Benigno Erasmo David

A typical day for Benig:

Wakes up at 8-9AM for his first feed, usually during breakfast.

Then plays with Lolo Rico or Lola Neneng, whoever is here for the week to be with him while Lawrence and I are at work/school.

Then he’ll go for a walk around the neighborhood, to Shaw’s at Porter Square usually.

He’ll then nap and play throughout the day…

…until everyone is home for dinner, at which time he joins us at the table.

Finally, Benig plays with Lawrence and me until it’s time for him to sleep.  At this point, he will have fed 5 times throughout the day, taking in 800-900 mL.

And then the day starts all over again the next day.  In the frequent words of Lolo Rico to Benig, “Mahirap ang buhay ni Benig.” (Translation: Life is hard for Benig.)

Lawrence bought Benig this beautiful toy fire truck for Christmas.  Benig is still a little too young to ride it, but that hasn’t stopped us from having him ride it while we support him.

At first, he wasn’t having any of it.

But after a couple of tries, he started to at least not cry.

We’re still waiting for the day he actually smiles while riding it.

We took Benig out during one of the mild snow storms to hit Boston this winter.  Just another confirmation that he’s our son- he hated it!  As soon as the first snowflake hit his face when we stepped outside, he shook his head “no”, as if he were angry that it had the audacity to land on him and use his body heat to melt itself.  He then promptly went to sleep, his usual stress response, and stayed asleep for the remainder of his time outside, in spite of our placing him in the middle of a snow pile for most of it.  He promptly woke up as soon as we went back inside and was cranky for the rest of the day.

Benig attended his first birthday party for a friend in January.  Our friends’ son, Sterling, turned 2 and had his party at Together-in-Motion in Arlington, an indoor playground with mats, parachutes, and the like.  Benig was of course the youngest kid at the party and too young to really take advantage of the padded floors, but he still had his own fun, or rather we had our fun by making him pose.

Now that it’s January 31 AND I have started classes again, I figured it was the right time to finally blog about Benig’s first New Year’s Eve celebration (read: procrastination time).

Benig managed to stay up until midnight!

Though part of it may have stemmed from the noise of the games we were playing (Beyond Balderdash can get a crowd riled up), we think it was actually mostly due to the hosts’ apartment actually having adequate heat.  Lawrence and I tend to keep our house on the chillier side, so at the party, Benig was actually sweating. We had to strip him down to his onesie!

I tried making Benig laugh bringing his feet to his face, which he sometimes finds funny. Instead, I think that I was just helping him move his bowels along based on his grunting. Also, I think he was pleading for help from the iPad at the end.

Benig has had two new tricks in the past weeks:
1) Great head control during tummy time. He can really hold his big head high and turn it at will. You’ll see this in the video.
2) Drooling up a storm. We don’t know how this happened, but all of the sudden he hasn’t stopped drooling. You’ll see his ability to let it just drip or to even whip it around in the video.

He also may be starting to develop a love for the tennis ball. Sweet. Let the hand-eye coordination training begin, though he seems to be interested more in just head-eye coordination. He is only 11weeks!

Lola Neneng, Ninang Anna, Ninang Lisa, Lolo Rico, Lola Peppy, and Ninang Steph all came to our home in Somerville to help Benig celebrate his first Christmas.  Unclear if he enjoyed his roll as Santa Benig; he wasn’t too thrilled to fulfill his duty of handing out presents…

…or about being a gift himself.

He might also have not been too thrilled about all the attention he was getting from Mom and Dad.

He did seem to love being a part of the meal…

…and being entertained.

All in all, we all had a wonderful first Christmas together.

Benig’s Ninong Ardi sent him some Christmas presents from Canada.  We used one to gift Benig to himself.

This Sunday, Benig was baptized at the MIT Chapel.  We were fortunate to have our immediate family and close friends there since, as usual, we scheduled this big event at the last minute.  Benig even wore Barong Tagolog baptismal garb for his baptism.