A new business venture…

Yoga DVDs are definitely in style as of late and I recently learned that they even have yoga DVDs for pregnant women.  I’ll admit that I didn’t put much thought around it, but it was Ashlyn that saw a golden opportunity:  Toddler Yoga.  Google “Toddler Yoga DVD” (with quotes) and you will get a measly 73,700 results.  In Internet terms, this is nothing.  As a comparison, Google “Chuck Norris Jokes” and you will get around 3,690,000 results.

Keep an eye out for Ashlyn’s upcoming Yoga DVD, the current running title is “Toddler Yoga: Find You Inner Peace While Wearing a Diaper”.

Ashlyn’s brother is now the size of a banana, which is still Ashlyn’s favorite fruit.  We’re already in room preparation mode; our guest room has been torn down to make room for a new baby room.  This pretty much guarantees we’re only going to have two kids because the only available rooms now are the computer room and media room.  Ashlyn as always wanted to jump in and help get the new room ready.

Only 186 days to go until the Fightin’ Texas Aggies take on the Louisiana Tech Bulldogs in our first game in the SEC!  Ashlyn is ready.

Gig ‘em!

A week of exciting news…

Tuesday was Valentine’s Day, and Ashlyn’s daycare had a “Wear your PJ’s to Daycare” day.  It was also an “I don’t want to get out of bed” day.  I simply couldn’t do anything to get her to wake up, and I’ve learned from experience not to pick her up out of bed before she stands up on her own.  Luckily, PePa had left a Valentines gift for Ashlyn in our downstairs closet, and at the mention of the gift she went from sleepy to standing up in the crib in seconds.  We went downstairs and Ashlyn asked for her present.  I took it out of the closet and handed it out to her, but she refused to take it.  “Wrap it Daddy.”  Okay, so I took it back upstairs, put it in a gift bag, and Ashlyn happily opened it up.  “A puppy!!!” she exclaimed when she took out the snoopy animal, as if she didn’t see it two minutes earlier.  Silly girl.  I love those PJs.

This marked the first big weekend for potty training, and I’m happy to report that Ashlyn did an incredible job.  She ran around the house all weekend with no pants on, and used the potty every single time.  As a reward, she got to celebrate with ice cream and stickers.  Our goal was to have her potty trained before the next kid is born, and it looks like we’re on track.

Speaking of the next kid, the biggest news this week came to us on Friday when we had the 20 week sonogram.  We’re excited to share that we a have a baby boy on the way!  We would have been very happy to have another girl, given how much fun we’ve had raising Ashlyn, but we’re pumped that we’re going to have a girl and a boy running around in a few short years.  We tried to get Ashlyn to pose with an “It’s a boy” balloon for the blog, but she wouldn’t cooperate.  Here’s the best we were able to capture.

So 19 more weeks to go until Ashlyn has a baby brother.  She’s practicing on her hugs with Elmo.

Five days and counting…

"You can learn many things from children.  How much patience you have, for instance."
-Franklin P. Jones

Ashlyn is now getting to that age where she knows when she’s not supposed to do something.  She’s also learning how to get away with it, or so she thinks.  She has a ways yet before she’ll actually be able to hide things from us.  For instance, this week she took a bowl of tomatoes when mom wasn’t looking.  She was caught red handed, or whatever color a tomato is.

The weather this weekend was very, very cold.  Too cold to be outside jumping on a trampoline, playing with a plastic mower, or kicking a pink ball around.  It wasn’t too cold though to go out with PePa for breakfast at a nearby eatery.  This is something that we do almost every other weekend, and Ashlyn enjoys it.  I’m not sure if it’s the food or the company, but for the sake of my self esteem I’m going to assume it’s the company.  Later in the day she wanted to go outside, but when there’s ice in the backyard we tend to keep her inside.  Not to be denied some fun while wearing her fluffy jacket, she jumped on Clippity Clop.

We keep hearing about the terrible two’s, but so far we’ve experienced very little of it.  Maybe Ashlyn is just pre-disposed to being a happy child.  Or maybe, in the spirit of increasing my self esteem, it’s the parenting.  Yeah, I know, it’s probably just her nature.  Either way, Ashlyn continues to be a chipper toddler that finds fun in almost everything we do, even if it’s a simple game of running off with her bath towel.

Only 5 days to go until we learn whether Ashlyn is having a baby brother or sister.  She goes back and forth still on what her preference is, but in a few days she won’t have a choice.  Soon to be mom² is doing well and is looking forward to moving away from the “it” reference when talking about Pokey.

From bounce houses to chop sticks…

"The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.”
-Albert Einstein

The past week has been a busy one, and a fun one, so it was difficult to narrow down which pictures to include.  The highlight was a trip to Pump It Up for a friend’s 3rd year old birthday party (Happy Birthday Reed!).  Pump It Up is essentially a group of rooms with large blow up houses, slides, etc.  Ashlyn had a great time, and it was tiring running after her as she went from activity to activity.

Nina was present, and Ashlyn had fun playing with her through a screen in one of the houses.  I think Nina got her a little too excited though, because she fell over.  No problem, it’s hard to get hurt in a bounce house.

One activity included a steep wall that you had to climb before sliding down the other side.  Ashlyn was too short to reach the steps, but she found another form of travel that worked even better.

Thanks Reed for letting us come play with you on your birthday!

Sunday was the Super Bowl of course, but nobody was really into the game since there were two Yankee teams playing.  The Wolfe family came over though, which always leads to a good time.  Heidi was there, which meant that Ashlyn was entertained and in a happy mood the entire evening.

Grandma and Grandpa were there too, filling in for Heidi when she needed a break.

We went out with the Wolfe’s again on Monday to have dinner with a family member from out of town.  We went to PF Chang’s, which is a little too nice be taking a lot of pictures.  However, we did get a few pictures from Mom’s iPhone of Ashlyn eating with chopsticks.  They may be children’s, but she was picking up small pieces of food with them within minutes of getting her hands on them.

Only two more weeks to go until we learn what Pokey (the new baby’s current nickname) is.  We’ll be able to stop calling it “It”!.