New Addition

     On Labor Day of 2011 we found out that we would be blessed with a surprise in May of 2012. It took a while for the shock to wear off, roughly 9 months, but now that we have met this wonderful little surprise we can't imagine life without her. Elsi Eve is the happiest, most content, easy going baby to ever join our family. Except maybe for Rae. Eve and Rae are a lot alike in so many ways; they look alike they have a lot of the same character traits and they both LOVE animals. Their birth weights were 2 pounds different though.
     Elsi was born on May 14th, 2012 at Miami Valley. That was the first time for us to use the Miami Valley Hospital over the Wayne Hospital. I chose M. V. because the midwives that I had been seeing during the pregnancy didn't deliver at Wayne. Elsi Eve was born at 3:04 on her due date. The hospital staff said that only 3% of babies are actually born on their due date.
      It took a little over 24 hours for us to decide on a name. Rae and Shane wanted to name her Elsi Lynn and Jeremy wanted to name her Eve Lynn. I liked them both equally and didn't want to disappoint anyone by casting my vote, Rae and Shane together only counted as one vote, of course. And we were willing to veto their right to vote if we didn't like the outcome. Our family consists of BIG BOSS, little boss and our five little subjects. Now if the five little subjects could just accept their places, but no, they're always trying to overthrow the bosses! And back to the name thing again, we finally decided to do away with Lynn and use both first nams resulting in.......you guessed it. Now much to everyone elses confusion we somtimes call her Elsi and sometimes Eve. Everyone here seems to accept it without question. Baby seems to respond equally to either name as well. No confusion here!
      At 8 month old Eve can now get into a sitting position all by herself, clap her hands, and army crawl. She spend some time on her hands and knees rocking back and forth so I'm betting she'll be crawling within a month. No teeth yet. At 6 months she weighed 16 pound which is more than Lexi weighed at 13 months! 

Rae Lynn Benedict

Headed with alarming speed toward adolescence! Rae is finally finishing up her third grade year at Greenville East Intermediate. This has been her first year to have a bad teacher. When I state bad I am implying that she is mean as well as hasn't really taught Rae anything. Everything Rae learned math wise this year is due to Jeremy, myself and Rae just figuring it out herself. She struggles with the concept of math anyhow but having a teacher belittle you and insinuate that you're just pain dumb to the whole class does not inspire learning. The good part is Rae's homeroom teacher is the best. The day she found out she will be getting Ms. Baker again next year was very exciting for her. Her Science and Social Studies teacher is pretty cool too. At the beginning of the school year she had some trouble finding where she fit in with her peers, but all of that issue seems to have cleared up.

Rae's interest include horses, (actually pretty much any kind of animal but especially horses) swimming, reading, movies and hanging out with friends. Her and Shane spend more time watching documentary's than anything else. The biggest argument is whether it will be an animal doc. or a scientific doc.. Shane's interests lie in the cosmos were as Rae's are directed more toward the living things.

When she grows up she wants to be a teacher. She gets her ability to interact well with younger kids from Jeremy. She does great with the little girls, and puts up with a lot from Shane. He seems to be most amused buy pestering and bugging the tar out of her. She does have her limits though. Her latest defense has been to emit very loud obnoxious screeches! I understand the not being able to stand Shane's pestering any longer, but my nerves can't handle being shocked like that either. I came up with a great consequence for Shane when he pesters too much-do all of Rae's chores for a week- one reminder usually does the trick. Now I just have to think of a good one for the screeching.

From a mothers perspective she has been, so far, the easiest child to train and get along with. She generally has a happy outlook on life and truly wants to do right. Most times when she's out of line all I need to do is quietly reminder her to think before she acts or speaks. There is no rebellion in her she just stops and reassesses herself. She confesses and shows signs of a true belief in God the Father and God the Son. Her willingness to redirect her attitude comes from her wanting to please God as well as her parents.

This summer from June-August we have leased a pony named Camy for Rae. This way she will be able to show in 4-H at the Darke County Fair. She's been taking riding lessons for about 4 months now. In March she entered her first horse show and got two ribbons. BIG BIG day for our little Rae.

Shane II

I forgot to mention in my previous post some very important declarations made by young Mr. Benedict.
Just in case you are reading this and don't have previous knowledge of Jeremy's unwavering devotion to Penn State, I will say it has deep roots. So what I am about to write was a very BIG deal within our household. At the supper table one evening a couple weeks ago I told Shane that if he could get good enough at wrestling and if he continued doing it through high school he could get a scholarship to college. Then Jeremy chimed in with how good PSU's wrestling program is. At this point Shane interrupts to ask just where Penn State is. Well Pennsylvania of course. Shane gave Jeremy a sort of confused look and said " Well I'm not going to Penn State then. I'm going to Ohio State duhh!"
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"GASP"
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CHOKE
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SWALLOW
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SPUTTER
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"BUT"
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"BUT!!"
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"WHAAAAAT!!!!!!!"
and the shock set in. Oh where, oh where did he go wrong. Actually These are just Jeremy's reactions. I on the other hand had the best abs work out of the year due to the laughter. Honestly though I never coached Shane on this. Since this momentous event the shock has worn off and reality has started to set in. Jeremy has even conceded that if Shane actually got so good the he was offered a scholarship to OSU that he would put on the scarlet and gray and cheer his loudest at all the meets. Except when Shane would be wrestling the PSU kid then he's just not sure!!

I also wanted to link a few of Shane's wrestling match videos here so...

against Covington

against Bath

round 1 against Aaron Wallers

round 2 against A.W.

and round 3 against A.W.

Shane/Bub

Shane Markley (my maiden name) Benedict. 8 weeks before Shane was born Jeremy and I came to the conclusion that the name we had picked out for our son, Kane, had to go. We both liked it and felt confident the the stigma behind the name Cain did and would not affect us, but what about the little boy? Would he grow up resenting the fact that we didn't consider his feelings about the matter? Hindsight is 20/20 they say, but I'm still not sure how he would have felt about it. He's sort of like a crusty little crab, hard on the outside but soft on the inside.

Last night when Shane went to put his dirty clothes in the hamper he discovered that he actually had to reach the put his things on the top of the pile/mountain of dirty clothes. He then collapsed in a fit of giggles declaring loudly that "Mom REALLY needs to do the laundry!" The good part about it was he was more than willing to add Jo's dirty clothes to the very tip top when I was getting her pj's on her. He wanted to see just how tall he could make that mountain of laundry that Mom so needed to wash. I'm happy to report that although I probably won't be finishing it today the laundry is sorted and the washer and dryer are humming cozily. I'm so glad for a warm house and modern commodities like washers and dryers on days like today!

This year Shane is in the First grade. His teacher is Ms. Green and she is an excellent teacher. Shane's math skills are amazing, but he is still struggling to understand the concept of reading. He seems to be able to memorize really well and does good with his sight words, but struggles a lot when it comes time to sound words out. My challenge is to get him interested in the books he is trying to read. Since he is a science and biology geek it's not that difficult. He loves all kind of informational books the hard part is fining them with words simple enough for him to read. The funny part is when we get to some scientific word that I don't even know and we both sit there trying to sound it out. I'm still not sure we figured out the true name of that one kind of frog the other day. Oh well it was fun to say it all the different ways it might be and good for him to try.

Shane has two hobbies this year. I had originally told the children they could pick out one each, but both of Shane's hobbies were inexpensive. He joined the Cub Scouts about a year ago and really loves all the outdoorsy stuff. This past November he also signed up for wrestling and he's been doing really well. This coming Sunday is the tournament and then after that we'll go to the Nutter Center for his final meet if he does good enough this Sunday. So far this year he's gotten 6 pins.

Just this past Christmas, when we were in Kansas, Shane spent a day with his Uncle Kent reading water meters. That evening at the supper table he wondered if he was related to Kent. Upon confirming that he was indeed related he replied "Sweet!" Immediately a red flag went up and I had to inquire as to just what those two had been up to that day. Besides Kent trying to teach Shane how to gleek, if you don't know what that means consider yourself lucky, I'm not sure what all they did. Shane did get paid a very large sum of moolah for his wonderful companionship that day though. He is squirreling it away and intends to amass a much bigger stock pile. I'm rather pleased to find out that he has a desire to save his money as in the past he can't wait to spend it.

He may be the only boy in our family (actually can you every really say a man is not a boy any more? which would mean there are actually two boys in our family), but he definitely holds his own in a house full of females. ...Note I'm not commenting on the maturity of the parental female of our household...

Lexi

"Alexia Thu Thuy Benedict!" Shane uses every one of her four names when he discovers her destroying or just plain wrecking one of his creations, which she just can't resist whether they be masterpieces made of Lego or tinker toys, architectural structures for his train or cars, carving out of wood, or one of his many collections. She now has an accomplice in crime, her side-kick, stinker winker bean, better known as Joey. Upon discovery of her wreckage she has newly elected to attempt to divert all blame to said side-kick by emphatically stating "Jo Jo JO JO JO!!!" It's not working out so well for her seeing as we're on to her little scheme. For example yesterday I discovered Lexi's artwork on our white cupboard. Due to the fact that it was colorfully displayed in purple marker and there was the same shade of purple marker marks on her hands I was pretty confident I had discovered the true culprit. Besides that the scribbling were just too advanced to be the scribblings of a one year old. Actually if it had been Jo I'm pretty sure the purple markings would have been primarily around Jo's mouth as she's more apt to chew on the marker than use it to create artwork.

Now how about a list of some of Lexi's favorite things: school, Daddy, outside, food, massive piles of hoarded toys, and wrestling with the entire family(excluding Mom of course). I just don't find much pleasure in being attacked by four jumping squealing, elbowing, kneeing rowdy kids! Jeremy seems to find it rather amusing though. I do find it amusing as well, but only from the sidelines thank-you very much.

Lexi has been home for two and a half years now. She is in school primarily for speech therapy and the last PT conference I went to the therapist was very encouraged by Lexi's progress. She does seem to have a lot of new words since she started school this past fall, but I have yet to hear her put two together. Her two newest words are "me and mine". Have you ever heard of a child who waited until they were 3 and a half years old to implement these two words into their vocabulary!?

Joey DOB 11-17-09

This post will be about Jo Lynn, the beloved baby of the family. It's so funny to watch Rae and Shane when they scold or correct her. She is still little enough that her naughtiness and sassiness make us all want to burst out laughing. I've explained to the older kids though that I don't want Jo to get the idea that her naughtiness is an acceptable source for our amusement. So as long as they are scolding her they have to keep a strait face. Once she can't see them they no longer need to be in control and may he-haw to their hearts desire. So this evening was a classic example. Jo got into something she wasn't supposed to have (for the 1,000th time today) and Rae took it away, whereupon Jo began her big bad baby sass. Rae did great she even kept her voice stern, but as she hastily exited through the kitchen I noticed her eyes sparkling, mouth pursed, cheeks puffed and gawffing snickers emitted through her nose/ears??? But seriously this stage doesn't last very long if I remember correctly. Very soon, I expect, no one will be amused by the sass this child already has mastered. Within thirty minutes of being home this evening Jeremy notified me that " that girl is fast!" He was complaining that he barely moved her away from getting into one thing and turned his back for a second and the next thing he heard was the sound of the eggs he had just gathered cracking. Good thing he's fast too and rescued the eggs before she ruined the whole lot of them.

Joey, as Shane nick-named her on her first day home from the hospital, has a lot of character. She loves to imitate the other children and , be one of the big kids, which cracks Rae and Shane up. At least for now. It's the funniest thing to see her climb into the child size recliner and literally lounge when she witnesses them put a movie on and get comfy in their chairs. She growls, lifts her eye brows, tilts her head to the side, shrugs her shoulders until her neck is completely invisible and so many other funny expressions throughout the day. In many ways she reminds me of Rae at her age, vivacious and very social. She is definitely more of a mamma's baby than Rae was though. I have thoroughly enjoyed her thus far and wish it didn't seem like time is racing by so fast. I'm afraid I'm going to wake up tomorrow and she'll be in Kindergarten already.

Hello Again Bloggers!

I'm not making any promises to myself or readers that this isn't a one time thing for the year, but I've been thinking about resuming my blogging for a while now. It's like having a scrapbook of my own to look back on latter. I like reading my old blogs as much as I like reading everyone else's.

My family has changed so much since the last time I blogged! Major changes include another daughter, Jo Lynn born in November of 2009. and two deaths in my husbands side of the family. Jeremy's dad passed away in May 2009, and our brother-in-law, Russell, passed away in November 2010 leaving an obvious emptiness in our extended family. Three of Russel and Faiths children happen to be our children's best friends. They are like three individual sets of peas in a pod.

In order to encourage myself to continue posting on my blog I'm planning to do individual updates on each family member one at a time.