Sunday, December 23, 2012

13 months!

Yesterday, we celebrated 13 months with Asher. I knew I wouldn't get our post up yesterday because we were on the plane to Rapid City for Christmas at Grandma and Grandpa Dobbs' so I had intended to write our post on Friday.  Unfortunately Friday was INSANE!  :) 

First of all, Asher decided to wake up a toddler.  No he's not yet walking, but in every other sense of the word he wasn't my little baby anymore.  :)   He woke up and decided to get into EVERYTHING, pull out EVERYTHING, climb up on EVERYTHING, and generally just make it impossible for me to pack.  Perhaps it just seemed more extreme because I was trying to get packed and cleaned for our "tour of the grandparents", I don't know, but we got out of town  two hours after we'd intended to because I pretty much gave up trying until Eric got home.  I didn't really, but I might as well have done so, because that's about how productive I was. :) 

I'd put one thing in the suitcase and Asher would pull 5 things out.  I'd distract him while I worked on someting and turn around to find him having pulled every pair of pants I own out of my drawer and onto the floor.  He pretty much whipped around the room like a little tornado.   (Sorry the pics are so bad. I took them on my phone.)



At lunch, I left him unattended for 10 seconds in his high chair and came back to him having pulled a plate of cookies off the counter, onto his tray, and stuffed an entire gingerbread cookie in his mouth.



When I was changing his diaper, I took a second to refill the wipes container and as I expected, he crawled off, but what I didn't expect was for him to climb up his brand new slide from grandma and grandpa all by himself and hang out up there pantless. :)




Needless to say, I love this stage, he's an absolute blast, but there is NO getting anything done when he's awake. :)


Secondly, it's worth mentioning that the drive to my parents Friday night was ridiculous.  Wednesday night we got 13 inches of snow, and the normally three hour drive took us five, on top of the two hours later that we got away, most of the extra time was just trying to get through Des Moines.  The cleanup of snow was horrendous around the city.  All to say, I sure didn't get this post done Friday, so here we are a day late again. :) 

Asher did awesome on the plane though yesterday.

So let's talk about Asher, since this is his monthly update.  :)   Our little guy is pretty much awesome.  :)  About 10 days ago, Asher finally started consistantly sleeping all through the night.  woo woo!  He also simultaneously decided that one nap a day was good.  I'm still adjusting to that one.  He's been sleeping from about 11 to 1:30 so we're also still working on when's the best time to eat lunch, and the afternoon gets very long while we wait for Daddy to come home.

Umm, let's see,  he still adores music and loves to dance.  His dancing looks mostly like a mix between a fist pump and a bicep curl.  It's pretty much HILARIOUS.  We adore watching him dance.  He says Daddy, doggie, yes, and a WHOLE bunch of other words that are unintelligible.  It seems as though he calls me daggy, but we've never reinforced it.  I have no idea where that one came from.  He pretty much never stops jabbering.  He gives high fives, climbs with the best of them, and I often find him laughing at himself when he's off playing.  He's the sweetest little guy.   

Well, this post is getting long, so I guess we'll leave it at that.  We're unfortunately not at home today to take a pic in the yellow chair.  But we'll try and post again soon about our Christmas celebrations, and keep you updated.  Thankfully separation anxiety seems to be gone.  Everyone is a fun new person to play with, which I'm extremely grateful for as we enter the holiday season with all kinds of new people around.  He meets his cousins on the Dobbs' side for the first time tonight and we couldn't be more excited.  :) 

Merry Christmas everyone!  Enjoy your own celebrations with family and friends!


#Meagan






Sunday, December 16, 2012

Christmas is coming...

...the goose is getting fat.  :) 

Maybe the goose is Asher, or Eric and I... I don't know about the goose.  But I what I do know, is that I've had that song stuck in my head all week. :) 

Anyway, this week has been so ridiculously crazy. We've been going, going, going since we got home.  Oh where'd we go, you ask?

Well, Eric spent 10 days at the beginning of this month on his fourth business trip to China in the last two years.  And I didn't really want to spend that long at home with just Asher and I by ourselves all day (and night) long, so we went down to my parents for a nice long visit!  Eric had a good, productive trip to their company branch in Wuqing, China. And Asher and I had a great time with family! 

Unfortunately, Eric had the camera with him in China, so we didn't get very many pictures of our visit. I caught this adorable one on my phone, though!  Yay for time with grandma and grandpa! :)
  

Off on a tangent - Our little guy is just about walking!  He takes several sturdy steps between Eric and I, and will walk all around the living room with his new push toy, but he's still just not quite brave enough to venture off on his own.  Anyday though now, we believe!

Anyway, since we got home last Saturday evening, I've made three desserts for three separate Christmas parties, made dinner for two friends who've just been blessed with new babies, attended three of five Christmas parties (with the last two on Tuesday and Wednesday nights this week), and dramatically struggled to keep up with the housework.  Laundry after being gone for two weeks (with a baby!) and grocery shopping five times in three days to keep up with all the treats and meals I've been making has left my poor husband fending for himself a good chunk of the time.  He stepped up as the awesome husband that he is, and spent his Saturday afternoon deep cleaning our bedroom/bathroom!  And he even cooked one of those 'dinners for friends' for me while I was at my exercise class. I ask you - how does this season get sooo busy when I don't hardly feel like I'm involved in anything? It's crazy!  

This has nothing to do with anything, but we did yoga that night at my exercise class, and I will never, ever make fun of it as a form of exercise again.  I was sooo sore the day after yogaing for an hour the night before! 

Okay, I'm getting really rambly. And what in the world does this post have to do with Christmas.  Well, let me show you our sad little tree.  Though Eric just took a decent pic of it. :)



 
We have both every year of our entire lives gone out to pick out real live trees... until this year.  We realized that we were only going to be home for two weeks and one weekend between our recent travels and our upcoming holiday visits, and so we made the difficult decision to put up our little three foot fake tree that Eric had from his days bachloring in his tiny yellow house.  Eric has said a time or two "Sorry, Asher, you won't remember it anyway."   We also just wrapped up things we already had for his presents.  Does that make us bad parents?  :)  

We figure we buy him everything we think he needs when he needs it... and it's not like he knows what's supposed to be inside presents anyway. :)   And besides the grandparents do a fine job of buying plenty of new things.  The fun for him these days is just in the being a part of the family and being able to rip open the paper.  I mean we did get him a few little things for his stocking and wrapped a couple new things like warm, snuggly flannel sheets and his new forward facing car seat!  We're looking forward to taking him out for a drive in it for the first time when we celebrate our Christmas this week. 

You might also have noticed all of the brown paper under the tree.  :)   We were good recyclers this year.   I went up to get my wrapping paper earlier this week all gung-ho to sit down and wrap all my gifts only to discover we had none.  :(  But what did I realize we had a bazillion of?  Brown paper grocery bags.  So we went thrifty this year, but I think I made them pretty, don't you think? 


Anyway,  wishing you all a very Merry Christmas.  We'll try and keep up with posts over the holidays, but no promises.  :)   Enjoy time relaxing with family! 

#Meagan


Tuesday, December 4, 2012

One year of Asher

Well, it seems as though Tuesday has become a bit more of a habit than I'd like to admit.... Cause here it is Tuesday again and the first day this week since last Tuesday that I'm blogging.  At least it'll help you keep up with your habits. :)   Here's a bit of reminiscing over Asher's weekly pictures that debuted at Asher's birthday party.  I don't think it needs much more explanation than that. 



Didn't Eric do an awesome job?!  This ones a keeper... that is my hubby, my baby... and this video. :) 

#Meagan