Merry Christmas all, and FINALLY A TOOTH!

Actually, we now have two teeth. Ashlan got her first tooth on Sun, Dec 18th, and the second followed shortly after the first. The weird part is that we found out by accident! She’s been having trouble sleeping for a few nights here and there but it wasn’t too bad so we thought nothing of it. She has honestly not been cranky at all during the day, or at night for that matter. I was making cookies that day and we decided to give her just a smudge of dough. Dan gave her a bit with his finger and said he felt a tooth. I didn’t believe him because she hasn’t been acting differently except for sleep at night so I felt for myself and sure enough, she had a tooth! I can’t believe we didn’t know she was teething! She’s a tough little girl!


So for Christmas my parents decided to come down and it has been nice having them here. We do miss our other family members during the holidays but we feel very blessed that we get to spend the holidays with some family at all. Ashlan has been ‘talking’ a lot more lately with family down here and we think she’s starting to use words. She says certain syllables that answer our questions that we ask her and it happens too often for it just to be a fluke. For instance, there was a picture of a giraffe on her book and she pointed to it and said “raffe” when we asked what it was. She also can repeat certain things, like we showed her one of her letter blocks that had a ‘u’ on it and we said “u” and she did too right afterwards! These are just a few instances of many lately, so she’s on her way.


Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas, we sure did!

The three of us on Christmas.

First tooth, on her bottom left...and now she has the right too.

Waving bye bye to Caesar on our way out.

Papa and Ashlan on mommy's old rocking horse.

Bucket of magnetic letters from Nana and Papa- she loves them.

Putting them on the fridge.

Putting them back in the bucket.

Spelling lesson with Papa...her name.  :)

Crawling all over Nana.

She brought the bucket to Nana.

Bouncing on Nana's legs.

In the box, a favorite pasttime of hers.  :)

Nuzzles from Nana.

Papa being silly. 

Loves to read!

She actually puts her 'cell phone' to her ear.  She was doing it here,

but my camera didn't catch it, she's too fast!

More reading, from Papa.

Her new alphabet blocks.  As soon as she opened them, she immediately put four blocks on top of each other, and these are regular blocks, not blocks with a hooking mechanism...and they didn't topple!

New baby einstein books, so perfect for her hands.

Ashlan got a doll with her name on it from Nana and Papa.  She hugged it when we asked her too, but of course, that picture was too blurry to post! 

She loves this toy too, the Weebles.  She dances to the music that it plays.  She's so fun!

Nana, Ashlan, and Papa.

Three generations of first born girls.  :)

The Ashlan Adventures

This is going to be short and to the point!  Well, as short as I can make it because you guys know I'm long-winded.  :)

What Ashlan can do now:

-She can swing her leg over her bus by herself and climb on it. She can also get off by herself, and those who know what the bus looks like, know getting on and off is difficult because of the tall “handle” that is on the back of the bus! She has also pushed herself backwards with her feet a few times, so it's just a matter of time when she'll be pushing herself on it.  :)

-She gives high fives (when she’s in the mood!). She gave me one in the grocery store the other day in front of the cashier, but played shy when the cashier asked for one. Lol!

-She can stack multiple blocks in multiple sizes from her megablocks set on top of each other now.

-She will give Caesar his treat when I place one in her hand and tell her to give him it.

-She is in 18 month pants, though some are a little tight (and it’s even if she has a disposable diaper on!) I had to buy her some stretchy 18 month pants so they would fit around her big diaper, lol! She is in some 18 month onesies and some 24 month onesies, though the 24 months have some room to grow.

-One thing I love is that she now allows us to hold her hand when walking. It starts out as us leading her, and by the end, she is leading us (and usually pointing at everything in sight)!  She's been walking for a few months now, but she is so independent that she never wanted any help!

-As I said before, she has been running all over the place for the past few weeks. She actually let me hold her hand when we walked out of a store the other day, but she still prefers to explore everything alone. We went shopping the other day with Dan and she wouldn’t hold his hand because she was too busy pointing at things and looking around (and talking to herself), but at least she would hold mine. Whenever I let go of her hand or she yanked hers out of mine, she’d take off and we’d have to chase her around. We don’t do that very often, because she’s usually sitting in the cart, but she loves to explore different places on foot.

Daddy reading to our girl, something we do all day, it seems!

I love this pic, though a bit blurry.  She was walking towards me, reaching for her binky, and Dan was smacking her butt with an empty roll of wrapping paper.

Fun in the tub.  She loves bath time!

I love this outfit, jeans and a sweater.

We were getting ready to go out.  She wears little sock booties that have grips on the bottom because I've read it's better for them not to wear shoes when they're learning to walk (though she clearly knows how to walk by now, as most of my readers know).  We still have some real shoes but she doesn't wear them very often.  We plan to start that soon but I'm in no rush.

Reaching for bubbles at her BFF's (Audrey's) house.  :)  The girls are such good friends and really seem to like to play together.  They scare each other and are dare-devils...Audrey crawls on furniture and stands on it and Ashlan does face dives off of chairs (don't worry, she doesn't get hurt).  They are definitely entertaining and two peas in a pod.  :)

Ashlan couldn't make up her mind on which one she wanted so she just started pushing and then dragging them both.  :)

One of mommy's purses...idea courtesy of her BFF.  :)

She walks around with that thing everywhere, it's so funny!

Ashlan got herself on the bus (though she's backwards here), and she is bouncing up and down in this pic, hence the blurry photo. 

Loves bath time!  Sticks her hand in the water while the tub is filling up.

Her picture puzzles.  She loves them!  Still working on putting them in the right ones but she has the idea.  :)

Her new onesie, and my new favorite, "Mommy's girl".  By the way, the blurry pics are now a thing of the past.  I didn't like the new camera I bought so we took it back and got a new one.  The new one is MUCH better!!

Pushing her bus around...she put her milk on top of the seat and it magically stayed still the whole time she pushed it around, and if you've ever watched her, she can be quite violent sometimes with that bus, lol!  She puts everything on that seat, or under it because it lifts up, that she wants to carry around with her.  Such a smartie!  :)

Happy 1st birthday Ashlan!!!

Happy 1st birthday Ashlan! It’s hard to believe she is one already!!! Her party was pretty awesome for a one year old, I thought! The food was fantastic, the company was fabulous, and you could tell Ashlan was having so much fun, especially with the other kids there. So a big thanks to Nana and Papa for coordinating such a fun event for such a happy occasion! Also, a special thanks to my photographer, Aunt Katie, to which I would not be posting so many pics to this blog without her photo expertise. :)  We were so excited that everyone showed up to take part in Ashlan’s birthday celebration! Thanks to all that attended! We are so happy you could take part in her special day!!


The flights were pretty good both ways, for the most part. She did start to get antsy towards the end of the 2nd flight on the way there and refused to sit in her seat on the landing (heck, she didn’t even want to sit on us, she wanted to run down the aisles apparently!), but the two flights back home went perfectly. The dvd player didn’t help as much as we thought it would. It took her attention for maybe 20 min on one plane ride on the way there so that didn’t help much, lol! We were wondering if maybe she couldn’t hear it well since it was loud in the plane. We haven’t given up hope yet though! But the thing that kept her attention was books. Thank God I brought a whole bunch on the plane since she went through every one multiple times! Glad we had new ones for the ride home though, lol!


Ashlan definitely understands a lot more. She has started to identify where parts of the body are on herself and on me. I will ask her to tell me where mommy’s nose is and she points to it. She has done the same thing with her head and ears. My favorite thing is that she now gives high fives! So cool! It started by accident when she raised her hand to me, and I slapped it and said “High five”. Now, I ask her for a high five with my hand raised and she does it all the time. She also gives kisses to us when we ask her for one, or she sometimes just comes up to us when we’re sitting on the floor and plants one on us. It’s so sweet. Yesterday when Dan went to work, I picked her up and told her Daddy was leaving. She started waving bye bye and I told her to kiss Daddy so she did. Then I said, “I want one”, and she kissed me, and Dan told her he wanted another and she kissed him again. This went on like 6 times! She’s just such a sweetheart. She also waves bye bye through skype, so she definitely gets that there is another person in the computer!


She recently got a book for her birthday that she loves, and brings it to me all the time to read to her. She has been bringing us books for us to read to her for awhile, but something new is that I’ll be sitting on the floor and after handing me the book, she immediately turns around and plops herself down on my lap. It’s kind of like a “trust fall”. It’s so funny!


About a month ago, she received alphabet puppets as an early birthday gift. There is one for each letter of the alphabet, like there is a frog puppet and the letter ‘F’ is on it, as well as the word ‘frog’. She will go to the bin that they’re in, grab one, and then bring it back to me. I put it on my hand and say something like, “I’m a frog. My name is Fred and it begins with ‘F’.” (I know, cheesy, right? The things you do for kids. But anyways…) She stays until I’m done talking, and then goes back and brings me another…and this goes on for quite awhile. We got up to 16 letters today before she got interested in something else, lol (I counted)! We were actually skyping with my mom at the time, so we were wondering when she’d lose interest in that but it was longer than I thought!


She also can respond to simple commands (geez, I sound like she’s a dog, haha!). Anyway, she ended up finding a binky and I said to her, “You don’t need that. Give your binky to mommy” and she took it out of her mouth and put it in my hand. Now, she wasn’t happy about it, but she did it! She also listens (thankfully) when I tell her to come here or tell her no. Every once and awhile she is defiant, but she usually listens. And she always struts down the hall now when I tell her it’s time to change her diaper, so she definitely knows what that means now!


I just can’t believe how much she has changed over the past year. It has truly been a whirlwind! I enjoy every day with her, as I know some moms don’t have the luxury to stay home but I can’t imagine our life any other way. She is such a joy and we are so lucky to be her mommy and daddy!

These pictures may or may not be out of order.  I bought a new camera the other day (Merry Christmas to me!) and I'm still getting used to it!

After everyone sang happy birthday, Mommy blew out the candles so Ashlan could get started smashing the cake!

This is me testing out my new camera at home, a few days before her birthday.  She was practically running around the house here.

The venue, Nunzi's Restaurant...a select few of us got there early to decorate.

The poster we had everyone write on.

Ashlan's cake, that was actually cupcakes.  How cool is that?

The tabletops and surrounding tinsel.  Notice the great job Aunt Katie did decorating the buffet table.  :)

My mom taking Ashlan to see my grandma and grandpa. 

What Ashlan wore for the party (until the cake smashing event!).

Our little family.  <3

Ashlan had a good time with Viv.

They had a great time, and even held hands and kissed when we asked!  So sweet!!!

The slinky's that my mom bought were a big hit with the kids!

Ashlan's smash cake.

Right before she smashed the cake...after everyone sang to her.

Testing it out...

I gave her a lick, hoping to speed things along.

I don't think she liked her hands getting dirty so much, lol!  Maybe I've rubbed off on her?  :)

Trying to give her more...she did not want any part of it!

I licked her fingers...though I do not like frosting, she certainly wanted her hands clean or just wanted to feed me it, lol!

Holy cow, she separated the layers, lol!

"Ew, what IS this?"

What she did to it!

The "kid" table.  They had fun playing their game.

Ashlan loved the balloons!  Grammy was entertaining her here.

Look at that face!  <3

Grandpa entertaining Ashlan.

And now it's Aunt Katie's turn.  :)

Of course, Ashlan found the one hole in all the chairs and had to obsess about it, lol! 

Dan, Ashlan, Rose, and Sarah (Tony's daughter and wife).

Back home at Nana's house, after the party...Aunt Katie was reading to Ashlan.

And Papa was spending some QT with Ashlan before we left for home.