Gower

Until the other day, whenever I'd asked Ashley what she was drawing, I would get a response like, "paper," or "color." Well, a couple nights ago, I asked her what she was drawing and she said "gower." I have no idea what a gower is, but her representation of it seems to consist of a couple circles and an extra scribble that she calls "whiskers." She drew three of them and you can see two of them here.

What really killed us was what happened the next morning-- one of her drawings was still on the table from the night before, and when she sat down for breakfast she immediately pointed at it and said "gower!"

Twenty-three months

We’ve noticed a lot of change in Ashley over the last month or so. 

She comes up with her own songs now.  An example would be something like:

Bango, Bango, Bango.

Under a chair,

Under a table.

Bango, Bango, Bango.

 

(repeat ad infinitum; intersperse an occasional “Meow” between verses)

She’s speaking pretty well, often in full sentences.  She’ll now say things like, “Mommy, I heard your phone.”

Her favorite word is probably “heavy”—she remarks that everything that she or anyone else picks up is “heavy.”  I guess when you only weight 30 pounds yourself, everything seems heavy!

Another word she likes these days is “maybe.”  She usually uses it in the context of looking for something, like, “maybe over here,” but she’ll use it in other ways as well.  She has some new shoes that she loves, and the other day Nancy had the following exchange with her regarding them:

Nancy: Are these shoes Tyson’s?

Ashley: No.

Nancy: Are these shoes Bango’s?

Ashley: (long pause) Maybe.

Her counting is really improving.  She usually skips the numbers 3, 10, and 11, (which is a big improvement from before where she’d skip about half the numbers she knew) and can’t go higher than 14 or so.  She still double-counts things a lot, but not nearly as frequently as she used to.  She’s good at recognizing if there are two of a type of item; for example, if someone with two dogs walks by she’ll always say, “Two dogs!”

She refuses to have her hair done at all.  Hairclips and ponytails are not happening.  This might mean frequent haircuts, and I can’t imagine how those will go.  (She hasn’t had a hair cut yet, and her bangs are in her eyes now.)

Some pictures from March 15th, her 23-month birthday:

Getting the car ready for the spring

Two weekends ago I put the summer tires on the car, and while I was out there, Ashley decided she wanted me to get her car ready for the warm weather too:

Obey the duck

We recently got a new baby monitor.  Ashley thinks that its camera is a duck:

A duck that can talk and play music!  The baby monitor has an intercom system.  We didn't think it would be useful, but it turns out we can command Ashley to go to sleep using it:

Snowball! Snowman!

We haven’t had much snow this year, other than back in October.  But one day back in mid-January, we did get a couple of inches.  I took Ashley out in the backyard and showed her how to make little snowballs and snowmen.  She loved it!

By the next morning the snow had melted.  But when she came downstairs that morning, the first thing she did was put on her boots and coat (backward, the only way she knows how), and started knocking on the front door, saying “snowball! snowman!”

Where’s Ashley?

Ashley’s thing these days is to cover her face, with anything, and then say, “where’s Ashey?”  We have a panda backpack hanging on the wall, and she has me put her little numbered baskets over the panda’s head (actually, one of them over it, and then another one or two stacked on top.)  Then she says, “where’s Pandy?”, followed by “under the table?”, “with Bango?”, “in the stroller?”, etc., until she finally has me reveal her panda’s face to her great delight. I don’t really get the appeal of this game, but whatever.

Twenty-two months

Our little munchkin is 22 months old now.  These days she’s a bossy, wild little thing, but immensely entertaining.  She provides us with a running commentary of everything she does, and everything she sees us doing.  She tries to pick out clothes for us and reminds us to put on belts and sweaters.  She tells me to take my shoes off if I’m wearing them around the house, and reminds me that we clean up first, before she’s allowed to play after dinner.  Her favorite game these days is jumping off the ottoman onto the sofa, yelling “kaboomy!”  She still has a little trouble with her personal pronouns (“read to you” means “read to me”) but is starting to get it.  She’s trouble at mealtimes these days; she’s had it with her highchairs.  In her mind, they are suitable for her dolls, but not her anymore.  Similarly, shopping is tough with her these days—there’s about a 20-minute limit before she wants out of the shopping cart. She loves baths and will sit in the tub forever.  We’ve finally recently moved her into the bath tub from her toddler tub, which had gotten laughably small for her.  Potty training has mostly been unsuccessful.  Naptimes and bedtimes have been good even though she’s still in the Pack’n’Play.

When we walk in the evening she loves to look for the moon, and if she can’t see it, she asks us to find it for her.  She still enjoys taking the dog for walks and often asks to see the dog and cat right after she wakes up.

She seems to at least sort of understand that a new baby is coming.  She often wants to kiss mommy’s tummy, and loves to read books about new babies and being a big sister.  We’ll see how she reacts when a real one is here!

Sassafras

Twenty-one months

Our little parrot is 21 months old now.  She’s a chatterbox these days.  Loves pretending to cook, playing with her dolls, singing, and taking baths. 

It’s difficult to get her to sit down to eat.  When we do eat, I usually have to wear a bib (by her request), and she’s constantly offering us her food.  Her favorite foods these days are strawberries, blueberries, and tomato soup.

We’ve had her out of her room lately, since we’ve had new drywall, and now paint, in an adjacent room, and she’s been a good sport about sleeping in a pack’n’play for the last few weeks.  Having the drywallers show up early every morning piqued her interest in “man”— every morning since, when I feed her breakfast I get a lot of “man goes bang bang bang” (as she pretends to hammer) or “beeess! beeesss! beeesss!” as she points her finger, pretending to drill.  Otherwise she’s been really into high-fiving and fist bumps lately, and with the wet and snowy weather we’ve been having lately she’s been very interested in wiping off the dog’s paws when he comes in from outside.

I haven’t had the camera out much lately, but here are a few pictures of Ashley from January 15th.

 

Cat scratch you!

Ashley plays with the cat, often resulting in scratches.  It’s not really the cat’s fault—she’s very tolerant—but Ashley can only grab her paws or dangle ribbon in front of her so much before the above happens.  After a scratching incident, it’s always the same refrain: “Cat scratch you!?  Bango did it!  It hurts!”  Then we kiss her scratched hand and she goes back and torments her some more.

Soup

Yesterday, for the first time, Ashley ate soup without making a crazy mess.  She celebrated with some fist bumps.

Stamping

Nancy bought Ashley a table and chairs at Ikea yesterday, and my mom had refurbished an old art smock that my aunt Jude had made for me when I was a little one, so today we put it all together and had Ashley do some stamping on her new table:

She loved it.  She initially wanted to remove the hat, but we just told her, “you need the hat on to do stamping,” and that seemed to satisfy her.

DC

Back at the end of November, Nancy had to go to DC for work for a couple days, so Ashley and I tagged along.

The first day, I just walked Ashley down to the National Mall and let her run around (or just stand and pose with her giraffe):

She loved running around the slopes and little steps of the World War II Memorial…

…watching helicopters fly by…	…and inspecting the plaques on the walls of the Memorial.

The next day was Ashley’s first trip to a zoo.  The National Zoo was perfect for her that day—it was empty as it was a relatively cool midweek day, so I occasionally could just let her run around.  Her favorite area was actually the kids' area with farm animals and a large pizza that she could climb around on.

(Above is Ashley staring at the goat below.)

That night after dinner we checked out the Christmas tree at the Ellipse.  Ashley loved wearing her Santa hat and sang the Raffi song, "Must Be Santa" as we pushed her around in her stroller.

It was a nice couple days and a great place to take a toddler.

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.