Happy Thanksgiving!

The holiday season has officially begun with the Thanksgiving weekend. We had a great time visiting friends and family, and Ashlyn enjoyed eating all the food. Unfortunately, she had a mild stomach bug so didn't get to enjoy everything as much as she'd like, but it just meant more food for Dad. Interestingly, she hasn't had any interest in the dessert leftovers, preferring to stick to turkey and sweet potatoes.

Even though she wasn’t feeling well, she still had a good time once shy mode was deactivated.

The funniest moment over the holiday weekend occurred when Ashlyn walked right up to Grandpa Wolfe and said “Gig ‘em!” with her thumb out.  Grandpa proceeded to teach her the longhorn symbol, but if you look closely at her right hand you’ll still see the thumb.  That’s our girl!

As tradition demands, we also spent this weekend putting up Christmas decorations.  Ashlyn even joined in putting up Christmas ornaments on the tree.  She needed some help reaching the high spots though.

These next pictures have nothing to do with Thanksgiving, but I still think it’s funny how Ashlyn is afraid to get on a beam more than 3 inches off the ground but isn’t afraid of recklessly leaping through air.  We were folding laundry, and Ashlyn felt it would be a good opportunity to practice flying from the ottoman to the couch.

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving, and thanks for all the wonderful food and company!

Gig ‘em!

You may have noticed Ashlyn wearing A&M clothing from time to time.  This is easily explained by both her parents being Aggies, but I don’t want anyone to think that we’ll be pressuring her when she gets older.  She can choose whatever school she wants, as long as it’s close enough to visit unannounced.  But that doesn’t mean we can’t smile when Ashlyn does this (accompanied by an enthusiastic “Gig ‘em!”):

It only took us two years to get her to do that.  It’s taken her much less time to mimic other things, whether it’s shopping, eating pickles with mom, or playing with techie gadgets on the floor with dad.  This year I’m going to let Ashlyn watch us do taxes in the hopes that she’ll fill out the forms for us next year.

The Lego skills are also coming along.  So far she only enjoys making towers, but she makes them a lot now and she’s very proud of her achievements.  We are too.

And finally, although Pepa’s birthday was last week, we still got together this weekend to celebrate.  As always, Ashlyn refused to blow out any candles.  She was quiet most of the night, but finally got out of her shy mode at the very end.

Only a few days left until turkey day!  See you there!

A dissertation on naps…

Something occurred to me this weekend.  When a child is first born, the baby takes a lot of naps. As the baby gets older he or she will take fewer naps, while at the same time increasing their ability to interact with their parents and the world.  At a certain point the child will stop napping altogether.  According to BabyCenter.com, the average age to stop napping is between three and four years.  At this time, a child is also able to talk and play independently. 

Naps are a built in mechanism for kids that benefit both parents and child.  It provides the child with a mental break from the massive amount of learning going on, and as the kid gets older and understands their world better, they don't need this break.  For the parents, it provides both a mental and physical break from raising a toddler which needs a lot of attention.  When naps stop between 3 or 4, the child does not need as much attention, and therefore the parents don't need the break as much.

You may be asking yourself, what's the point of this soap box discussion on naps?  Ashlyn, our wonderful little child who we adore so much, decided that she would stop napping this weekend. This was a “wonderful” development.  We spent most of Tuesday evening at Cook's Children's hospital after Ashlyn got the croup, then spent the following nights with little sleep as we tried to help Ashlyn through the nightly coughing.  So going nap-free all weekend has officially wore us out. Here's to hoping that naps get back into the picture before next weekend.  Don't get me wrong, I love spending time with Ashlyn, but I now realize how much naps help mommy and daddy appreciate the times when she's awake.  Here are some pictures of Ashlyn doing anything but napping:

In other news, Ashlyn decided that Halloween should not be over and has been trick or treating around the house.  She's even hitting the cats up for candy.  Seeing no candy forthcoming from our feline companions, she opted to put shoes in her bag so she wouldn't finish empty handed.

While Ashlyn was enjoying her time at Cooks, Pe-Pa was off at Caddo lake celebrating his birthday. Ashlyn didn't get to say happy birthday, so she went off in search of Pe-Pa.

She didn't find him, but Happy Birthday all the same!

And here are some random pictures of Ashlyn's preferred hair style:  crazy.

Jumping, and a Halloween recap…

In this post, I’m going to share Nina’s (Grandma Wolf’s) story of Ashlyn’s Halloween, some pictures from our own Halloween, and a video of Ashlyn jumping.  Let’s start with the video.  Ashlyn is one of the youngest, in fact I think she may be THE youngest, in her gymnastics class.  Even so, she’s the only one that’s even close to being able to do this:

Crazy right?  She’s scared to be on a beam that’s more than 3 inches off the ground, but you put her on a trampoline and all fear goes away.

As mentioned in last week’s post, we didn’t get to go trick or treating with Aunt Sisa, Nina, and Papa since mom and dad were in College Station watching the Aggies “play” football.  So here’s the recap from Nina, in her own words:

“Saturday morning we ate breakfast – and Ashlyn was perfect at the Waffle House; then we went home and played for a while. We left about 9:45 for the museum so we’d be there when it opened. I’m really glad we did that because it got crowded around 11:00 and wasn’t as much fun for her. Ashlyn played computer games, shopped in the grocery store, and was fascinated by making pinwheels turn and Styrofoam balls go up and down just by putting her hand on a metal handprint plate. She also enjoyed making sounds with water and driving an ambulance while the siren was going off. The dino-dig didn’t interest her for long, so we went from there to the older children’s area where she made paper cups fly, played with beach balls, and messed up the paper airplane contest by moving the orange cones where she thought they should be placed. From there we went to McDonalds where she had a healthy lunch of apples slices dipped in ketchup. She enjoyed sucking more ketchup off of her fries – no interest at all in her hamburger!

Then it was naptime – and she conked out immediately. When she woke up we went to Target and picked up an umbrella stroller to use Saturday night. We took her to the toy section and let her pick out what she wanted. She chose a baby doll and and combination stroller/grocery cart. In the clothing department she didn’t care about pants but wanted a shirt with pink netting. For whatever reason she kept going back to that shirt. When we got home, several of the dolls went into the stroller and Ashlyn banged into every wall pushing them around. Of course she couldn’t see over the top of the stroller. Then the dolls went into the toy cart and the pretend play really began. I had to feed the dolls then put them in the cart for her. She is very good at giving orders – but I got a “good job nina” when I did it right! She talked up a storm and often in sentences!

Saturday night was fun. It took Ashlyn a little while to feel comfortable, but Lisa and I took turns going up and down the street with her. She didn’t understand trick or treating but had a good time watching all the kids. She loved the house with the rubber duck game and played with the ducks in the toy pool for a while. She also was impressed by Sonya’s nephew who was dressed up like a green frog. Lisa and I had Reed Shields picked out for her, but it was Lucas Anderson that caught her eye!! I was very impressed by her dinner selection – she ate lots of veggies! We went to Tara’s at 5:00 and around 7:30 Ashlyn said “go home?” She was worn out. We went home and she played for a few minutes then went to bed.”

And here’s the sentences heard most often:

• “Get down Dixie – that’s my chair!”
• “Where’s Baxter? – Oh, Baxter’s with Sisa.”
• “No no Dixie – that’s my cheese.”
• “Go in the water?” (almost a sentence)
• “Papa’s in the shower.”
• “Come here……….”(fill in the blank – she said it to us and to the dogs)
• “That’s hot” (followed by lots of blowing).
• “I want that one.”
• “Feed the baby, Nina.”
• “Go potty, Baby” – Baby went to the potty often, but Ashlyn would have none of it!
• “We’re going to birthday party. “
• We’re going to Halloween party.”
• “Play music, Papa?”
• “Let’s go in there.”…..and we would go from room to room
• And my personal favorite “Good job, Nina!”

Thanks again for watching Ashlyn while we were away, she seems to have enjoyed the experience.  Halloween at our house did not start out so well, even cousin Heidi couldn’t convince Ashlyn that it was fun to be out in a bumblebee costume.



Heidi, being the princess that she is, didn't let Ashlyn stay grumpy for long, and was able to get Ashlyn into the Halloween spirit.



Mom spent most of the evening picking Ashlyn up, putting her down, picking her up, and putting her back down again.  Towards the end of the evening, Ashlyn started to figure out that “door = candy”.  She started to say “Open door, get candy?”, and when the door opened, she was heard to say “put in bucket”. 



It was a good haul on the end, too bad she’s too young and Ashlyn’s mean parent’s won’t let her eat all that candy.  We’ve been on a sugar high for days though. 



See you next Halloween!