i chews you

I just realized that I completely neglected to tell you all about my Girls' Weekend!  Sorry!

It was fabulous!!

First a little geography lesson - my sisters live about an hour apart from one another in Pennsylvania, I live in Virginia, about 2.5 hours south of my closest sister and my mom lives in North Carolina.  Needless to say, we all don't get together very often!

Erin invited us all over to her house for the weekend and we jumped at the chance to meet up and have some fun girl time.  I left Asher and Drew at home together {oh my!} and headed up to PA.

I think I mentioned last week that this was my first time having a night away from Asher.  If you count my pregnancy, it had been almost 2 years since we'd been apart.  I was a little sad, a little nervous, but mostly excited to sleep in and have fun without worrying about his needs and schedule.  Drew did amazing!  He and Ash had lots of fun - as only Daddies can do.

All day Monday Asher kept asking, "Dada? Dada?"  Drove me nuts.  :o)  But I guess that means he had a good time without me.

Over the weekend we did a bunch of shopping, ate great food, and chatted it up.  Sadly I didn't get many photos, but I did get some of a certain little dog in his Valentine's shirt Asher sent for him.

Gotta love the Target dollar spot!

I chew, chew, chews you!

Once I got home the boys and I got ready to root for the Steelers in the Super Bowl {we all know how that turned out - boo}. 

I'll be honest and say that the reason I get most excited about the S.B. is for the commercials.  My hands-down winner from this year was the VW Darth Vader commercial.

Did you see it?  Love, love, love that little guy!!



Happy Friday everyone!

enamored

I don't know what has his attention, but I love this little profile.

wordless wednesday

Mommy's little sous chef.

This motion is very familiar to Asher, so I shamlessly used it to my advantage. 

 Plus - A loves to see the lettuce spin!

a day out

For some reason, one of my biggest pet peeves is when Asher's hair gets too long.  I never thought that I'd care very much either way, but with him I love a short haircut.  When his hair gets too long it hangs in his face and just doesn't look as cute!

Remember this little hairy monster?  ha!

I noticed last week that it was getting close to time for another cut, so yesterday we headed off to the mall for a trim!  I always laugh when I go in and they ask me if it's his first cut.  Um, no, this is his 4th!  ha!  This boy was born with a ton of hair and I've been trying to keep up with it ever since!  :o)

This was a big visit for us because Asher sat in the chair by himself for the first time.  Usually he sits on my lap, but we decided to try it on his own this time around.  He is ONE now after all.  I was so nervous that he would have a problem sitting alone that I completely forgot to take photos {boo, mommy}. 

He did great!!  The hairdresser gave him a truck to hold, but all he wanted was his own comb.  Once she gave him a comb he sat perfectly still and watched the goings-on in the mirror.  She said several times how great he was.  Yay, Asher!

To celebrate the successful hair cut I decided to take us to Chick-Fil-A.  I'm still trying to get Ash to eat different foods, so I hoped that maybe he'd try some chicken nuggets.  We must have been on some sort of roll - because he did!  I tore it into small pieces and he ate several strips.  It only totaled like half a nugget at the end, but it was something!

{that's not a yuck face - he's just chewing}

Unfortunately, that's where the great news ended.

Once we got home I smelled a poo, but never expected the poo-tastrophe that I discovered upon pulling A out of his car seat.  It was all over his clothes - gross, gross, gross.  That's right.  3 grosses.

This hardly ever happens to us, so I can't complain too much.  I am just so glad that we came right home, rather than hitting Target like I'd originally planned.  Thanks up there!  :o)

Needless to say, Ash got right into the bathtub and got all squeaky clean before his afternoon nap.  We spent the rest of the day playing and trying to get some good photos of his new haircut.  No luck there - maybe today!

pucker up

Who needs some love to keep them warm?

Asher's got kisses in spades! 

{I even got a smooch in the grocery store.  Lucky mommy.}

inventory

Asher loves to organize things.  His favorite activity is unloading all of his books/toys/my kitchen cabinets, taking inventory, and re-loading.

He's a boy after my own heart!

 I think we're a little low on Valentine's cookie cutters, Mommy.

I see Christmas and Easter, but no Valentines.  This won't do.

Where, oh where is my dinosaur book?

On a different note entirely, I have exciting news!  I'm heading to Harrisburg tonight to spend the weekend with my mom and sisters!  We haven't had a girls weekend in forever.  Is it possible that the last time we were all together was at my baby shower??

The great news is this is my first time "off" from baby duty since Asher was born and I get to sleep in, eat when I want to, go shopping, and just go with the flow.  Yay! 

The bad news is that this is my first time away from Asher since he was born!  I'm a little nervous {and sad} to leave him, even it's only an overnight.  Trying to focus on the fun aspects - I know A will be fine with Drew!

safe and warm

My blogging friend, Jen just left a comment on my last post and it's so important that I wanted to clarify right away!  She asked if I was leaving Asher in his coat while he's in the car seat. 

Doing this isn't a good idea! 

Here's why:  In order to get the harness around the extra bulk of the winter jacket you need to loosen the straps a lot.  Because the puff of the jacket will compress in an accident leaving the straps way too loose, your baby would be flopping around unprotected, rather than snug against the harness!  Yikes!

I was lucky in that I read all about this on Rene's blog back at the beginning of December just when we were starting to need a winter coat.  {Thanks Rene!!}

Because I was worried about Ash getting cold by taking him in and out of his coat while at the car/outdoors, I decided to try option #2 which involves kind of leaving the jacket on.

All you have to do is:

1) unzip the coat and set your child in his/her seat
2) pull the harness straps inside the coat
3) buckle the harness snug against his/her chest and legs as normal
4) optional: re-zip and/or velcro the front of the jacket closed over the buckled harness

This method works great for us.  Asher's harness is right against his body, but his arms are still in the warm coat sleeves.  I'm also able to attach the velcro on his jacket lapel over the harness so it stays closed and warm.  Perfect!

I haven't taken many photos of A in this position and these aren't great {I'll try to get ones that are more clear the next time we go out}, but you can kind of see what I mean.  See how the harness straps are at his shoulders, but you can't see them after that?  That's because they are inside his coat, which is simply velcro'd over top of the harness.

Rene mentioned this post at Car Seat Nanny which is where I saw exactly how to do it.  Those photos are very clear and make the procedure super obvious!

Thanks Jen for mentioning this confusion.  Keeping Asher safe is my first goal {no matter how annoying the procedure is! ha ha} and if I hadn't been doing this correctly I'd absolutely want to know a better way!  Hope this helps other cold weather mamas out there!

this, that, and the other thing

It's been a boring sort of week for us.

 
While most of the country is getting buried in record amounts of snow we've had something of a warm-up around here.  Yesterday was in the 50s!  That's ridiculously warm for February!  Asher and I celebrated by leaving our winter jackets at home and venturing out in our sweatshirts only.

Sweet freedom!

I can't overstate how unbelievably cumbersome it is to get a toddler in and out of a rear facing, 5 point harness car seat with a big 'ole winter coat on.  The prospect makes me want to stay home sometimes. {that's dumb, I know}  Asher takes the whole process really, really well, but still.  It's annoying.

I didn't realize just how annoying it was until we went without the big coat yesterday.  SO MUCH EASIER!  Needless to say, we're excited for spring to get here {someday}.

Speaking of convertible car seats...you have to check out this makeover that my blogging friend Emily did on her car seat.  She got a hand-me-down seat to have on hand as an extra and it was looking a little rough.  So what did she do - she made a new cover for it!  Amazing!  I was uber impressed, to say the least.  Now I totally want a rockin' custom cover for Asher's ride!

In other random news, I left a really awkward voice mail yesterday - with Asher's help, of course.  I was vacuuming the kitchen and left Ash playing in the living room.  When I came back to check on him A had somehow grabbed my phone and called my former lactation consultant.  Apparently, someone misses mama's milk and would like to figure out a way to get it back.  What he doesn't know is that it would take a lot more than a phone call to the LC.  ha!

When he's not making calls on my phone Ash has really loved reading on his own recently. 

I caught him standing at the couch and reading his stories the other day.  So cute!

This has been a completely random post, but there hasn't been too much going on here {sorry}.  Just lots of playing music

drinking milk

and looking out the windows at all the melting snow.

There are some exciting things planned for this weekend, though, so more then!

animal impressions

Asher loves to read books about animals.  He has books about pets, farm animals and world animals.  As we read, of course, I have to make the noises so Asher can learn what the animals "say."

Over the past week Asher has really caught on to what the elephant says.  Probably because throwing his arm trunk in the air and trumpeting is Drew's favorite past time.  What boy doesn't want to be like their daddy?  The thing is, Ash doesn't just hang with your normal elephant crowd.  His favorite buddy is a handi-capable elephant who is tons of fun, but also is {as far as any of us can tell} completely mute.

You may recognize her from Asher's first year monthly posts.  Hello, Ellie.

Ellie doesn't make any noise, so neither does Asher.  He does, however, have a pretty wicked trunk toss.  Here, let him show you.



Beyond the elephant, I find some of the animals more challenging to voice than others.

For instance, the goat.

The story suggests that the goat says bleat, bleat.  But every time I say that it just sounds like the goat has been saying something naughty that the censors had to bleep out.  Oops, sorry goats.

Or how do you differentiate between the house cat, kitten, lion, and leopard.  In my house the small cats meow and the big cats all roooar!  I guess there's plenty of time for Ash to learn all the different species.

The hardest ones for me are those that aren't typically associated with sounds at all - a la the penguin.  What sound does a penguin make?  Well, here they say Brrr and shiver because they live in the snow {obviously}.

Don't take my word for it - Asher will show you.

{He was a little busy when I took this video, but willing to indulge me nonetheless - thanks A}

pancakes

My boys love pancakes!

And I can't say that I blame them - between me and Aunt Jemima there are some pretty darn good pancakes served up at our house.

Raise your hands if you want more!

snow day

On Wednesday afternoon the snow started falling in northern Virginia at the rate of 2" per hour.  It kept up through the night and on Thursday morning we were met with this

a winter wonderland!

Wednesday night it didn't seem too wonderful.  Drew was stuck in horrible, horrible gridlocked traffic trying to get home from work.  We were actually worried for awhile that he might not make it at all.  He works 4 miles from our house and it took him over 2.5 hours to get home.  There were abandoned cars and drifting snow everywhere.  Not good!

Needless to say, Thursday was a work-from-home day for him!  While he managed to get a lot done at our kitchen table, there was time for a short break mid-afternoon to take Asher outside for his first ever romp in the snow.  Yay!

Asher was born last December in Cleveland, so he had seen snow before, but this was the first time we were able to get him in his snow suit and boots to really experience the flaky white stuff.  He was interested, but hesitant.  Honestly, I think he was so suited up he couldn't even really feel it.  ha!  I didn't want him to get cold.  :o)

The best part for A was when Drew plunked him feet down into the snow.  His boots supported his ankles really well and the snow came halfway up his legs so he was able to stand upright by himself!  That's a first!  Sweet Ash couldn't stop smiling at this new freedom!  Maybe now he'll attempt it inside as well.  We'll see.

His snow suit/boots/mittens came from LL Bean and were all hand-me-downs from his cousins.  Perfect!  I love getting special items like this for free!  Look familiar?

Drew made Ash a snowman that was just his size.  I think they're friends.  Or at least a curiosity.

Then there was, of course, the requisite "mom, I can't put my arms down!" shot.  Babies are so much work, you have to get your kicks when you can.

Now we just need a sled of some kind and we'll be all set!