What we're doing today...

... enjoying being snowed in

... wearing comfy clothes

... drinking coffee (that'd be me!)

... pretending to be a cat (that'd be Asher!)

... talking on the phone

... taking care of my sick husband (he's been home from work for 3 days now!)

... feeling sore from sleeping in the guest room bed in order to avoid catching aforementioned sickness from said husband (it's a crappy bed, sorry if you've ever slept in it!)

... feeling tired from consistently getting woken up between 5:30-6:30 all week by one little guy

... can't believe it's possible that Asher is 21-months old today. I guess I should just start saying he'll be 2 in April since he's closer to 2 than he is to 1

... dreaming about that potential cruise - we have an appointment to talk possibilities with a travel agent tomorrow!

... wondering if we'll make it to Asher's swimming lesson this afternoon with that storm out there

... wanting to bake (so weird) but I don't have any eggs

... looking forward to going to my favorite restaurant with some friends next weekend

... eating a lot of cheese

What are you up to?

Wordless Wednesday - the gymnastics bridge edition

Asher at 20-months

I love Asher's age right now (although I say that all the time) and I want to remember him exactly as he is. Here's a few highlights of Asher at 20-months:

- still sucks his thumb and loves to stick his other hand up yours, or his own, sleeve at the same time

- sleeps with his comfort item, Jams the lamb

- sleeps 11.5 hours at night and 1 x 1.5 hour nap

- still sleeps in his crib in his "sleep sac"

- says too many animal sounds to count, but my all time favorite is elephant, with giraffe coming in a close second

- loves the books "Good Night, Gorilla", "If Kisses Were Colors", "Someday", and "Love You Forever"

- says "amen" when we all sit down to eat together to remind us to say grace

- loves to eat toast, couscous, watermelon, pears, cheese, crackers, and dip

- is still so messy with a spoon

- loves his once a day drink of juice

- calls every meal "supper"

- says over and over whenever we're en route to my parents place, "Nana, dog, Matthew, Grampa", and always in that order

- loves to play with his boots and shoes

- if I don't have my slippers on when I'm in the house, he will bring them to me and make me put them on

- very excitedly says "Papa!" when Greg comes home at suppertime every day

- still loves buses, cars, trucks and tractors and feels the need to point these out to me whenever we see any. This is very funny when we're in a parking lot

- still enjoys his swimming lesson, Kindermusik class and gymnastic class and has recently mastered how to do a bridge from gymnastics. I will have to get a picture of this because it is crazy cute

- knows to ask for a "turn" when he wants something, but has yet to realize that the other child is not obligated to give it to him

- says "hello" every time the phone rings

- really wants to be able to jump, but has yet to have both feet come off the ground

- has had too many haircuts for me to count, and is in need of another one

- tells me if there's a "mess" somewhere, and sometimes helps to clean it up

- likes to count, but can only remember the numbers 2 and 5, so he says these repeatedly

- can recognize the letter A, and sometimes the S

- has so many single words, but is only really just starting to put 2-word sentences together. I think we need to teach him more verbs in order to help this along

- says cookie in such a cute way; it sounds like "kieko". I don't want to correct him because it's so adorable

- loves his friends Marek, Noah and Maaike and says there names for hours after we've seen them

- tells me he has had a bowel movement, but only after the job is done

- loves to close doors ALL. THE. TIME.

- tires me out every day

- continues to be a quiet and shy boy who is slow to warm up to new situations and doesn't like loud noises (but boy can he be loud sometimes!)

- calls me "Mama" and I love it

- one recent story that I don't want to forget... I had to leave the house early one morning a few weeks ago, before Asher was up. This never happens. Greg got him out of his crib and set him down. Asher saw the light was on in our bedroom and so he excitedly ran into it saying "Mama!" only to realize I wasn't there. Greg proceeded to get Asher dressed and headed down stairs into the kitchen, where Asher again saw the light on and ran in saying "Mama!". I wasn't there either! Apparently Asher expects to find me in bed or in the kitchen. Nice.

- is still my favorite boy in the whole wide world and I love him so much it hurts!

please don't blame my mom - she's way cleaner than I am!

Well thank you to all you brave blog readers who answered my questions. Wow! I was impressed with your responses. So much so, in fact, that the very next day I washed all the sheets in the house.


So apparently I'm in the minority with that one, and I guess I should have scabies or flesh eating disease or something by now. Good thing I don't! And I guess you are all thankful that you don't have to share a bed with me? (Sorry, Greg) Just don't blame my mom on this one, OK? I'm sure she taught me that I was supposed to wash my sheets somewhere between once a week and once a month (this is the norm, from my online research) and I just forgot or didn't listen or something like that. I plead "I didn't know any better" as my verdict. The only person I ever really remember having a conversation with about this was one of my more cleanly friends, and seriously people, do you think I could count on that response as accurate? This came from a girl who won't use a mop because she thinks they're too dirty (I'm not kidding). So I really thought what I was doing was "appropriate". Guess not. My new goal = wash sheets every couple weeks. (just as an aside, so you know that I'm not a bad mom and all, Asher's sheets get washed usually every week because I can see that they're dirty). So thank you for enlightening me on proper sheet washing protocol. I feel so much more grown up now.


And as for this bit about me being anal, I thought I'd clarify that one for you. For those of you who know me well you know that I am a bit obsessive, but it's more with things being tidy. Everything has it's "place" in my mind, and there is a way things are just supposed to be. The pillows have to be just so on the sofa. The towel has to be hung this way in the bathroom. The stacking toys all have to go in this bin. The toaster has to be put away when we're not using it. The toilet paper has to be coming over the top of the roll. I literally cannot sleep if there are dirty dishes in the sink. I may not have washed my sheets as often as I should have (past tense, ha!), but the bed had to be made every morning. Some may call this obsessive-compulsive, but I like to think that I'm just a tidy girl. And hey, that's an important part of being clean too, right? (Erin, don't burst my bubble on this one by quoting the DSM or something crazy like that!)


And as for the rest of it, I think we're all not too far off from each other, eah? We all suck at flossing (except Andrea and Rachel), we (mostly) clean our floors weekly-ish, with little spot touch ups here and there, and we all spend close to the same on groceries, whether we have baby stuff or pet stuff to buy along with that (how do you do it on so little Andrea?). I'm glad to know that only washing your hair every other day is something that other people do too. I still find it hard though, and my hair is usually in a pony tail on day 2. But I'm a mom, so that's how I roll.


And the vegetable/fruit issue. I'm going to go with majority rule and say tomato, apple, pepper as the sequence. Size can't be a good indicator for this stuff because the one strawberry is the same size as a bunch of grapes and a corn on the cob. Hopefully we won't confuse Asher too much with this pretend food set we have.


So thanks for those of you who answered. It was so fun to read your responses! I know there's many more of you who read who didn't answer, but that's cool. Seriously, it killed me to put my answers up and this is my blog!


Signed,
the "sheet-redeemed-tidy" girl

Wordless Wednesday - "there's a hole somewhere in the ball tent" edition

Will you answer?

I have a few questions that repeatedly run through my mind that I've been dying to ask you for ages now. In fact, if you see me regularly enough in real life, I may have snuck in one of these questions at some point. The thing is, I just don't know the answer, and I wondered what other people did. I have no idea if my answers to these questions are way off target, or not, so if you dare answer, I would LOVE to know! I'm going to risk it and give you my answers, so be brave, friends, there's no judgement here!

1. How often do you wash your hair? My hair dresser keeps telling me to only wash it every other day, or even every 3rd day, if I can. I try, oh do I try, but I just feel so greasy and gross when I don't wash it every day. (not that one would be greasy and gross if they didn't wash it every day, I just feel that way) I keep thinking that eventually it'll feel normal and I'll get over it, but I haven't been consistent enough yet to make that happen. But whether I wash my hair or not, I just HAVE to shower every day. I can't help it! Do you?

2. How often do you change your bed sheets? Maybe this question depends on how much "activity" is happening, or how much you sweat at night, but I just don't know what's normal. If I'm honest, I probably only change them every 6-8 weeks, but I've heard some people that do it every week, or every other week. That's a lot of laundry, I think. What do you do?

3. How often do you really clean your floors? I mean sweep and mop and scrub and the whole deal? Seriously, it takes so much effort, but I really want clean floors, and I hate dust bunnies! I find I sweep every day or two, just the high traffic areas, and have especially needed to do this after Mr. Asher came along, but really clean? What's considered an appropriate amount of time to not border on gross or border on excessive? I just don't know the answer. I'm sure kids/pets, etc. factor into this as well. I probably really give them a good clean every 2-3 weeks. Maybe. Depending on what's going on.

4. How much do you spend on groceries? Being vegetarian, people tend to think that my grocery bill will be cheaper, but I'm pretty sure it's not. I am bad for wasting food, but I'm really trying to get better at this. (Really trying!!) And I do like to buy organic and natural products when I can, but given that, I'd say I still spend about $150 a week on groceries. Is that crazy? What do you spend?

5. How often do you really floss your teeth? Honestly, every day? Do people do that? I know we're supposed to, but I just can't get it done. I brush 3-4 times a day, but I go through phases with flossing. Sometimes I'm pretty consistent at getting 2-3 times in a week, and other times I'll go months without flossing. So terrible, I know.

6. I need your input in figuring out what pretend vegetable this is supposed to be that's in Asher's little pretend food set.

Here's the tomato, I'm sure of it:

And I think this is the red pepper, but it could also be an apple. What do you think? Apple? Red pepper?

What in the heck is this? Another kind of tomato? A pepper? What vegetable has a square stem on it like that?

I really look forward to your answers, so I hope you risk it and let me know. Even if you don't answer them all, atleast give me the pretend vegetable guess. Greg and I just can't seem to figure that one out.

Apparently if it wasn't for Wordless Wednesday's, there wouldn't be much on my blog as of late. Sorry about that, faithful blog readers. This is what's been up lately...


- I've been feeling a little under the weather, and that has kept me on the down low.

- We've been reading a lot of Good Night, Gorilla (obviously).

- Asher is eating more fruits and vegetables again, after his little picky eating phase.

- We've been practicing animal sounds. I plan on making a video to show you all the ones Asher knows; it's quite a lot!

- Greg took Asher to his Kindermusik class for the first time, and everyone survived.

- We've been singing a lot of "The Wheels on the Bus". Asher's favorite line to say is "roun and roun".

- The fascination with cars, trucks, buses, and trains continues.

- I've been feeling the love of lots of dear friends. I'm so blessed.

- I've been thinking a lot about the idea of hope and am trying more than ever to look to Jesus for mine.

- 2010 = Greg and I both turn 30 and will celebrate our 5 year wedding anniversary. I'm dreaming of a cruise and hope we can make it happen.

- We are now officially done paying off our car. Wow, what an awesome feeling! We're hoping to just ride out this "no car payments" thing for a while.

- I've been liking graphics of birds lately, and someone dear even made me a special little hand-sewn bird of my own!


What have you all been up to? I'd love to hear about it!

Wordless Wednesday - Good Night Gorilla Edition

Asher asks me to read him this book repeatedly throughout the day. Funny thing is there are hardly any words because it's a picture book! And one that he loves :)

Wordless Wednesday - Noah's train table edition

New Years Eve and Jayson's Birthday

For New Years Eve this year we had an AWESOME night with a few "couple" friends of ours. We ate and drank way too much, and played Singstar and Rockband (ok, mostly Singstar). It rocked and was totally a lot of fun (and Asher slept peacefully upstairs the whole night). Here's some pictures from the night!

Our nephew Jayson turned 5 this past week, and he had a fun skating party (he's into speed skating, just like his dad and uncles were). Your truly has a 3 year old niece that can skate better than her, so I decided to just stand on the side-line and take pictures.

There, now that the mandatory updates are finished, we'll get back to our regularly scheduled program! :)

Hello friends, Happy New Year! Here's a little recap for you of our holiday adventures; now that we're back in the regular routine, I finally have the time to do this.

This was Asher's second Christmas, but he was definitely more interested and excited this year. He loved our Christmas tree and every morning when we came down stairs he would say, in his very cute little voice, "ptee". He was always excited to see it and look at the lights. The tree also led to his first two-word sentence; when we took it down he said "ptee gone".

Asher also loved unwrapping presents this year. He was pretty much able to open most of them on his own, but he sometimes needed a little help. He got lots of clothes and fun toys, money for his RESP, and a registration to renew his participation in his Kindermusik class. Here's a few pictures of Christmas Day.

Me, I got a Garmin Running Watch. It's pretty much awesome. I can now track my pace and distance and monitor my heart rate. It just makes running that much more fun!

We also went on a quick trip to visit my family in Cape Breton. It's very cute to watch Asher and my dad play together; to this day Asher is still making the truck sound that my dad makes when they play together. Asher also loved their dog Rusty, although Rusty wasn't too fond of Asher. We did have one disastrous night that involved hours of screaming, and ended with a suppository for Asher. Poor guy.

Asher and I enjoyed lots of time with Greg at home, and lots of visits with family and friends. Asher ate Chinese food for the first time, and consumed more turkey than I could have imagined (I am of the opinion that this was related to needing to use the aforementioned suppository).

I hope everyone had a great holiday, and I'll post more about New Years and a fun birthday party we went to soon!