I stand, therefore I am.

This is not going to be a long update, but today marked the first day that Ashlyn stood up on her own, and I felt it was worth sharing some of those first moments.  As you can see from the pictures below, she’s a bit wobbly, but she seems excited by it.

If you’re wondering why Heather is holding a camera while I’m taking the pictures, it’s because Ashlyn kept crawling over to grab MY camera, and it’s hard to take pictures with a baby’s hand on the camera lens.

Also, and I can’t provide proof of this so you’ll have to trust me, Ashlyn snuck two more teeth in on us.  She now has all four front teeth poking out, two on top and two on bottom.  These went MUCH easier than the first two.  In fact, we thought the first one was just a cold and the second went by without her even being bothered by it.  Here’s hoping that the rest are that easy.

Uh-Oh!

Today marked the first of what I can only expect to be many small injuries to parents caused by Ashlyn.  She’s decided that the best way to let us know she’s done drinking water out of her sippy cup is to toss it on the floor.  We’ve learned to be watchful of this, but we strayed a bit this evening and a full sippy cup was tossed directly onto Heather’s previously injured toe.  I laughed, Heather would have laughed if she wasn’t in pain, and Ashlyn ate a piece of cheese.  Good times.

And now on to better things..

With curiosity comes mobility and with mobility comes the desire to stand and explore.  She’s all over the house now, standing on anything with a ledge.  It’s fun to watch.  Walking is right around the corner.

And in interesting news, Ashlyn signed for the first time today.  Two different signs!  She asked for food, and asked for more.  Below is her signing for more cheese.  She likes cheese.  Now we need to work on a sign for “I’m done with my sippy cup” other than using projectiles.

She’s also starting to shake her head to say no, and will wave at you if you wave at her.  All this is still a little sporadic of course, but she’s doing it and it’s awesome to see her learning to communicate more.

And this is just a random pictures of Ashlyn hamming it up for the camera.  I can’t remember if I posted this before, but I don’t care.  It’s worth posting again.  That hair is awesome.

Aren’t daughters great?

Today’s excuse:  Life has once again made regular posting a difficult thing.  This time it’s for good reasons, but I still need to keep this thing updated.  If not for you, the reader, then for Ashlyn, the true audience.

This week has been rough, with very little sleep and my head constantly filled with pesky work thoughts.  But I have a secret weapon for stress:

I’ll tell you truthfully, I love being a father.  It’s hard to imagine a time when I wasn’t a father.  Today I got home, watched Heather hold Ashlyn’s hands while she (Ashlyn) walked across the kitchen floor.  And that simple thing, those few steps instantly made the entire week and all the worry about work fade to background noise.  I threw on some shorts, picked her up, and we walked around the lake in our neighborhood.  Well, I walked while she held on and stared at the fountain in the middle of the lake.  The girl just loves water, we took her to Uncle Bruce’s house this past weekend and she was kicking around in the pool like a frog.  Only 12 years and 1 month until we go scuba diving!

So once again I say thank you little one, for showing us that simple things in life can be amazing adventures.

Mommy and Daddy love you.

What I learned this weekend…

First, I want to apologize for the lack of blog posts over the past few weeks.  Work has kept me incredibly busy.  I won’t go into details, mainly because you didn’t come to this blog to read about me,  you came to read about an 11 month old little girl named Ashlyn.  And I don’t blame you.

To start out, Ashlyn learned how to stand about a week ago.  One minute she was working at it, holding on to ledges and window sills, and the next thing you know she’s standing up on two legs banging on the glass.  And once she figured it out, she decided to practice.  She caught us by surprise this weekend by exploring around the entry way, and before we knew it she was up on the first step of the stairs and working on the second one.  It was a big “uh-oh” moment which resulted in a dash to Target for a baby gate.

I also learned that Ashlyn has crazy hair.  She has a lot of it for her age, and it goes everywhere.  Interestingly, once it’s in place it likes to stay that way.  The picture on the left (below) is her hair several hours after taking off the little bands that were holding up some pigtails.  The other two pictures are just random pictures showing her varying hair styles.

And lastly, a very happy birthday to Great Grandma Russell!

I be crawlin’

These last few days have seen quite a bit of activity from Ashlyn, with some pretty big milestones being achieved.

On Saturday afternoon, while visiting Grandma and Grandpa Wolfe, we put Ashlyn up on the table so she could play with a remote control.  Instead of flopping on her stomach as she used to do, she got up on her knees.  One step, two steps, and off she went across the table. 

Now I don’t feel like I’m cheating when I buy things for Ashlyn with the “crawler” symbol on it. 

Take that Gerber!

Since then, she’s started to crawl more and more.  She still gets tired pretty quickly and goes back to the army crawl, but she’s trying, and I have a feeling she’ll be crawling more and more every day.  Time to baby proof.

She’s also sitting up from a stomach position, and today was the first day she’s pulled up to her feet on her own.  She did it three times today in fact.  Unfortunately, we had to learn that one from daycare and we haven’t been able to reproduce it at the house.  So instead of a picture of her pulling herself up, here’s a picture of her with a bubble Mohawk.

To Uncle Scott, from Ashlyn

This is a story from Ashlyn…

(editors note:  Ashlyn does not have a very large vocabulary.  Most of her typing was along the lines of “kkkkkkkkkkkkkkad#AD”, so we had to take some liberties in the translation.  Enjoy.)

When I learned that I wasn’t going to see Uncle Scott on his birthday, I got pretty upset.  My mom and dad told me that I was going to see him in a few months.  A few months!  That’s practically forever.  (editor’s note:  This may not seem like a long time to most of us, but keep in mind that 2 months is 20% of her entire lifetime).

So I put on my birthday hat and took a plane to the desert.  My dad is cheap, so I had to fly coach.

When I got there I took a ride on this thing to see if I could find Uncle Scott.  If you aren’t sure who is who in the picture below, I’m the one in the pink.  The hat was only a disguise, I’m not really in the Army.

Uncle Scott must have been wearing camo, because I never saw him.  So instead, I came back home and typed up a blog post.

Happy birthday Uncle Scott!

10 months…

Today marks Ashlyn’s 10 month birthday, which we celebrated by knocking down block towers, making a mess of bananas, and splashing around in a bath.  For this post, I thought I’d highlight some of Ashlyn’s favorite things, and some recent firsts.
Ashlyn’s #1 favorite thing to do is knock down block towers.  If she sees a tower, she will find a way to get to it and destroy it.  As you can see below, the mere sight of a block tower sends her into a frenzy of destructive baby fury, which can only be satiated by demolition. 

Unfortunately, Ashlyn did more than knock down a few block towers.  I think we paid around $3.00 for this thing, which I believe is a spoon holder, so Ashlyn is already in the red.

In other games, she also enjoys whatever this game this is called.  It’s tiring for the adult, but Ashlyn seems to get a kick out of it.  We’re hoping it will help with the whole crawling thing.  She’s getting better every day, but still hasn’t made that final adjustment to push her body fully off the floor.

She’s developed a few new things of note over this past month.  First, her hair is filling in, which is giving her an interesting hair-do, especially after baths.  Sorry for the blurry photo, the camera decided to focus on the wrong thing.  She’s also learned a very strange sleeping position, which she seems to prefer over most.  She’s actually sleeping in the picture below, I turned the lights on to get the picture and she didn’t budge. Strange baby.

And finally, although I don’t have any pictures to back this up, she’s started to learn how to put rings and blocks INTO her little toy bucket, instead of randomly throwing the contents OUT of the bucket onto the floor.  As GJ (grandma Wolf) would say, “she’s a genius!”.  Happy 10 month birthday little one, only two months to go to the big 1!

One more cold down…

If you’re wondering why the blog has been silent the past week or so, it’s because of another baby cold.  Baby colds aren’t like big people colds.  Baby colds mean you wake up and cry at least 7 times each night.  In comparison, when I have a cold I only get up and cry once, twice tops.

It’s been a tiring week, but luckily we’re past that now and Ashlyn is back to her happy self.  I’m also happy to report that Ashlyn has passed yet another baby milestone, and is now officially a clapper.  Apparently that’s a big thing, clapping, and she seems to enjoy it.  She’s also graduating to sitting in the tub instead of laying in the baby tub.  This means that splashing is now a nightly routine, which is great because mom and dad get to join her in getting wet.  It also means we can give her fun hairdoos.

Other than that, as you can see from the picture with the baby puffs, we have to keep a close eye on her or things start flying.  We consider it being rebellious and destructive, but the baby books call it “exploring”.  Either way, we just can’t seem to get mad at her for it, so we we laugh and take pictures instead.

Mobility has its drawbacks…

If you’re a regular reader of this blog you may recall that Ashlyn has not always been the most eager of babies to learn how to get moving.  She didn’t like being on her stomach, so it took her awhile to learn that being face down wasn’t as bad as she first thought.  We’ve kept at it, and it looks like crawling is right around the corner.  So far she can do the army crawl, and she’s learned to scoot around on her butt.  While it’s fun to watch, it also means that we can’t sit her down and not keep a close eye on her.

She’s very interested in the stereo equipment.  If you put her down in the living room and walk away for more than a few minutes, you’re going to come back to find CDs and stereo cables dragged out onto the floor.  I’m going to assume this is her first sign of showing interest in electronics.  That’s my girl!

And in things that make you go “awww..”, Ashlyn’s day care put some bands in her hair.  I walked into a pizza party for Amy, one of our nieces, to see Ashlyn grinning with those little pigtails.  That was a good way to end the day.

A weekend of firsts and family…

Ashlyn had a busy weekend.  Friday started off with my favorite restaurant, Joe T. Garcia's, where we went to celebrate GJ’s (Granny Jack, aka my mom’s) birthday.  Ashlyn got rained on, but was passed around the table and seemed to have a good time with it all.  Here’s a picture of grandpa Rick feeding something to Ashlyn that probably isn’t “baby approved”, but she liked it anyway.  Happy birthday mom!

On Saturday Ashlyn got to experience her first fruit salad, which Heather made out of bananas, pears, and cantaloupe.  On Sunday we saw Ashlyn go from a sitting position to her stomach for the first time, and she also had her first of 1,204,549 Cheerios.  It ended with a visit from the Wolfe's, where once again Ashlyn was passed around and had a good time.

All in all, it really tired Ashlyn out.  When I put her to sleep on Sunday, she drank her milk and was out as soon as I put her on my shoulder.  I got to rock her while she slept for a few minutes, and that was a great end to an eventful weekend.

Happy 4th of July!

Today we commemorate the signing of the Declaration of Independence, mainly by grilling burgers and blowing things up in the sky.  We also celebrate by trying to get daughters to pose with an American flag so dads have something to put on a blog.  It doesn’t always work, this is the best we could do, which is pretty good considering she may be cutting her third tooth. Ashlyn is a little young for fireworks, the only explosions that happen around here mean it’s time to change the diaper.  So instead of fireworks we thought she’d enjoy a trip to the Dallas World Aquarium this weekend.  She may have enjoyed it, it’s hard to tell with a 9 month old.  She seemed more interested in the other kids running around than at the actual fish and animals. 

Have a happy and safe 4th of July everyone!

Splish splash…

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Sorry about that, Ashlyn wanted to contribute to this post and she was so proud of her typing that I couldn’t make myself delete her contribution. 

Today was Ashlyn’s first time in a swimming pool, and I think the experience was a good one for her.  Most of her time in the water was spent splashing.  And more splashing, followed by some giggling, and then splashing again.

It’s definitely something that we’ll be doing more often as she gets older.  She’s going to need to love the water, because when she’s 13 she’s going scuba diving with mom and dad.

Happy Father's Day!

Bill Cosby once said, “If the new American father feels bewildered and even defeated, let him take comfort from the fact that whatever he does in any fathering situation has a fifty percent chance of being right.”

Mr. Cosby was a wise man, and I take comfort that when I choose the wrong 50%, Heather is here to steer me back in the right direction.  But today, I think I must have done something well, because I was presented with a great gift:  Ashlyn's first drawing.  Yep, my daughter is the next Michelangelo.  Just check out this masterpiece, described by renowned art critic Donald Kuspit as "drawn with crayons".

It was the best gift a dad could ask for from his 8 month old daughter.  So here's to you little one, thanks for letting me be a father.  And here's to the rest rest of you dads out there.

Happy Father's Day!

Puffs and Pebbles..

We're continuing our efforts to convince Ashlyn that crawling is a nice way to get around, but so far she still feels that being carried is a more preferable method of transportation.  So while we continue to work on the whole crawling thing, we've also started spending time teaching Ashlyn more ways to do something we already knows she enjoys:  eating. 

Ever since Ashlyn started eating solids, we've seen a growing interest in food and a waning interest in milk.  She's already started to feed herself, mainly tiny little puffs made from sweet potatoes, bananas, and other ingredients that I'm sure are healthy (alpha tocopheryl acetate for example).

If you look closely at the picture above, you may notice that she has a little pony tail sticking up on the top of her head.  It seems that our daycare felt she has enough hair for these kinds of things and thought it would be cute.  Or maybe they just love the Flinstones.

Dress shopping made easy…

With Lisa’s wedding approaching, we’re starting to think about what Ashlyn will wear.  This will be her first wedding, and for my sister no less, so we want to make sure she’s dressed for the occasion.  Luckily, Heather’s parents brought back some gifts from their trip to China, and so our shopping is done!

As soon as we put it on her, we knew we found the winner.  As everybody knows, nothing says “wedding” like a red kimono.  Now that we took care of the dress, we had to think about a hat.  Should she wear a hat?  And if so, what kind?  Once again the Wolfe’s delivered, with a hat straight from the Great Wall of China.

Thanks Mr. and Mrs. Wolfe, that’s a weight of our shoulders.

I have a toof!

There's a lot going on lately in Ashlyn's little world.  She's really liking solid foods, and so far the only thing that she doesn't like is prunes.  We still have some work to do though, since half the food ends up in places other than her stomach.

She's also starting to hold her bottle up on her own.  In fact, she likes to grab the bottle out of your hands.  This isn't bad, but the bottle tends to plop out of her mouth and poke her in the eye.  She doesn't seem to mind, and drinks happily away once you guide it back to her mouth.

And finally, we have begun the journey that all parents dread:  teething. Ashlyn is growing her first tooth, and we were finally able to get a picture of it.  It's a little hard to see, but that white line under Heather's finger is her first little baby tooth.  Up to now, it hasn't bothered her too much, but she's getting a little fussy as the tooth makes it's way out.



I asked Heather how long teething lasts, and do you know what she said?  Probably not since you weren't there, so I'll tell you.  YEARS.  I looked it up, and as usual she was right.  At this time I'd like to pause for a moment of silence to remember Kaldi, an Ethiopian man who lived in the 9th century......  Thank you.  If you don't know who Kaldi is, he was a shephard who first discovered the effects of coffee beans.

To Aggieland!

This post is a little late.  It's been a long week at work and I've been getting home just in time to put Ashlyn to bed, which means I'm a little behind.  And by the way, it's a little upsetting to walk into the house just as Ashlyn is getting out of her pre-bed bath.  I don't much care for seeing her for only 15 minutes a day.  Luckily, next week should not be so bad.

Last weekend was Ashlyn's first road trip, and I think it's fitting that her first trip was to good 'ol College Station, home of the Fighting Texas Aggies and the 12th man.  Gig 'em!  She did pretty well too.. she slept most of the time, and only needed to stop and eat once on the way and once on the way back.  If you drove by Bucky's on 45 Saturday morning, you may have seen us stuffed into the back of the car feeding a baby while people went in and out buying beef jerky.

The destination in Aggieland was a yearly crawfish boil served up by a good friend of ours.  Each year he brings the family (our close group of friends from that time in college) together for some fun, drinks, and 500 pounds of tasty crawfish.  Notice that this picture contains crawfish, beer, and sippy cups.  You can tell how the dynamics of our group has changed over the past few years.

Sorry Ashlyn, crawfish doesn't fall into the "stage 1 food" category.  She ate sweet potatoes instead.

She was passed around by our friends, who were excited to see her.  We're very fortunate to have the friends we do, even this guy.  She's not too sure what to think, he was probably telling stories that shouldn't be heard by a 7 month old and all she wanted to do was chat about the joys of sweet potatoes.  JW, if you read this, you know we love ya.

Ali, thanks again for an awesome time.  Your generosity always amazes me.  And I promise that the sink was thouroughly cleaned.  Sweet potatoes are messy.