Summer vacation

Please excuse the hiatus! Currently at Cross Sound Ferry in New London, CT. VERY full car and headed to Long Island for summer vacation, July 4th, Jason's 35th birthday and lots of fun in the sun. See you July 9th, here's our ferry gotta go!



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Painting in Pampers

Last Friday, two days before Father's Day, I hosted playgroup at my house for the first time. [Actually, before I go on, I would like to share my favorite joke about Father's Day.

Question: Why is Father's Day in June?
Answer: Because about a month after Mother's Day, someone went, "Hey! Wait a minute..."]

Thanks, thanks very much. I can hardly hear myself type with all the laughter. Anyway where was I. Oh yes, playgroup. We meet once a week and it usually involves sitting around and chatting while our babies stick various toys in their mouths. This time I had the genius idea that we should make some kind of artwork for all the dads for Father's Day. I went and bought paper and supplies, my good friend Becca brought a big sheet of plastic, and we stripped everyone down in preparation for what was sure to be the Great Fingerpaint Disaster of 2012. Here is the calm before the storm:

There were four babies including Ashton: Lucia (far left, also born August 3rd), Maggie (a little wary in the front) and Owen (who is Ashton's role model at 18 months, he was too busy running around for me to catch in this picture!).

It started out nicely enough, Lucia had the orange...

Maggie chose blue (and couldn't resist a little taste :) Good thing it was nontoxic!)

And Ashton watched Chera help Owen with a footprint

Then I put my camera down, helped him get some paint and things got much messier.

I'm sure you can't tell how chaotic this was, but, it was. 

What do these look like to you? Weapons of mass destruction, that's what. Or something out of a horror movie where babies are allowed to crawl amok and smear paint on what is otherwise a very clean, nicely decorated condo!

Whoever the geniuses are behind Crayola fingerpaint, I applaud you for your product's key adjective: washable.


After the "painting" was done, Owen took a rinse in the sink and the other babies went into the bath. Sounds innocent enough but I'm pretty sure this was the best moment in Ashton's little life so far:

Two girls in his tub? Yes please.

I think what made the rest of the day so cute is that everyone continued to hang out in their diapers (uh, babies, not moms). Ashton and Maggie had snacks:

Owen was happy dancing around:

And they ended with a good old fashioned game of "Hey! Let's pull up on a dining room chair and all stand there together!"

It was a really fun time. It made me look forward to all the cool things that we will get to do as Ashton gets older. For now, I'll leave you with his first masterpiece- the best gift that Jason will ever get :)

Dirt.

I left Ashton playing in the living room for about 60 seconds to take an important phone call. Great way to start the morning!

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Hot Day, Summer in the City...

Heat Wave!!!!

Well, it's not that bad but today was hot...  As any good dad would do I ran out & purchased the coolest little mini pool I could find.  Needless to say Ashton was pretty happy.  Here are a few pics of him playing in the pool.

Hey Ash, nice double chin ;)

Look at those pearly whites!

Don't worry, lifeguard Dad was on the scene (or, those are ice cold Coronas in that red cooler...)

Stand up guy

It seems like Ashton is growing at an astronomical rate. Today I honestly tried to think back to what it was like when he was just starting to hold his head up, roll over, etc. and I couldn't even picture it. He now moves around so able-bodied, aware and interested in things, and pulls up on anything within his reach. In the past couple of days he has gotten to his feet and then let go of whatever is supporting him, so for a second or two he is standing all on his own :) It would be totally amazing, if it wasn't completely annoying! I'm exhausted from policing his every move, and his new trick this month is to stand up in his crib. It wreaks havoc on naptime because I put him down, close the door, and thirty seconds later I hear some noises and check the monitor and yep, he has popped right up to check things out. What's outside of his crib is far more interesting than what's inside, obviously. So we play this game- I go back in, lay him down, pat pat pat on his back and give him his paci, and leave. Thirty seconds later, same thing. I know what you want to ask: why don't you just leave him alone? I have started to this week. Before that though, he was pulling up without knowing how to get down, so he cried and cried and it was heartbreakingly cute when I went in to pry his little fingers from the railing and rescue him.


Now, pretty much every morning and after every naptime this is what I am greeted with:

I often leave two or three pacis in his crib so he can find them for himself in the middle of the night. In the morning it's not unusual to find him with one in his mouth and one in each fist. He shuffles around to collect them or something. Hey, whatever floats your boat.


But the standing up is getting out of control. He loves all of our planters, the coffee table, the kitchen stools, the bed frame, everything but the very nice new toys I have been buying him. Tsk tsk, what a cliché. Nonetheless, this is what it's like around here:

Exploring his toy box

(Although I'm not sure what he's looking for- he never finds anything in there as remotely interesting as, well, the remote. Ha ha)

Underneath the dining room table:

Yes, it WOULD be fun to pull all the cans out of the pantry. 

Loving the coffee table

I don't have pictures of all the times I catch him flinging dirt from the plants because I'm usually running for the vacuum cleaner. 

When he does play with "Ashton approved toys" I might as well be living in a casino with all the sounds and lights. They all seem to play Pop Goes the Weasel, and, even more bizarre, Alouette. Alouette is a French song about plucking various parts of a bird. ??? I'll spare you a video, but notice Tate in the background looking utterly bored (and ruining our couch at the same time). 

Notice the playmat. It's new. We pushed aside our living room furniture and got rid of a chair so the dining room stayed after all :)


I am behind on blogging so stay tuned this week for more new posts!

Intruder

We have one of those dual exchange fans in one of the windows in our bedroom. Last night, I left Jason on the couch watching the US Open highlights because I was ready to hit the hay. I walked into our bedroom, switched on the fan, and ZOOM, this huge beetle was rocketed into our bedroom at warp speed! It must have been hanging out on the propeller, not knowing it had a ticket to ride. I mean this thing was in our room so fast that before I knew what was happening, I grabbed the nearest flipflop and smacked it. As it lay dead on the windowsill, I ran into the living room flapping my arms and shrieking, "Babe! This HUGE beetle just came through the fan into our bedroom! I turned it on and it popped right out. I killed it! It was HUGE!"

At this point, Jason gave what most people would call an unmoved reply. "Oh you did? You killed it?" I said, hesitantly, "Um, obviously!" What was I supposed to do? Name it and invite it under the covers? Couldn't he appreciate that this HUGE beetle came out of nowhere and into our room like a bat out of hell? And I saved us from it. Why wasn't this a big deal?!

I got a piece of tissue and disposed of the beetle. I stood quietly in the bedroom for a second, then walked back into where Jason was watching TV and admitted, "Actually, by HUGE beetle I really meant a regular sized one." Without looking up from golf, he said, "Yeah, I figured it must have been pretty small if it fit through the fan in the first place."

Well. Resigned, I plodded back into the bedroom. My unflappable husband.

Water water everywhere

For many years B.A. (before Ashton), Jason and I frequently passed by the Beaver Brook Reservation Spray Deck just down the road. It's a combination playground/picnic area/cool off zone for all the annoying kids within a 5 mile radius. They run around shrieking and screaming. They get hopped up on the sugar from the popsicles their parents buy them at the ice cream truck. They spray totally innocent bystanders with Spongebob water guns. And then they wail when their exhausted moms and dads drag them out by their sticky, damp little hands. In general, a non-parent's worst nightmare. It looks like this:

Kudos to the ones that know they're in for a long afternoon and bring their own chairs. Anyway, this past Sunday, for the first time ever...we joined them. It was a beautiful day, we packed our lunch, and Grandma, Grandpa, Jason, Ashton and I took a walk down there to check it out. Ashton's expression as we arrived on scene:

As you can clearly see, he's spellbound by the little girls in their ruffly bathing suits. When he came to his senses, he was a bit cross with me for making him wear such a dopey sunhat. I wanted to tell him he had bigger problems (hellooo, shrinkage) but didn't want to discourage him from going in the water in case he hadn't thought of that.

With Dad's help, getting the lay of the land:

He didn't actually look that relieved when we told him there were no sharks.

But, in he went. Talk about putting Shrimps class to good use! That water must have been nearly a quarter of an inch deep ;)

He had me take a few headshots just in case Baywatch calls:

Why would he waste such rugged good looks on eTrade?

After that, it was total amateur hour. On my part, not his. First of all, I didn't think he'd get that wet. I honestly anticipated dipping his toes in and that's it, which is why he had a tshirt on and not a rash guard, and a standard diaper vs. a swimmie. He didn't have proper sunscreen, and I had to dry him off in a baby blanket because I hadn't brought a real towel.

I'm smiling because I hadn't figured out what Ashton already knew: horror upon horrors, I didn't have a change of clothes for him! I did have a dry diaper so that's basically all he wore home. He's like, "Great, thanks Mom."

I bought him a Bomb Pop from the ice cream truck to try and make amends for my lack of foresight. No dice. He was still in his skivvies saying goodbye to Grandma thirty minutes later.

Ashton barely spoke to me the rest of the day. I'll never live this down. Looks like I'm going to have to take notes from the other parents at the spray deck. Perhaps a Spongebob water gun is in my future after all. Whoever said bribery will get you nowhere, we'll see about that!

Double Digits

Last Sunday, June 3rd, Ashton hit his 10 month birthday! He now weighs 22 lbs 5 oz, and we are squeezing his little tush into the last of our size 3 diapers before moving on to size 4. I am buying pretty much all 12-18 month clothes, not surprising considering how much this baby eats! He still nurses three times a day, plus an 8 oz bedtime bottle, plus breakfast, lunch and dinner, plus snacks. Oy. [Note to self: buy stock in Cheerios.] I am having a lot of fun with him with food. Being careful of his allergies, I like to give him tastes of whatever it is that I am having. I gave him a spoonful of my key lime italian ice the other day, you can imagine between the cold and the tart how tightly his little face puckered up haha. I died laughing.

Mobility wise he is still not doing the up-on-all-fours crawling; I honestly wonder if his version of crawling is pulling himself army-style across the floor. He can go from his back to his front to sitting up to rolling over...he's all over the place, I'm tired just watching him. He is also starting to try and pull himself up on things- we had to drop his crib all the way down yesterday. We have been walking in to find him sitting there with his hands on the rails trying to stand with an "I'm outta here" expression on his face. We set him back considerably by lowering the mattress.

And the curiosity! Anything he is not supposed to have, he wants. Cords, plants, remotes, phones, vacuum hoses, Tate's stuff, etc. I'm still in denial and haven't babyproofed yet, although I have broached a subject with Jason that I swore I never would: taking down the dining room table and turning that room into a *gasp*... play area. I can gate him in, get some more mats and toys...voila. I'm generally horrified by this thought because I don't do well with messiness or things strewn about. But, I've just about swallowed the very large "it's not about me anymore" pill and I feel like if Ashton would like it, I should do it. In the meantime, I actually have more fun than I should by taking a whisk or basting bulb and putting it on the floor some distance away and making him crawl for it. I also sometimes leave him on the rug in the nursery, walk to the kitchen and call his name for him to follow me. He does :) My little puppy.

General adventures this month, besides his first Mother's Day and his new car, include but are not limited to:

Meeting his uncle Erik for the first time!

Seeing some animals at Drumlin Farm - this is an unfortunate angle but there you have it

We also met the piglets, cows, sheep and chickens. 

Lots of playing! A date with his little friend Brooklynn.

So cute. Until things went south...

Oh dear. Ashton got a good-sized lecture on the way home about how to treat the ladies. 

We visited the ball pit at Knucklebones

And did some general exploration around the house

He likes to end his day with a drive after dinner so we've done LOTS of loops around the neighborhood - again with the oh-so-cool arm drape!

What else? Oh, now when he goes out to restaurants, he sits at the table in his highchair like a big boy

He loves to be the one to walk Tate

Some quality man time:

And lastly, general 10 month cuteness.

I think this shirt might be too small ;) Hope this post gave everyone their picture fix for awhile!