Merry Christmas!

Twenty months

Ashley’s changed a lot in the last month.  She seems to have had a bit of a word explosion, and seems to know the noun for anything she regularly encounters.  A few favorite phrases now: - Careful [something].  We used to say “careful Ashley” whenever she was walking around Tyson to try to stop her from stepping on his tail.  Now she says “careful dog dog” whenever she walks around him.  She’ll also do it for “dada”, “mama”, “blanket”, etc.  She seems to have kind of missed the point of the word “careful” but at least she does tend to walk carefully when she’s telling others to be careful. - [Something] fell down.  Not always true, but she likes to say “tree fell down”, “fork fell down”, or whatever. - [Something] come off.  Usually talking about her boots, and either means that she wants them off, or they fell off. She has a clear favorite song-- “Must be Santa” by Raffi.  She asks to hear it by pointing at the DVD player and saying “Santa”.  And she’ll sing lines from it on her own spontaneously.  Her current favorite overall album is “A Duck in New York City” by Connie Kaldor though.

Almost every object around the house is categorized as being either “Mama’s” or “Dada’s”.  Mama’s purse, juice, hat, phone, boots, garbage.  Dada’s vacuum, camera, shoes, coffee, tea. 

She seems to have a pretty good idea of whatever we’re talking about.  If Nancy and I discuss what we want to have for dinner, for example, she’ll almost always pipe up with a suggestion (usually cheese).  The other day Nancy was ordering a pizza.  She asked for a large with sausage and mushrooms and Ashley added, “cheese!” 

She’s had at least two new teeth come in this past month.  Upper and lower, right side of her mouth, teeth between the front and first molars are starting to come in.  That makes 14.

It’s been a rough month for sleeping with the teething and a couple of colds.  She’s spent a lot of time in our bed, but we trying to put an end to that.  We’ve been visiting her in her room and reading her stories the last couple nights, instead of letting her go to our bed.  It’s been surprising to us how quickly she seems to be catching on to what’s going on.  She adapts by saying different things (like calling for the dog instead of either of us!) or changing the pace or path of her run to the door after we put her back in her crib.

The next update will be her trip to DC a couple weeks ago.

Christmas card portrait fail

On Thanksgiving weekend, our yard was still full of leaves, so we decided it might make a nice setting to attempt to take a family portrait, so we could maybe send out a Christmas card for once.

I set up the tripod, we put a Santa hat on Ashley, and and took some test shots… things were looking promising.

Next I got in the frame and we took a whole bunch of photos.  Well, they were all the same… just likes this:

Ashley is a cheerful kid and smiles all the time… except when you need her to.  We couldn’t do anything to get her to smile.

So maybe next year.  On the plus side, Ashley had a good time playing with the leaves and the tripod.

Christmas tree

Also on Thanksgiving we set up our (fake) Christmas tree.  Or, at least, Nancy and Ashley set it up, while I took pictures.

Ashley seemed quite impressed that the tree on the box looked so similar to the assembled tree.

A quick kiss for mommy:

And a kiss for the mouse ornament:

Cat whisperer

On Thanksgiving day we went to the little farm nearby, where Ashley likes to look at the animals.  She mostly just stares quietly at length, as shown above, and then quickly runs over to a new animal to look at.  Anyway, we were about to leave and a certain little animal caught Ashley’s eye:

She managed to pet the cat for quite a while without ever really scaring it away.  We were quite impressed!

 

Bup Bups

Today when I was feeding Ashley lunch she had me set her "bup bups" (her two bunny rabbit stuffed animals) at the edge of the counter in front of her.  I had to pretend to feed each mouthful to each of them before she would eat it herself.  Lunch took a while today.

Nineteen months

Ashley is nineteen months old today.  She had her 18-month doctor’s appointment a couple weeks ago (which went a little better than her previous couple visits), where she weighed in at 25 pounds, 14 ounces, and measured 34.5 inches in height.   She’s still tall and light for her age.  Her thirteenth tooth is coming in.

Her favorite foods these days are apple, cheese, and cheerios.  Mostly she just wants whatever we have though.

She gives good hugs and says “hug!” when she does it.  The cat doesn’t appreciate her hugs as much as we do.  She’s generally kind of wild these days.. .climbs all over everything and doesn’t like to sit still for too long in restaurants.  She enjoys drawing, holding down the paper with one hand while she scribbles with the other.

She’s talking a lot these days, although we don’t always know what it’s about.  She likes to string 3 words together in phrase, but it usually doesn’t make much sense.  Sometimes it will be whatever she feels like eating: “apple cheese nai nai”, for example.  If she feels like seeing the animals it will be “cat cat dog”, or “cat dog cat”.  If she wants to go read books on the potty it’s “boom boom duck”, borrowing from the content of some of her favorite books that she likes to read on the potty.  She’s also started to sort of memorize some of the lines from her books… so she’ll say something that sounds a little like, for example, “the sun has set not long ago,” at the appropriate page, which entertains us to no end, though she obviously has no idea what it means.

We tried to make a list of the words that she can say.  It isn’t a complete list, but a lot of the words on it would probably be hard to understand by people other than us.  Ninety-five words.  There are two words that strike us as a little weird that she can’t say: “horse” and “bird”. 

airplane alligator apple Ashley ball ballerina banana Bango barn bath bed bee belt blanket boom bowl bread bup bup (her word for bunny rabbit) butterfly bye bye cap car (vroom vroom) cat (yow) caterpillar chair cheese chick (cheep cheep) circle come cow (moo) cracker cup

dada daddy dog (woof) down duck (quack) ear elephant (roar) eye fish floor flower fly foot frog glass (her word for glasses) gong gong goose (honk) Gossie hat Hay Gee heart hi hippo house hug ice keys kiss koala leash light mama

Mum Mum nai nai octopus off owl (hoot) panda pants paw pig pillow please po po potty puff purse rhino rice seal shoe sit sock star sun tail tiger tree tree Ty Ty uh oh up watch

Some photos from today:

“Airplane!”

Laundry baskets

If you leave an empty one out, she’ll climb right in.

I see you

Sunglasses

She likes wearing them!  Not as much as she likes other people (or animals) wearing them… but at least she’ll wear them sometimes now.

Out of gas

Pull the car to the side of the road…

Open the gas tank…	fill’er up…
close it…	and “vroom, vroom,” it’s time to go again.