Excuse #1: When your child gets older you don't have as much time. Excuse #2: My workload has increased. Excuse #3: Easter came early this year, so there wasn't much time. Excuse #4: Blame the computer. Excuse #5: Asa was in the hospital. Excuse #6: Asa wants to play with the camera, not be in a movie.
Anyway, here are the videos, spanning from tree decorating right before Xmas to just a couple of weeks ago.
Decorating the Tree
Feeding the Baby
Asa Talks About the Hole in Mama's Slipper
Asa & Playdough
Asa Explains How the Video Works ("and another Asa")
Coming down from the sugar high, we are doing pretty well. Poor Asa had to get his 15-month immunizations plus flu shot yesterday afternoon. 4 shots! On the other hand, I had a better treat waiting for him when he got home than usual, since we headed straight out for trick or treating.
He had SO much fun trick-or-treating. He loved the doorbells (pushing buttons is great), and then all the coos and attention he got in his lion costume. He thought that picking out the candy was superb. He doesn't say trick or treat, but would sign please with prompting. And then the thank-you would turn into another reach for the candy. I even gave him some of his candy to eat last night. We did the whole neighborhood, but were home by 6:30.
Here is a video of Asa reading a book with Ahmee this AM.
He has gotten really good at walking in the past month, almost never falling and moving FAST. Climbing has also improved, so that now he can get into most chairs in order to scare me.
He's talking in two word sentences now, although I don't understand him at least half the time. I've given up tracking his words though. He has a ton. And understands almost everything you say to him. He knows body parts and some animal sounds. Books are still one of his favorite things which is how he's learning some of this. He's able to look at books in his carseat independently, which helps a little. We had a long car ride to my mother's house and now he hates the car no matter what you do.
His favorite toys right now are his vehicles (trucks and a school bus) and his farm animals. Plus the books and music of any sort. Even they don't help in the car though.
Another new thing is that we've started time-out. He's still too young by all the books, but for hitting, biting, and throwing things we had no other solutions. The problem was escalating, so that if you told him 'no', he'd just start doing it more. He needed a break from everything in order to calm down. For other things, we are still doing a lot of redirecting (as much as that works) and warning. Testing limits was something I thought came later than this...
Asa is so big! Today he made his very own bread! He really did. It was an easy recipe and one that he could eat at every stage. Here is the rough recipe:
1/2 cup rice flour (or other flour) 1 tsp sugar 1/2 tsp baking powder 1/4 cup evaporated milk 1/2 tsp butter (melted or really soft) we also added a sprinkling of ginger to give it flavor
Stir or squish with fingers until batter-like. Pour into greased pie tin. Makes one pancake-sized biscuit. Bake at 425 about 10 minutes.
Asa thought it was great fun, and it made a HUGE mess. It was mostly for that reason that we did it. He's been sick this week with some kind of stomach ailment. Yesterday he had a fever and was sad and complainy all day. It was low-grade, but just enough that he felt awful. So I've had to be creative with entertainment for the past few days. We read a lot of books. I built a cave with blankets and pillows and chairs in the living room and he liked playing in there and reading books in there. We played outside and went for a few walks in his wagon too. His attention span wasn't as long as usual, and he was clumsier than usual, and more frustrated than usual, so it took some doing to get through yesterday especially. Today I was better about the scheduled Tylenol and he was also feeling better and took a real nap (which was missing yesterday).
Today, Asa was my helper for his entertainment. We did laundry, lots of washing of walls and tables with sponges (a favorite activity), made bread, swept the floor (another favorite), vacuumed, and took out the recycling and trash. When cleaning stops being fun, I'll be in trouble.
Other news. Asa is really walking pretty well. He can inconsistently get all the way across the living room and into the kitchen. He's determined to do it now, and isn't crawling nearly as much, but standing and walking instead. I had to go get him new shoes last week. We had a long day and he lost one of his previous pair to the cherry tomatoes. I looked and went back and looked again, but it was gone. They must have needed fertilizer. Anyway, so I took him shoe shopping. By myself. This possibly ranks as one of the stupider things I have tried to do. But we did find a pair of Nikes that fits and I checked out the return policy and then brought them home. We're going to keep them. He can walk pretty well in them. Plus, he has worn them in the sandbox, so we can't pass them off as new any more.
The Nikes were the third pair of shoes we tried. Asa picked them out. They were the second pair he had chosen, but I deemed the pink Barbie Mary Janes with flowered bottoms and rainbow strap and blinking lights unacceptable as first walking shoes. I think this might be that pair. As a note, this is not because of the gender stereotyping, but because these shoes should not exist. It made my head hurt they had wrapped so much up in this pair of shoes. His Nikes were also little girl shoes (technically) although they are pretty gender neutral. Silver and white with a blue and green swoosh. Very styling.
Does dishes, loves the broom, and now makes pizza! What will we think of next? (Okay, so sneezing on the pizza crust is maybe not ideal, but that's what ovens are for!)
It was taken today. Today was the first day I really saw him realize that walking was a method of getting around. He's started walking to things that are nearby instead of crawling.
Other advancements:
He can be handed a whole peach to eat instead of little bits. Obviously, someone still has to remove the pit, but this is a great milestone for me!
He can get the square Duplo Legos together about 1/2 the time. This is an important milestone to him, and he's spent hours on them.
He's been moved into a booster seat instead of the highchair. I already have a target giveaway person for the highchair.
He's moved officially from 2 naps to 1 afternoon nap. This means that he is very crabby a lot of the time, but is slowly beginning to adjust. It helps if we go out in the morning. He seems to be sleeping a little later in the AM (to around 7-7:30) and taking a longer afternoon nap to compensate for the sleep.
He can identify his tummy and his feet when you ask him where they are.
He can throw the ball for Jack.
He will give you a hug or a kiss if you ask for one.
So, we've been spending a lot of time at a local farm in the mornings this week. Asa learned to say "chicken" this week. It sounds kind of like "ticken". He's also gotten to ride a tractor and met a whole host of other kinds of animals: sheep, goats, donkeys, horses, cows, etc. He got to pet most of them and also engage in other fun farm activities. He has been having a blast. The only drawback is that I won't let him crawl at all, so he either has to be held (oh, my aching back) or walk holding onto a finger.
In other excitement, Asa was in his first tornado! Okay, it might not have been a tornado, but definitely qualifies as a massive storm. Here's the deal: we had gone to visit friends for the weekend and they took us to the beach. When we arrived, it looked like rain, but we'd brought dinner, so we figured we'd have a quick dip and then go eat. We were in the water about 15 minutes or so, when we saw lightening and got out. We figured we'd eat instead of playing on the playground and opted to go under the shelter as the rain was appearing more imminent. We did think it might miss us entirely at that point though.
Once under the shelter, I sat down on the floor and started changing Asa out of his swimsuit. Our friends started getting out snack foods. I had just gotten the swimsuit off of Asa and his diaper about halfway on, when the sand started blowing off the beach toward us. And then things -- large things -- started flying past us. I turned leeward to shelter Asa and grabbed for as much as I could to keep it with me. Yes, I held tight to Asa. He was scared for the first part of the storm, but someone put a blanket over us about 2-3 minutes in and he thought that was funny. It was supposed to go over our shoulders, but the wind blew it over our heads and made a tent. Plus, I found him a relatively dry sweatshirt and managed to get that on him and found him a cookie. Life is always better with a cookie, right?
The whole thing lasted maybe 20 minutes or so, from beginning to end. We really had not been in the shelter for more than about 5 minutes when it started. When it finished, there were at least 5 trees within 500 yards that were completely down, plus any number of branches and other debris. I didn't hear any of them fall, because the wind was so loud. The wind had picked up a kayak from the water and blown it 500 yards before it was crushed by a falling tree. There was a puddle of rain that I was sitting in, that had just blown into the shelter; the rain had been horizontal for most of the storm. Everything was totally soaked (although my diaper bag actually did very well at repelling the water from its base). My friends had a tree narrowly miss their car and roads were closed. However no one was hurt, and in fact most people had already left the beach.
All in all we were absolutely stunned. We had not expected anything like that when we went to the beach!
Here is another video of Asa helping to do the dishes. You gotta start 'em early!
