A New Rendition of Old MacDonald

Zeke's additions to the classic kid song:

Old MacDonald had a farm.  E I E I O.

And on his farm he had a Po, with a Kung Fu here and a Kung Fu there.

And on his farm he had a Tigress, with a ROAR here and a ROAR there.

And on his farm he had a Rhinoceros, with a hit Ti Lung here and a hit Ti Lung there

And on his farm he had a Po's Dad, with a (uhg...I can't remember...but I know it was cute)

Zeke's first nightmare

Zeke had his first bad dream the other night.  In his own words:

"I had bad dream.  Somebody push button and it was noisy.  It scare me."

Ashlynn 7 Months

Despite my wishes, Ashlynn is growing and developing like crazy.  Okay, I am loving it, but I do wish she could just pause right here for a little bit.  And I realized I need to take more pictures of her.  I have close to nothing since her six month pictures, which is really a shame, and blogger does not seem to want to upload videos at the moment. Here are some of her latest little things though:

Ashlynn's absolute favorite thing to do is dance with Mommy or Daddy.  We hold one of her hands and sing and dance and bounce and dip her and she is all smiles and laughs. 

Ashlynn began pulling herself to standing on Feb 8th and now does it all the time. 

And I think because she wants to make things easy to record, one day after turning 7 months she started actually crawling, although she has been the master of the scoot for a month, and she still resorts back to that now too.

She decided this month that she does not like to wear headbands.  They are meant for eating only.  I keep putting them on so I can enjoy them for about ten seconds.

Ashlynn has also started to love bathtime with Zeke.  I usually bathe Zeke first and let Ashlynn play on the floor with toys until I'm ready for her, but now that she can pull herself up she instantly crawls over to the tub, stands up and starts reaching her hands in to splash with the water.  When she is in the water she doesn't act particularly excited, mostly just contentedly chews on Zeke's alphabet ( I gave up protecting the letters) and does a little splashing.  But she always gives me a little squawk and cry when I take her out.

She is a full time smiler now.  She is a very happy little lady, and about the only thing that makes her upset is when she realizes that she is playing by herself.  She prefers to play with Zeke, Mommy or Daddy, although she is getting more entertained by toys too.

I also call her my little sweeper, because since she started crawling I have been horrified at my sweeping skills because I am constantly pulling things out of her mouth.  Last week I fished something out only to discover that it was a piece of a Christmas decoration that Zeke broke (and I consequently swept up) clear back in December.  Seriously? There was still a piece of that on the floor and I have swept how many times since then?  But then, Ashlynn is a very skilled finder of any and all things bite sized.  Not only did she take a bit of Zeke's ham and cheese last month, she also managed to get a good bite out of a chocolate peanut butter candy on Valentines (lucky no allergies, eh?).  She was not too happy when I took that one away.

She has started to sing a bit.  Even never hearing it before, she knows the whole chorus to The Beach Boy's "Barbara Ann." She is yet to say Mama, or even mamamamama.

 One last little tid bit.  Today she fell asleep at Church completely folded in half. She was sitting on his lap in Sunday School and then she just folded over, put her head completely on her knees and was instantly out.  Comfy.

Well those are the memories and details I can think of for now.

The Joy of a Plastic Bag

I thought I was being resourceful using the bag from our comforter to store blocks in. Zeke added a little creativity and the bag became even more useful

First, after a great deal of effort, this clear plastic bag it made an excellent hiding spot last week. 

Oh dear!  Where did Zeke go?  I can't see him anywhere!

Shortly after this he changed his use of the bag and decided that he was Rhino (from the movie Bolt) and this was his ball. 

Shortly after that he used a yellow ribbon as reins, some blocks as reindeer and hopped into his clear plastic Santa sleigh.  Love it.


As you may have noticed, Zeke loves movies and movie characters.  For a kid who only watches about one movie a week (not by his choice of course), this kid's world revolves around movies.  His memory is incredible and he remembers obscure scenes out of movies he has only seen once.  And movies are what he plays.  He is constantly Po (Kung Fu Panda) and makes me be Tigress, Daddy is Mantis, and Ashlynn is usually baby Tigress.  This particular movie love has been an interesting one, because although he knows that he is not supposed to hit on a normal basis, he seems to think it is okay to hit us as long as he says that we are Ti Lung, because "Ti Lung not nice guy."  We're working on this one ;).

His wardrobe has also recently shrunk since he insists almost every day that he is "Mike A-house-ee" (Mike  Wazowski from Monsters Inc.) and therefore needs to wear a green shirt.  He only has two and doesn't seem to think that their presense in the hamper is any excuse for not wearing  them.  One day I convinced him to wear a white shirt because Mike has a white eye.  He liked that idea but then also needed to wear a blue shirt on top of the white shirt because Mike's iris is blue.

Needless to say, Zeke has us laughing all the time and I wish I could remember every word our little man ("no BIG man" he would say) says.

Playing together and Zeke's first dream

January has been a fun month to watch Zeke and Ashlynn play together.  Ashlynn is getting more and more interactive and always wants to play with Zeke.  Our friend was babysitting them last weekend and she said Ashlynn would be playing happily next to Zeke and his buddy and then they would move away and she would look around puzzled for a minute and then burst into tears. The second Kendra put her back by Zeke again she was happy.  And that is pretty much how it goes.  Zeke hasn't mastered the art of gentleness, and Ashlynn is not to fond of being squashed or pulled about, but the rest of the time: She loves her Zekie.

One of my favorite things about Ashlynn right now is the way she bounces when she is excited. She has always done this a little bit, but lately she does it a lot. When she is happy she just starts pumping her legs up and down whether she is on the ground, in her saucer, or in our arms.

Zeke's biggest update this month is that he reported his first dream. I'm sure he has dreamed before, but this is the first officially remembered dream. I went to get Zeke after his nap and he said "I dreamed! Bolt, Mittens, and Rhino play with me in backyard, but no Penny or Penny's Dad or the green eyed man. And Po sat on a chair."

 

We went and played in the backyard after that and he told me that Bolt and Mittens were sitting on the big green swing and Rhino was swinging on his lap. After he got off the swing he carefully put Rhino back in his ball before running off to climb his tree. Can I say: I love this kid!

Also, the very next night at probably 1 a.m. we hear over the monitor "mumble, mumble, mumble, Mater" so I believe he was dreaming again.

 Here is Zeke demonstrating his couch leaping skills.  (Kace, if you read this, does it remind you of our trampoline days?  I think he gets his taste for jumping from me :))

 speaking of Mater, can you tell what this fabulous creation is? 

The creative geniuses.

In other news.  I decided this month that I want to write a book.  So I am.  Crazy.  I'm not expecting truly great things, but I caught the bug so I'm going with it.  Plus, there is a lot of really horrific literature out there, so maybe my "okay" literature can get published.  I always wanted to write a book, so why not?  Well, the reason I shouldn't is because I am one class away from finally graduating so I really should be devoting nap time to that...but I can graduate and write a book, and raise two kids all at once.  Nothing to it.

Backyardigans and the return of ChimpanZeke

Vegas has been gorgeous this past week so we've lived outside.  Here's just a couple shots of Zeke and Ashlynn.

Zeke has recently become a professional at climbing trees.  He is still my little monkey.  He just requests "need footstool" if he is at a part he can't climb by himself.  I am learning to restrain my protective mother bear instincts and just let him do things that one of these days are going to land him with a broken bone.  Today he was above my head in the tree and I could no longer even reach him...I was a bit nervous. He wasn't.  ChimpanZeke was in his natural turf.

 

 He calls this branch "the monkey bar."

Six Months

I have loved Ashlynn from the moment she was born.  She is such a sweet, happy, loving baby.  But now she is getting to the real fun stages.  So far, with both my kids, it just gets better and better as it goes.  It is crazy how fast six months has gone by, and yet I feel like she has always been mine.  Here is a little update on my special Ashlynn.

Ashlynn still loves it when we tease her with her binkie, she is starting to get ticklish in her toes and she loves when Zeke climbs up onto the side of her crib when she wakes up.  She loves Zeke and is very patient.  Zeke likes to play ring around the rosies with her and dog pile (neither of which is gentle at all, despite my warnings) but she seems to like it. 

She is almost always happy and is very free with her smiles.  She really makes us work for laughs though.  I can get her to laugh when I kiss her and then make a silly face and noise (kind of like an elephant noise), peek-a-boo seems to make her laugh too, and I discovered this week that she loves the swing in the backyard and will grin and laugh when I push her.

She likes to be outside.  The other day she was pretty discontent and would cry every time I tried to lay her down inside but when I placed her on a blanket on the grass she was happy. I brough her back inside and she cried so I took her back outside and she was happy again.  We've had picnics outside every day this week and she loves feel of the grass and leaves (and loves the taste of both as well).  Try as I may I can't keep her on the blanket (and that was even before she was crawling)!

She is a bit of a phenomenon in that I have a hard time getting her to fall asleep in my arms.  She likes to get a few snuggles and then I put her in her bed with really snuggy blankets and caress her forehead and then she'll fall asleep.  But we do still get some snuggles, thank goodness!  I love cuddling her.  I love it especially when she is really tired because she will look up at me or Trustin, whoever is holding her, give a big smile and then bury her face into us for a second and then repeat that again and again.  She does the same thing when she is nursing and those moments are among my very favorite.

She is not picky at all about food.  She has never made a face good or bad about any food.  The green beans were as happily accepted as the pears although she hasn't really been excited about any either.  She just eats it if it is there and doesn't really care if it isn't. Unless of course the food is grass, which may be her favorite green vegetable.

Yesterday I did her six month photo shoot.  She is beautiful inside and out!  I love you Ashlynn!