Splashing & Giggling

Last night's bath:

Asa's Birthday

Finally, after many hours of editing and days of procrastination, I have completed a rough video compilation of Asa's many birthday activities. I hope you like it!


On a side note: I needed to replace the batteries on a toy yesterday. I successfully took out 11 screws only to realize that it was pointless. It was the wrong place. The battery compartment has only one screw holding it closed. It would have been nice if I had discovered that to begin with!

Asa-ism, Writing Preferences and a Bug

I just have to say that Asa has been saying something new and it just makes me smile for some reason. Here it is:
"Look, Mom."
He points at something for me to look at.

We have thought for a while that Asa is left-handed. He seems to eat and color more often with his left hand. The "experts" say that a child doesn't show for sure which hand he will use until age three or something. But Asa seems to be pretty consistent. James thinks Judah is also a lefty. He apparently does better (like the first time ever trying) eating those little puff things for babies with his left hand. I'm not as convinced as the father. James wonders what the odds are of having two left-handed children.

Last night Asa spotted a bug on the kitchen floor. It's one of those yellow lady bugs. He laid on the floor watching it for a while. He even picked it up a few times. Every time he went away he would come back and look for it. I'm announcing that he has spotted it again today and is very happy.

Sleep Schedules

I apparently need to read some books about sleeping. Asa was sick last week and woke up in the night a lot. He also woke up early in the mornings and had shorter naps than normal. We aren't back on schedule yet. He was up early both this morning and yesterday morning. He was just envying my muffin. When I moved it out of reach and put a muffin on his plate at the table, he broke down. He was sitting on the floor and would not climb up on his chair to eat his own muffin. I finally picked him up and handed him the muffin. He, still crying, held the muffin with both hands and took a bite. That finally silenced the crying. (For a few minutes.)
Judah is another story, not very different. He still gets up in the night to eat. I have to admit that this is my fault. I'm too tired to put him back to sleep so I just let him nurse and sleep with us. Then any time he makes another noise, I nurse him again. Sunday night was terrible. He has been having trouble pooping and I think it was keeping him up. It was really hard to get him to sleep. With Judah, I think I'm going to try to feed him during the day on a stricter schedule. Hopefully that will help him to get full during the day so he doesn't need to eat at night. I'm also working during the day to get him to fall asleep on his own in his crib.
I feel like I have had these plans before and they have failed. Well, it doesn't hurt to try again.

Carrots, Paint and Jumping

Judah is now enjoying carrots.
Asa just went to the basement and came up with his paintings and paint brushes. Then he went back down and brought up his paints. He put them on the table, sat down and said "ta da!" I guess we'll have to paint tonight!
We've been teaching Asa how to jump off of something into our arms. He is pretty good at counting but doesn't leap into our arms yet. Now he'll stand on something and say "Jump me." I think he means to say "Catch me." We're still working on that!

On a side note, I am not doing a very good job keeping my resolutions. I think about them a lot though. I don't know if I've been kind to my family, but I'm trying. The house is clean a lot more of the time than before. I have not actually cleaned the bedrooms all year and the basement is a wreck. I've exercised twice and I've read a few chapters of a book. I am trying, but not being very successful.

Saturday

Saturday morning we set out for a walk with the double stroller and our sunglasses. OK, I'm the only one with sunglasses. It ended up being around 65-70 that day. Shortly after we started walking, I remembered that there was an event in downtown Lee's Summit called the Chocolate Crawl. Basically it's a marketing scheme to get people to shop downtown. All the stores had some sort of chocolate they would give you as you shop for Valentine's Day. We decided to try to walk there and check it out. Thankfully James was pushing the stroller. I pushed for a couple blocks and about died. I don't know how he's in that much better shape than I am. Oh well. I just checked Google maps and the walk to downtown is about 1.2 miles. Once we got there we only went in a couple stores and got a couple pieces of chocolate. I felt a little guilty taking their sweets when I had no intentions of buying anything. We did find a little consignment shop that we will visit again. It was actually a consignment store plus a craft fair. There was a lot of cute stuff. We spent the most time in that store. Both boys slept for part of the walk. It was a great way to spend a Saturday morning.

A Busy Week

This has truly been a busy week. I was glad to sit at home all day yesterday. Monday was Asa's birthday and we went to NPH to have lunch with James. Tuesday we went to a friend's house to play and I went to the doctor. Wednesday James was home sick. Asa had his 2 year check up. We found out that he has an ear infection so I had to make another trip to Wal-Mart for the prescription. That evening we went to church as normal. Thursday was awesome! Asa and I played with trains for a while. He loves it! We also did some painting Thursday night. He got some paints for his birthday and had a fun time being messy. This morning we went to Xtreme Gymnastics for open gym with some other moms and kids from church. Asa was so much more outgoing today than last time we went. Our pastor's son jumped into the foam pit and bumped into Asa. I had to crawl in there and get him out. I was looking for someone to pull me out. It was harder than it looked!
I'm looking forward to a relaxing weekend!

Saturday

Saturday was a fun day. Judah is starting to sit up pretty well. Asa is starting to sing. He was walking around repeating a phrase and I finally realized that he was singing a tune from Blue's Clues: "We just got a letter."


It was such a nice day (almost 70 in January!) that we decided to go to the park in the afternoon. Asa probably liked going down the slides the most.

The first time James put him in the swing and pushed him, he started crying. Later when Judah started to swing Asa decided that he would try it again.

It really wasn't a very eventful day. It was nice to relax with the family all day.
One more picture. Judah wearing one of Asa's outfits.