Drinking from a straw!

I normally wouldn’t post another blog entry this soon but I just had to…Ashlan drank from a straw today! She was sitting on Dan’s lap and I saw her looking at me when I was drinking out of my glass with a straw (something I always do because I don’t like to drink straight from a glass). Since she sometimes “sucks” in food when it’s falling out of her mouth when eating I thought I’d give it a shot. I put the straw to her lips and lo and behold, she started sucking! The first sip she drank a little and a tiny bit dribbled out of her mouth when I pulled it away. When I put the straw to her lips again, this time she sucked for a long time and took a bunch of big gulps of water! We were so proud of her! Not even 9 months old yet and drinking out of a straw! She was doing so great with the sippy that we were filling it with half breastmilk and half whole milk (just for extra since she still breastfeeds about 5 times a day). So now we don’t know what to do since they make sippys with straws but we just got two more regular sippys because we misplaced one. I guess we’re going to have to get the ones with straws too. But this is nice if we ever forget her sippy when we’re out!

So Ashlan’s 9 month pictures were today even though she doesn’t turn 9 months until the 3rd. I was originally just going to do a tutu picture for her 1 year birthday but decided to bring it for some reason this time to see if we wanted to do it this time too. I’m glad I did because JC Penney’s won’t allow a topless picture with a tutu on babies one or over. Those ones turned out so cute! Anyway, you can right click on the link I sent you by email to access the pictures.



Even though she has no teeth (which I am super glad about since I’m still breastfeeding), she can eat just about anything now, within reason of course. She is great at chewing and loves to eat chicken, macaroni salad, broccoli, apples, etc. Today we had pretzels from Auntie Anne’s when we were at the mall and she got to enjoy a plain pretzel (and mommy and daddy got to help her, haha).



She is also very, very ticklish on the bottoms of her feet. Sometimes I tickle her feet when she’s in her high chair eating (I know, bad mommy, haha), and she has nowhere to go. She’s also ticklish under her arms and around her belly but for some reason daddy can’t find her tickle spots. He still enjoys watching mommy make her laugh though!



The next weekend that Dan has off we’re going to the Tampa Zoo and the Florida Aquarium in Tampa. Dan is lucky to have a 4 day weekend that time so we figured we’d take advantage of our Jacksonville zoo passes since they provide 50% off of admission for these two places and kids under 2 are free. Plus, we’re using our Hilton card for a completely free hotel stay for 4 days and we also get free breakfast because of our card status (Oooo, we’re special, lol!). Can’t beat that! We’re staying in the historic district so hopefully we’ll get to spend some time there too, and maybe even hit the beach if we have time.



So, we didn’t have many pics to share this time but lots of news! : )

She got her first abrasion on her forehead from the cement around our pool, though it's hard to see in the pic.  :(  She healed fast though since I put neosporin on it.

She loves playing with my bikini strings!  It will keep her entertained for so long!

Poor girl still has red knees from crawling around so we put baby legs on her every once and awhile.  We don't like it for when she crawls on tile because she can slide around and it's dangerous because she can lose her grip.  Since she crawls on tile quite a lot, she hardly ever has them on anymore, which is why her knees are so red.  It's a lose/lose situation.

Hugs from Daddy!  <3

The Ashlan show

Night time sleep and naps are going great! She has been elongating her night time sleep so she is now waking up around 6am even though she still goes down around 6pm so it is pretty awesome for us now! We still get mommy and daddy time in the evenings and she is now sleeping later but not late enough so that way daddy can still play with her in the mornings before he goes to work. Naps are great too. Since she was taking three half hour naps a day I decided to try two naps, and I wish I had done it sooner now. She takes at least one hour nap and then another 30 min nap, so she is still taking a total of 1 ½ hours of naps per day so I’m guessing that’s all she needs. It’s just amazing to me that she can stay awake for so long now, about 4 hours before she has to take a nap! She still goes down wide awake in her crib and falls asleep pretty soon after I put her down, and without a peep still. We are very happy about that! We’re not looking forward to her getting teeth though because we know that it can change!

Eating is about the same…she is a little pig. Now whenever we have something that we don’t give to her, she wants it and will scream until we give her a bite (or the whole thing). I thought maybe she only did it to me but she did it to Dan today as well. For me, I went into the fridge and pulled out a flavored greek yogurt. She followed me out of the kitchen and sat next to me on the floor when I sat on the couch. When I put the first bite in my mouth she watched me, and she screamed after the second bite since I still hadn’t offered her any. So I gave her a bite and before you know it, she ate the whole yogurt container! When I offered Caesar the container to lick the rest of the yogurt off the sides, she screamed because she wanted it. As soon as I got up and put it in the recycle bin, she went about playing with her toys. So, I have resorted to eating when she’s taking naps, unless I make enough food for her to eat off my plate...and this is even if she had a snack about an hour prior! When I was reheating the Sesame chicken that I had made a few days before, Ashlan ended up eating ¾ of it and I had to get something else to eat!



Ashlan and I went to the dollar store a few days ago to see what there was in the way of decorations for her first birthday party (a bit early, I know, but since we’re flying up in Dec I wanted to make sure we took the decorations up when we drove up in October). While we were there I found two bathing suits for her, at $1 each! I couldn’t pass them up so I took some pictures down below of her in them and she fits into them perfectly.



Caesar and her have really become good friends now. As I said before, there are times when I’m in the room but he chooses to bring his toy to her to play! She will grab it and whip it around and he’ll jump to get it from her. Several times right after they got done playing with another toy, he also went to get his rope too so they could play tug of war! It’s just so cute to see them interact together now.



We have been hanging out with all kinds of friends lately! We still have a few that we go to the pool with and then we met some new ones at the O2B Kids place I was talking about a few weeks ago so we have had play dates several times over the last week there as well. Ashlan is definitely starting to get used to that place. She would sit for 30 min or so and just look around and stare at other kids when we first started going. Now she jumps right in when we get there. We also went to two play dates to our friends houses where Ashlan must be getting used to the same kids she plays with because she was interacting in no time! My friend was having issues with her cloth diapers so we went over to help her with that one day. And speaking of issues, I am going to need to strip her diapers too since we’re dealing with some ammonia issues with her night time diapers only. It’s not that big of a deal since the absorbency is still good, but I just need to stop socializing and do it already, haha! Her diapers have needed it for a few weeks at least but it seems I’m never home enough to do it since it takes awhile, and since it’s only her night time diapers, it’s been easy to ‘forget’ about.



Today we grilled out with some friends that were visiting from out of town and Ashlan was so excited because they had a 3 year old son for her to follow around. It was nice to swim in the pool too and just relax! Ashlan spent a good portion of the afternoon in her raft watching the 3 year old jump in the pool about a million times. This coming week is going to be busy as well. Tomorrow I have my girlfriends and their kids coming over to swim and have lunch. We have another play date set up at O2B on Tues and then on the two days that Dan has off, we have her 9 month appointment and her 9 month pictures. I can’t believe she’s going to be 9 months here soon! Time is flying!

Getting into her box of toys.

I caught her!

She could look out the window for hours!

Audrey was excited to see Ashlan!  :)  This is my friend's 11 month old.

They love each other!  :)

This is my other friends' two year old, Sean Paul.

Audrey is starting to walk here.

Ashlan has an obsession with remotes...probably because we don't let her have ours.  :)

Uh oh!  Ashlan doesn't watch tv so she was so interested in Super Why!

This is one of her $1 suits!

This suit is 12-18 mos!

Her other $1 suit.

This one is 18-24 mos but fits pretty good!

I finally got pics of family in this book.  She loves it!

She sometimes likes to drink the pool water even though we offer her the sippy.  Yuck.

She would stare out this window forever if we let her!  I don't know what she's looking at either since it's just the side of another house!

Caesar passed out in the sun but his head was resting on Ashlan's toy, haha!

8 1/2 months old

This week we celebrated Dan’s birthday by going out to eat! We actually went out to lunch twice (Wed and Thurs) even though Dan’s birthday was Tuesday. Wednesday we went to Gator’s Dockside and Dan and I ordered our usual. We were going to order something for Ashlan from the kids menu but we didn’t like any choices since they were all fried, like chicken tenders, chicken nuggets, fries, etc. or something she really couldn’t have like salad, apples (probably not soft enough), etc. So we ordered her the grilled chicken sandwich meal with the chicken as plain and steamed veggies instead of fries. She did awesome! She ate half of the breast of chicken, about ¼ of the veggies, and a few pieces of the bun. Then the next day we went to our favorite little Greek café and she had chicken souvlaki, which is like a gyro but with chicken and she had pieces of chicken and the pita with tzatkiki sauce on it. She didn’t eat as much as the day before but still did rather well. The only downside is now her meals are as expensive as ours, haha! At least we get lots of leftovers from hers though.

She’s also tried a lot more food lately…yogurt, blueberry muffins, cheese, lamb, peaches, etc and she has loved them all. I sure hope she continues like this because it’s so easy to feed her! In fact, I think she has liked everything we’ve given her so far. And today she ate a whole banana by herself, geez! It’s just nice to prepare a meal for us and be able to cut it into pieces so she can have it instead of preparing something totally different!



Caesar and Ashlan are getting along much better now. He frequently brings his toy to her to play (and actually chooses her over me!) and we find him sleeping in his bed next to her crib once and awhile when she’s in it (which he never did before). She also seems to not be bothering him as much. She’ll look like she’s headed right towards him but she’ll go past him for something else, so I think that also helps. She still does go after him though, just not when she has her eye on something else!



Tuesday we went to O2B Kids and played with Ashlan’s little friends. We also had a playdate on Friday there with a new (and younger) baby, so Ashlan wasn’t the littlest one there this time! I shouldn’t say littlest, since she’s about as tall as the 11 month old we regularly hang out with! I should just say she’s the youngest usually. (And by the way, she’s in 12 month pants and sleepers now!) On Saturday we went to the pool with our usual swim buddies and had a great time as well. Then we went to Target for mommy to peruse the swim suits that were on sale and I couldn’t find anything but Ashlan ended up getting two tutus that were 50% off and I just couldn’t pass them up for $3 a piece. I love having a girl!!!

Playing with Caesar.

Looking at her diapers (they're clean of course).  Check out her standing!  She actually can now push away from the couch and stand for about 5 sec or so before sitting down.

Trying to get Caesar.  He's having none of it!

Finally got some pics of the family in that book!!

She is just getting super tall!  She actually pulled up on her high chair and put one hand on the table and turned, and then put the other hand on the table...all by herself!

Go Steelers!!  All ready for that nights game (even though she was asleep,

and so were we for part of it, haha!)

She wants to pull up on everything.

The pink tutu is a little big but will probably be perfect for when she can walk and

for her one year pictures! 

She crawled just fine with it on though, lol!  :)

"What IS this?"

Here's the purple one too!

Has to play with everything.  Good thing we baby proofed the other plug.

Thinking about climbing onto the couch.

She pulled up with both toys in her hand, lol!  She just didn't want to let them go. 

It did take a few tries though.  :)

New PJ's...they are 12 months but 9 month pants didn't fit her!  And this is before they were washed just to see if they'd fit!

Trying to pull up with another toy in her hand.

Contemplating on where to go next.