Kiersten’s Blog

I can’t believe how fast my baby is growing up!  He’s 11 months today.  He has been learning and growing so much.  The kid is HUGE!  I did notice today, however, that he looks like he’s starting to thin out a big.  One lady in church said to me today, “He’s just so cute!  I don’t know how you keep from kissing him up and down all the time!”  I thought that was a nice comment!  I think he’s adorable too.  He has such a personality.  A couple of days ago, he started to dance.  London was listening to some music and Ashton just started bouncing up and down.  Since then, he dances all the time when he hears music.  He also loves to play the piano.  What a cool toy that is for a baby!  He also does a lot of boy things, like playing with cars.  He drives them back and forth while buzzing his lips.  I guess things like that are just engrained in little boys.  Recently he’s also started waving and clapping.  I have also been working on teaching him to sign, “more,” which he now does as he says, “ma, ma.”  While signing, he has a HUGE smile on his face.  He’s so proud of himself!

Ashton has some favorite things to get into.  If we leave the gate off the bottom or top of the stairs, he makes a beeline for it.  He can climb the stairs pretty fast now, but going down is another thing.  He hasn’t quite figured out that he needs to go down backwards.  When he notices me coming after him, he goes even faster.  He also loves to play with the blinds.  We have quite a few windows that are low to the ground.  He stands up by them and pulls on the blinds all the time.  I’m constantly opening them up and tying the strings up high so that he can’t get to them.  He still hasn’t figured out walking yet, but he’s cruising around furniture really well and standing on his own for a few seconds at a time that I’m sure it won’t be long before he figures it out.  He is such a fun little boy to have around and so pleasant and happy most of the time.

In the last couple of days, Ashton has started waving.  He loves to watch himself in the mirror.  As soon as he sees himself, he starts waving, then gets a huge grin on his face.  Not only does he wave, but he also says “bye-bye!”  It sounds more like “ba-ba,” but I really think he knows what he’s saying.  Or at least he knows that when you wave, you say, “bye-bye.”  My baby is growing up so fast!

London has always been a book worm.  I think part of her love of books comes from our reading books to her every night before bed.  Because I was so set in a routine with her, it has been difficult to work a baby into that routine, especially at bed time.  Recently, though, we have started reading books with Ashton too.  She loves reading his books.  Sometimes she even reads his books to him.  And he absolutely loves reading.  He finds books so fascinating.

Last night I got eight consecutive hours of sleep.  It finally happened!  Ashton didn’t eat in the middle of the night last night!  I think I’ve mentioned before how much this baby loves to eat.  He has always woken up in the middle of the night to eat.  The last couple of months have been bearable because he usually gets up between 10:30 and 1:00 or so.  I give him a bottle and he goes right back to bed when he’s finished.  I’ve just learned to deal with it.  I guess these last 9 months have been the payback for me not having to get up every night when I was pregnant with him.  Last night we hit a milestone, though.  He woke up around 11, as normal, but by the time his bottle was ready, he was asleep again and he didn’t get up again until about 7 a.m.  I’m not saying he didn’t wake up.  I don’t know if he did or not.  The other night he woke up around 3 a.m. but he wasn’t fussy so I didn’t go get him.    He just went back to sleep on his own.  I attribute the sleep miracles to two things: a glo-worm, and a musical hanging toy that’s hooked onto the side of his crib (which, incidentally, came with the free crib).  When he wakes up, he turns his music on and goes back to sleep.  I love it!  I’m so glad he has learned how to calm himself down.  My baby’s growing up so fast!

This is the first time I have caught him standing by the side of his crib.

I can’t believe my baby is 8 months old today!  He had a checkup with the doctor, who confirmed that he is, in fact, a huge baby.  He weighs 21 1/2 pounds and is 29 1/8 inches tall, putting him in the 80th percentile for weight and the 90th percentile for height.  How we got such an enormous child, I’ll never know.  I love this age.  He has become so much fun!  He hardly ever complains (except a little lately because his third tooth just broke through).  He loves to smile and will give the cutest grin to anybody who will pay any attention to him.  He rarely laughs and it’s pretty much only his big sister who can get him excited enough to go into hysterics.  He thinks she’s the greatest thing on the planet.  She thinks he’s pretty cool too.  I hope it stays that way.

He’s just learning to crawl.  He thinks his time in bed is supposed to be spent practicing crawling.  He’s a pretty good little scooter, although he goes backwards much of the time.  Mostly he wants to just move his legs and not work his arms.  Lately he has decided that the changing table is a really cool place to explore.  As soon as he’s set down, he tries to roll onto his tummy and heads straight to the wipes box, where he proceeds to push the button for a wipe to pop up.  Luckily he hasn’t learned yet how to get the wipes out of the box.  I’m sure that time will come soon enough.

His favorite toy is his exersaucer.  That thing is a life saver for me.  I can put him in it and he is as happy as can be, playing and jumping for at least a half hour.  His other favorite thing to do is eat, hence the hugeness.  He has made vast improvements in eating solids from when I first started feeding him real food.  Now he doesn’t make a mess at all.  He puts his hands out to the sides, twirling and gripping them as he eats.  In fact, he’s so non-messy that I often feed him without a bib at all!  This is a huge turnaround from when I had to strip him down to his diaper and bathe him after every meal.

He has finally started to sleep through the night, giving me some much needed sleep.  He still gets up around 11 for a bottle but then won’t eat again until 7 or so.  I can handle that.  Sometimes he still wakes up, but only long enough for me to put his pacifier back in his mouth.

Oh, and one more thing I forgot to mention.  He got one shot today: a booster for his seasonal flu vaccine.  He didn’t cry.  At all.  Not one tear, or even a wimper.  What a tough little guy!

Ashton is such a fun little guy and I’m so happy that I can be his mother and watch these changes as he grows.

I’m thankful to be a mom. There was a time, not too long ago, that I wondered if I would ever say that again. I wondered how anybody could actually enjoy being a mother. I can say now that I do. I love my children and I love spending time with them. I feel so blessed to be their mom. I love the conversations I have with London and I love the smiles and kisses I get from Ashton. I also love the way they interact with each other. It’s so fun to watch London make Ashton laugh. I hope they’ll always be such good friends.

London is thankful for mix. I had to have her clarify because I didn’t really know what she was talking about. She told me that mix is mixing up cookies and eating dough. She loves baking with me. We both get our aprons on and go to town. And it happens fairly often. London’s favorite part of “mixing” is eating the dough. I think she gets her tastes from me.

Last year I posted something I was thankful for every day of the month of November, until Thanksgiving day. I think it’s a great tradition that I’ll continue this year.  Like last year, I’m going to post one thing starting with each letter of the alphabet.  Since Thanksgiving falls on the 26th this year, it’s perfect.  I have also decided to enlist London’s help this time around.  I’ll post what she tells me she’s thankful for, along with what I’m thankful for.  And I’ll try to be original and not use repeats from last year.  As you can see, I’m a little behind so I’ll do some catching up today.

I asked London what she’s thankful for that starts with the letter “A.”  Of course she just told me the first thing that came to her mind that started with the letter “A.”  Apple.  London is thankful for apples to eat.  Really, it’s one of the few things she likes, most of the time.

I’m thankful for Ashton.  He really is a sweet baby and I think he’s just the cutest little thing.  He’s so fun to play with and watch grow.  And grow he does.  That kid is huge!  I look at some onesies he’s wearing and remember how London didn’t fit into them until she was a year old and walking.  Anyway, he’s such a blessing in our home.  He has the cutest little smile and he absolutely loves giving his baby open mouth kisses.  What a blessing he is in our family!

We have had a fun halloween.  London gets so excited for any holiday, but I think Halloween is one of her favorites.  What child wouldn’t be excited to dress up and get free candy?  Dressing up is one of her favorite things to do and eating candy comes in a close second.  Since this is my first halloween with two kids, I decided to do a theme.  Long ago, London decided that she would be Jessie and Ashton could be Woody from Toy Story 2.  I wasn’t feeling ambitious enough to tackle making the costumes this year so when I ran across a generic cowboy costume at a consignment shop, I snatched it up for Ashton.  I started to worry after about a month, that he would be too big for it, but it worked out alright.  All except for the hat.  There was no way that tiny hat would fit on his huge noggin so we borrowed a hat from a friend.

I looked high and low for a Jessie costume for London, but couldn’t find one anywhere in her size (at a price I was willing to pay) so I bought some cow print fabric and applique’d it onto some old jeans.  I bought the shirt off of ebay, and my mother-in-law found the red hat at the Dollar Tree.  I added the yarn and I think her costume turned out darn cute.

Why she won't let me get a good picture of her with a decent face, I'll never know.

Luckily for me, she’s had those boots for years (literally) and also had the horse so I didn’t have to spring for those things either.  My kids looked darn cute, if I do say so myself.

This morning we started the festivities by eating pumpkin pancakes.  I think I need to make that a tradition.  They were yummy!

the cutest kids at the place: Samuel, Isabelle, London, Phillip, Addy

This evening we had a trunk-or-treat at the church.  We had a great time.  There were lots of games and lots of good food.  And, of course, there was lots of good candy.  London won not one, but two cakes in the cakewalk.  I tried to convince her the first time just to get a cupcake, but she had to have the spiderweb cake.  The second time I didn’t even know that she had jumped into the cake walk again.  She thought it was pretty cool, I guess.  She played one round before I found her and had just won.  I did convince her this time to just get a cupcake and give it to Isabelle.

We handed out candy from the back of our car.  Okay, we handed out halloween pretzels.  I decorated the best I could, with the pink spiderweb.  London decided today to paint some pictures earlier today to use to decorate “Comancho.”  (Comancho is what she named our car.)  So I hung up her paintings and stuck a pumpkin in the back.  That’s as creative as we got.

By the end of the night, we were all exhausted, especially our little cowboy.  He fell asleep long before the party was over and I carried him around in my mei tai.  Gotta love that!

I thought it would be fun to post some comparison pictures of my two kids.  I took some pictures of Ashton today in the same duck robe that London wore in some pictures at about the same age.  I was kind of surprised to see how different they look.

I think London really did look like a girl, with those long eyelashes, rosy cheeks, small nose and petite little hands.

Ashton, on the other hand, looks like a boy with his enormous head, big nose and sausage fingers.  I know big doesn’t equal “boy” and small doesn’t equal “girl.”  Those were just some observations.

I also noticed that Ashton’s a whole lot smilier than London was.

It’s fun to see how different these two kids are.

Our huge fire

For Family Night tonight, we decided to have a bonfire at the beach and invite some friends.  For Taylor, it was an excuse to go surfing.

sand angels

For London, it was an excuse to get messy.  For Ashton, well, he just likes to hang out with anybody who will pay attention to him.

He looked so grown up and adorable in this little chair!

Bonfires at the beach are one of London’s favorite things.  We usually get there and hang out for a bit and when the sun starts to set, we start up the fire.  Then we roast hot dogs and marshmallows.  The kids play in the sand and we all have a great time.

Isabelle, Sam and London in the shark tent

Every time we go, we say how we need to do it again.  So we do.  And it’s fun again.  I’m excited to go back!