Benjamin Michael Singer -- One Year and Growing

It's the last week in April here and a spring snowstorm has just dropped six white, fluffy inches onto us. Last Tuesday it was 83 degrees in Ann Arbor. Go figure; that's the Midwest for you. Luckily the snow should melt in another couple of days...

Joel's job is going well, and he had a good trip to a data warehousing conference in Las Vegas in February. Melissa's classes are finally over and she's even got a draft of her dissertation proposal. She enjoyed AERA and a couple of research trips to warmer climates (including a visit to the best doughnut shop in the world). But we know what you all really want to hear about -- Benjamin! Unfortunately the past few months have been a bit trying for him, and us.

First he seems to have cracked a bone in his leg while bouncing around at day care (see the splint and the cast below). Various x-rays have been inconclusive, however, and the pediatric orthopedist isn't sure whether he really got injured that badly at all. But Benjamin had to put up with plaster on his leg for three or four weeks, and that rubbed a nasty pressure sore on the back of his right heel. (Now we know why he had extreme trouble sleeping for a couple of nights in February, one of which had the three of us exploring Ann Arbor winter nightlife at 3am...)

Then Melissa was going to Denver, Colorado for a short ski trip and took Benjamin along for to see family and friends while she exercised on the slopes. However, the trip was a disaster from the start, as Benjamin fell and got a nice large bruise on his head, then turned out to suffer from altitude sickness when they went up too high too fast for him. (He'll have to learn extreme snowboarding when he's a little older.) Sad to say, Melissa never got to ski.

Also, Benjamin inherited Joel's ear structure and eustachian tubes, which was a bad thing -- he should have taken Melissa's! This meant that he had constant fluid behind his ears for most of the winter, affecting his hearing and giving him multiple ear infections. After consultation with the doctor and a few tries at scheduling, we finally got ear tubes installed (Benjamin's first cyborg implant) a couple of weeks ago. He seems to be hearing much better and draining all that nasty stuff out.

He's getting pretty close to crawling, but he's a bit late on moving around by himself. We're consulting a physical therapist, just to be on the safe side, but we're not too concerned at this point. Joel and Melissa were late crawlers (you can see how much that's affected their development), and having an unknown leg injury for a month probably hasn't helped his development any.

Lucia and Jack came up to visit a couple of times in the last couple of months, and Benjamin gets along very well with that set of grandparents. We'll be visiting Joel's sister Rachel and the rest of the Singers in Chicago in a couple of weeks. Benjamin also celebrated his first birthday by tearing apart and devouring a blueberry muffin. Thanks to everyone for the presents and phone calls and words of encouragement -- a one-year-old who's getting mobile and who likes to look at everything that he couldn't reach before keeps us on our toes!