The Ashlan show: 18 1/2 months

We have been having some QT with Daddy this week, who only worked 2 days out of 7 this week, yippee! It was so nice to have him home even though the weather didn’t cooperate. We haven’t been in the pool at all this week because of cloudiness and rain! Figures, huh? We actually had a date night last night where we went out to dinner. It is nice to finally have a babysitter instead of just asking family when they come down. Most importantly, Ashlan and Caesar love her. Apparently he sat next to her or on her the whole time we were gone. :)

Last Friday, Ashlan and I had some friends over. We were going to try to swim but it was rainy. So instead we made keychains for Father’s Day. One of the moms went to a craft store for all of us and got things to put on the keychains that our husbands would be interested in. Dan's said “Steelers Dad”, and had footballs and black and gold on it. There is a picture below of it. Ashlan “helped” write on the card too, even though it was just scribble.

Last Saturday when Dan was working, Ashlan and I went to the zoo with some friends. We walked around for an hour or two before we went to the zoo’s water park. We were only there for about a half hour because even though the temperature was 86 degrees outside, the water was cold. The kids were all freezing, running back to us with their teeth chattering, and touching us with freezing hands. They had a great time though. We ended up leaving there and having lunch, then hung out for a bit more at the zoo’s play park and walked around again. I really thought she was going to fall asleep while we were there but there must have been too much excitement going on. She didn’t fall asleep until we got in the car, maybe around 1:30 pm or so, but then kept sleeping for awhile after I transferred her into her crib. All in all, we had a great day there…Ashlan was super well-behaved (especially for being tired!) and we all had a lot of fun. It wasn’t even crowded at all, and it was perfect weather, 86 and cloudy. We’ll definitely be doing that again soon when Dan’s working on a weekend.

So it turns out that her ear infection never fully went away. We got back and she started to get stuffy and had a runny nose again on Tuesday. We took her to the Pediatrician on Wednesday because of that, and also got her ears rechecked. Apparently, the antibiotic was not strong enough to kick it out of her system. So, we decided to ask for the once-a-day antibiotic because of Ashlan’s love of taking medicine (heavy sarcasm if you didn’t know she loathes it, and we hate the fight to give it to her). We knew it wouldn’t be covered by insurance, because only the two times a day one is, but we figured we’d make it easier on ourselves. Well, after flavoring, the medicine was $70! Guess we’re paying for the convenience but man, that’s a lot of money for one antibiotic! Oh well, she seems to be taking it better, especially if we offer cookies (chocolate chip flavored graham crackers) for afterwards. She calls them “cooks”. LOL!

Ashlan has been identifying things a lot more lately. She is now doing eyebrows, hair, feet, toes, etc, among the other body parts that she was identifying at a year old. She also knows (and I am super proud of this one) that cows go “moo”, ducks go “quack quack”, dogs go “ruff ruff”, and that trains go “choo choo”. Not bad for being 18 months old. :)

Not too many pictures these last two weeks. I think I made up for it in our PA visit though, haha.

Coloring with two hands, lol. Guess she can't make up her mind which hand she likes better.