

This is a bittersweet posting.

Our little Benji has in the past few weeks changed.

He walks.
He talks.
He makes jokes, and laughs at himself.
He plays with his sister.
He engages in conversation.

He has, in short, become a little person.

It has been a remarkable transformation, and one that seemed much faster than it was with Yaya. Perhaps it's because we have been moving around so much--between travel and school and work--that we haven't noticed the subtle changes. But I think instead something in Benji just clicked over the past month.

His vocabulary has gone from nothing to about 20 words in the span of two weeks. He now says:

jie jie, nai nai, ma ma, ba ba, bao bao, xie xie (for which he just says "shhh"), ayi, ya ya, and so on.

He can almost always make himself understood, either verbally or through his body language. He loves fans and swings his arm to and fro to demonstrate how a fan goes around and around. He also love people, particulary women, and here in Thailand, he'll go to just about any of the smiling women around the resort.

But he's still a momma's boy. In the morning, he yells for Mama to "bao bao" and no sooner is he in her arms than he screams for "nai nai". It's time to wean for sure, but someone his cuteness keeps Carolyn from cutting him off completely.

In the meantime, his sister is, for the most part, very loving and tender with him. She brings him toys and loves to hug him. Yet at times, she still smacks him for no reason. (She also does this to us, so I have to complement her consistency on this issue.)

It's somewhat sad to realize that, unless we have another child, which we both think is not going to happen, this will be the last time we see these changes in our children. Circle of life and so on, to be sure, but when it happens to your kids, it's something to remember.



It's exciting and a little sad.