The Ashlyn Update

Ashlyn will be 17 months old in a couple of days! So since I haven't spent a blog post doing nothing but talking about her, now is the time! 

She is so much fun right now. I know I keep saying that but it's really true. She really keeps us entertained and it's so fun to see the new things she is doing all the time. (well, some are fun, some are not so fun. Like the fact that I fished one of her shoes out of the toilet this morning. I would put that under not fun.)

As her Nana describes it, Ashlyn is in perpetual motion! This girl does not like to sit still. She is usually running if she is moving, too. I don't see her actually sitting or standing still somewhere playing with something very often. The only time she really stops is when there is something to watch on TV. I haven't decided if I like this or not!

 Collin worked a week of 12-hour days at BSU's wrestling camp a couple of weeks ago, then we went to IF for most of the week of the 4th, then this past week again Collin worked more long days at his own K-12 wrestling camp. Needless to say, Ashlyn and I have had a lot of alone time together on our hands! I have found it works best if I make lots of plans for us to do activities together so we (mostly meaning me) don't go completely stir-crazy. We have done fun things like going to the zoo, the mall, walking Lucy downtown and all over other places, running on the greenbelt (well I would not consider that fun for ME but her and Lucy enjoy it), swimming, having playdates with friends, going to free lunch in the park, and visiting the splash pad! We also FINALLY just got a bike trailer (HOLLA! Some of you know.... I have been shopping for months! I found a great one for 60 bucks at Play it Again Sports randomly when driving by one night! score!) and I am so excited to get the chance to go on some bike rides too!

It has been over 100 degrees every day here for a week! So we have spent a lot of time swimming. I have gotten in the pool with Ash several times because even in the shade it is sooo hot if I'm just sitting supervising! She loves to splash around in her little pool we have in our backyard, but mostly she just likes to fill up cups with the water and drink it. I know. eew. If I take away the cups she sucks on the wet toys and balls. Whatever. The best way I deal with this is just making sure the pool water is fresh and clean!

Ash loves to hang out in little places she can crawl into.  Lucy's kennel was her favorite spot for like a week. Every time I didn't know where she was I just needed to look in there and I would find her! 

 She has also gotten really good at saying quite a few words! It is so cute to see what she figures out how to say. She is pretty good at "copying" what I say, if I tell her what something is called she will do her own little impersonation of what I said. It is often close but often way off, which is just as cute! Some of her words are "ball" , "bubbles" (these 2 were getting confused a lot and I don't blame her--balls and bubbles look like the same thing, right!),  "hi," "doodee" (cookie), "sheesh" (shoes), "Daddy" (STILL no Mommy. Seriously kid??), "Nana" (for both Nana and banana), animal sounds for a cow, sheep, pig, kitty, dog, duck, lion, tiger, bear, zebra, snake, bird, monkey, gorilla, elephant, fish and probably more I'm forgetting... can you tell she likes animals?? Also she knows where her nose is and can say "nose" although whenever you ask her where it is she starts picking her nose. So, that is awesome. And somehow she thinks that her "eyes" are where her ears are so we have to work on the body parts still.

Besides copying words she is also such a little imitator of pretty much everything we do. Whenever she gets a hold of one of our cell phones she walks around with it to her ear (really more like on her shoulder) babbling. And if she grabs the TV remote she knows to point it towards the TV and push buttons. Hmm, what does this say about us as parents?? She also really likes to watch me brush my teeth and then when we brush her teeth she knows to open wide and say "ahhh" which is really cute. When I am sweeping the floors after I am done I give her the broom and she will "sweep" just like I was doing. And when I am fixing my hair she always wants me to hand her a brush so she can "brush" her own hair, which is so cute.

 We got a huge ball and she loves to carry it around the house even though it is almost as big as her! And she says "ball! ball! ball!" the whole time.

 Another little hiding place. Here is a story for you--the other day I was changing her out of her wet swimsuit and swim diaper and for a moment she was naked and wet. She ran into this box and wouldn't come out. I was thinking she was going to pee in there and then we'd have to throw it out, which would be really sad because she really loves to play in it. So I tried to pull her out by her legs and since her bum was all wet she just stuck to the box and didn't even budge but the box came flying at me. It was pretty awesome. I had to peel her wet bum off the bottom of the box to get her out. She thought it was pretty funny.

 We also have enjoyed just hanging out in the backyard! It is so nice to have a fenced in, decent-sized play area! She is totally happy to wander around and see what she can find and just check everything out. Plus she likes to run on the grass which is fine since if she falls it doesn't really hurt!

 Found the Dutch Oven stuff.... needless to say it is not stored in the backyard anymore!

 Playing ball with Daddy! She loves to play with Dad. He is so good at making her squeal with delight and laugh and run around. They have a really good time together.

 And yet another little hiding spot. Don't you love the "this is serious" look.

 Here is a first-time mom, make-this-mistake-only-once experience! I read on some "toddler ideas" blog that a fun sensory activity would be to play with flour. Don't judge me too much, ok. I was planning on sweeping, mopping, and cleaning the kitchen later that day so I figured what's the big deal ? Well, it was a horrible idea. For one thing, I put WAY too much flour down for her. All she did was smear it away from her, which meant it coated all of HER, her HIGH CHAIR, the TABLE, CHAIRS, and the floor. And I realized I definitely wasn't thinking clearly as to how easy it would be to clean up flour! JUDAS! It took me like an hour, between getting her clean (which meant rinsing out her hair and a complete change of clothes), getting the big blobs of flour cleaned up, and then doing like 3 more rounds of cleaning to get all the gross "flour residue" off of everything. It basically wasted my whole day. So stupid. And you might think, "but it was worth it if it kept her occupied and she had fun," but guess what. She didn't even like it! I think she lasted like 10 minutes playing in it and then was crying to get down and move on. So all around, one of the stupidest things I've done in a while.

 See how empty the table was by the end? fun fun.

 One of the things we did during one of Collin's busy weeks was have some little friends over for a swimming party! 3 of my good friends have kids very close to Ashlyn's age, although they all also have an older sibling. So we had all 6 kids over to swim and play in the backyard while us moms got to chat, it was fun. Surprisingly little swimming actually occurred, but there was lots of sippy-cup stealing, snack gobbling, jumping on the tramp and swinging! This picture is so funny of the babies, I am amazed they all sat there long enough for it!


Along with all her new tricks, Ashlyn has also decided that she is Too Cool for School:

 She LOVES to wear sunglasses. It is never-fail hilarious to me every time. I will put them on her and then even though she takes them right off, she continually will beg for me to put them back on, or try to put them on herself (although she is only coordinated enough to stick them around her neck....). Once they are on she will stumble around the house like a blind person giggling and thinking it is so funny. It IS so funny to me!

 Ashlyn's cousins Scotty and Aiden were here last week for wrestling camp! These boys kept her so entertained! They played and played all sort of chasing games, with her toys, and whatever else. It really made me excited for someday when she will have a sibling she can play with because man, it was nice to have someone else entertain her!

 She is a great little "helper" with the laundry! Whenever I open up the washer or dryer to change the laundry loads she hears it from no matter where she is in the house and comes running. She is a great "helper" by pulling the wet clothes back out of the dryer... or jumping into the basket of freshly cleaned clothes.

She has started to be entertained by "older kid" shows, and by that I mean pretty much anything else besides Baby Einstein, which is all that used to keep her attention. I am happy with this because let me tell you, those Baby Einstein videos, even though we have quite a few, were getting SO OLD to me! I could sing you the entire soundtrack to any one of them by heart. We have some Dora videos, lots of Sesame Street, and Yo Gabba Gabba and she likes all that stuff. I try to limit how much TV she watches to just a little bit in the morning while I fix her hair and then some either before or after dinner if it's a slow day...but I admit there are also days when I just need to get some things done or not deal with her if she's grumpy so then she gets to watch some extra! I thought this was so cute, her lounging watching Dora.

 More swimming!

She wanders around on the smoking hot cement in bare feet and doesn't seem I think when I took this picture I had just warned her not to touch the grill because it was "hot." It wasn't of course but I'm trying to train her! She is a pretty sketchy listener. When I say "come back" or "no no" or "don't touch that..." ha ha ha it is like a 20% chance she will actually listen to what I say. I am hoping that is normal for this age.... and I'm hoping it will increase someday... like maybe by the time she's 8?? Don't laugh too much that I said that.

One thing she DOES do well is disobey and then give me a big cheesy smile right when she does something she knows she's not supposed to. For example, our kitchen trash can has a lid that can come off, and I am constantly keeping her from pulling it off and getting into the trash. Pretty much every time I say "no no, don't take off the lid" she looks right at me, gives me a big cheesy smile, and does it anyway. It's one of those times I think she's lucky she's so cute! ha ha.

Anyway, another thing she is really into these days is "putting" things into other things. Like I mentioned, the shoe in the toilet. Thankfully that was the first time for that although I'm sure it's not the last! But really, she likes to "put" stuff places. There is an empty drawer in our bathroom that almost every night I find a new surprise from Ashlyn! It is sometimes a shoe or a toy or even some trash. It's great. When we're in the backyard she likes to "put" all her toys into the baby swing. And she also really likes to put anything and everything into our trash cans and her laundry hamper. I have to go through her laundry piece by piece now because a few toys have gone through the wash recently that I didn't catch before I started the load. And whenever something is missing the first place I check is the trash can! I have found all sorts of stuff in there! It's pretty cute. I didn't realize it was such a big deal to do that at this age but she is all about it.

Ashlyn is also quite the dancer! If I am singing or she hears music or even if I'm tapping a beat on something, she'll stop what she's doing and start bopping. It's so so cute. She'll usually look at me to see if I'm dancing too. If I join in she'll keep doing it, but if not she'll stop. It's pretty funny.

She is SOO social! Just tonight we went out to eat and while we were waiting for our food she was wandering around and every person she saw she would wave and say "hi!" It's super cute. She doesn't really seem to have much stranger anxiety, which I'm going to take as a good thing, although I wouldn't mind as she gets older if she at least has a little! She has no problem going up to random kids and even adults and saying hi and then touching them or babbling to them in her little language. I'm hoping this lasts at least until she starts going to nursery!

She is eating tons of stuff and I wouldn't categorize her as super picky, although I definitely don't ever really know what she will and won't eat. One constant is blueberries--she absolutely loves those and would eat them--tons of them--for every meal if I let her. Some of our go-to's are nutrigrain bars, frozen or fresh berries of any kind, peaches, pears, bananas, grapes, frozen peas, oatmeal, chicken nuggets, cheez-its, kix, sweet potato fries, yogurt bites, bread of any kind, watermelon, cheese, lunch meat, animal crackers, teddy grahams, etc. etc. I usually have her try whatever we're eating although often she won't like it. We have ended up having pizza 3 of the last 5 nights (don't get me started) and she definitely likes that. Overall it seems like if she's hungry enough she'll eat mostly anything that isn't too weirdly flavored or spicy (she does NOT like spicy, we have found that out for sure!!), which is nice, especially since we have been on the go so much often she is eating kind of whatever there is wherever we are!

She is also still a sleeping champ. I don't know what I would do if she wasn't! She sleeps about 13 hours a night and takes a 2-3 hour nap in the afternoon, and I am really liking that schedule! I want to hang on to that nap as long as I can!!

Side note on her hair.... I have known from day 1 it would be an interesting challenge... and I don't think I'm an expert by any means.... but so far it is getting pretty long and is in good shape so I think I deserve a small pat on the back! It really is completely different from any hair care I've been exposed to but the longer we try different things and work on it I actually like it more and more. It's fun to read up on fun hairstyles we'll be able to try someday and in the meantime I am often trying new things to keep improving her hair and keeping it both healthy and cute. I hope it keeps going ok and for now it is actually a fun thing for me!

Anyway, Ashlyn is such a blessing to us and I really remember a lot how lucky we are to have her. It has been trying a lot lately with being a single mom often while Collin has been so busy, but really I have been having so much fun spending time with her. We are so thankful that her sweet birthmom chose us to be her parents and are so thankful that we are sealed together as a family. She brings so much joy to us and I can't imagine life without her anymore!