Outside!

Ashlyn’s favorite word right now is “outside!”.  Since the weather has warmed up, Ashlyn asks to go outside all the time.  We set up a new Grandma provided water table outside, and it was a hit.

 

We had to change her after each play session though, she tended to get herself a bit wet.

 

We played indoors as well, the tunnel is no longer scary, and popsicles are still a source of entertainment.

And that’s about it for now.  Ashlyn had an overnight stomach bug on Thursday, and mom and dad got it this weekend, which means this one will be a little short.  So I’ll end the post with a few more words that Ashlyn has learned, and hopefully I’ll be up to typing more next weekend.

New words:

• Outside
• Bounce
• Tigger
• Shower
• Bath
• Bear
• Jacket
• Cracker
• Bagel
• Up
• Pe-Pa (this her version of Grandpa, which is interesting since that’s the word my sister and I used when we were kids.  Dad was on the phone with me, and when I said “can you say hi to Grandpa?”, she replied with Pe-Pa)

The world goes shopping…

Today was a weekend for clothes.  Clothes, clothes, and more clothes.  This is a positive thing, since Ashlyn has outgrown all her 12 month old clothes and was in dire need of larger garments.  As much as we wish she would stay small, she has other plans.  In case you are wondering the extent of the shopping bonanza, here are a few pictures to help you.

The weather this weekend was great, and mom bought Ashlyn some bubbles.  We were excited about showing her bubbles for the first time, but when Heather started opening up the bottle, Ashlyn pointed at it and said “bubbles?”.  We can only guess that she saw bubbles at daycare and remembered what they were.  We didn’t even know she knew the word.  Oh well, we may not have introduced to her to bubbles, but she had a good time playing with them.

 

We missed the bubbles, but we didn’t miss the first tunnel, thanks to a gift from Grandma.  She wasn’t sure what to think of it at first, even with dad wearing it like a costume and jumping around, but eventually mom coaxed her in to making the journey a couple of times.  She’s still a little nervous about it, but she’ll get the hang of it.

And finally, thanks to another gift (it was like a second Christmas this weekend for Ashlyn), we started teaching her a valuable skill that will help her be useful over the summer.  If anyone can find an actual child sized lawnmower, or even a small weed eater, let me know.  I’m sure' Ashlyn will love it.

New Words of the week:

• Bubbles
• Duck
• Elmo
• Paper
• Baby
• bak bak (however you spell a chicken noise)
• oink (pig noise)
• No sir!

Ashlyn and her hair keep growing…

Good titles for blog posts aren’t always easy to come up with, so today I took inspiration from a picture I took of Ashlyn and Heather this weekend.

 

And now let me share something that I learned today.  If you give a toddler yogurt, they will get it everywhere.  They will get it on their hands, on the tray, on their face, in their hair, on the floor, on the dog, and on their parents.  This will be highly amusing to them.  If this happens to you, I have a suggestion:  laugh.  There’s just not much else you can do.



And here’s a video of Ashlyn for your viewing pleasure, where she shows off her mastery of body parts and language.  “Mastery” is a strong term here of course, but we’re proud parents and I’m going with it.

As fast as she’s learning now, I expect that this next segment will become a regular addition to future blog posts.  Here’s the newest words that she’s learned:

• Thank you
• Hat
• Ball
• Roomba
• Apple
• Milk

Brrrr!

Well, we survived the icy weather this past weekend.  Friday, with the snow it brought, gave us an opportunity that doesn’t come around very often in the great state of Texas.  Snowman building!

What could go wrong with making a small child size fuzzy man made out of snow?  A lot apparently.  I’m not sure if it was the cold, the snowman, or the fact that she looked like a pink marshmallow, but something made Ashlyn very unhappy.  We tried for a few minutes to get a good picture of her and Mr. Snowball.  This was the best one, if that’s any indication of how it all went.

So we made a change to the snowman that we thought would make it a little more tolerable. 

Replace the carrot with a binky, spin Ashlyn around in the air a few times, and she didn’t seem to mind the snowman quite so much.  She didn’t like it, she was more confused by it than anything else.  We tried to get her to play in the snow, mom even took a small bucket of snow inside for her, but she just poked her finger in it and said “cooold”.  Well, maybe next year she’ll understand that snow can be fun.

Back inside, Ashlyn thought it would be fun to play with dad’s gloves.  She put these on herself, we’re not sure exactly how.  When I tried to give her a shovel to play “scrape the snow off the porch”, she took the gloves off.

We’ll also leave this blog post with a list of words that Ashlyn can say without being prompted, mainly because we want to remember this later.   She’s said other words than the ones below, and makes noises, which count as words technically, but we only count the ones that she says correctly and in the right context repeatedly.

• Mommy
• Daddy
• Cat
• Dog
• Binky
• Cheese
• Uh oh
• More
• Eat
• Sock
• Shoe
• Eye
• Ear
• Nose
• Mouth
• Hair
• Cold
• Hot
• No no
• Banana (beeya)
• Avocado
• Cheese
• I-pod
• poop
• night night
• hello
• bye
• Animal noises:  Meow (cat), ruff (dog), rawrr (bear), Moooo (cow)

Stay warm everyone!