Halloween 2010

I wish I could tell you that I took some great pictures from when we went to the pumpkin patch with Logan's preschool on Friday. Instead you will have to settle for the pictures that were taken after. I decided to take our old Kodak camera instead of Tim's nice big (& heavy) Nikon camera. I had a new memory card and battery for the camera and was all set to take pictures. But for some reason the memory card did not want to work with the camera. Also, it rained most of the day. This was the first day since April or so since the pumpkin patch had had any significant rainfall. So we all walked around in the mud doing the different activities around the pumpkin patch.

All of our shoes with mud on them.

Logan's muddy shoe

Ashley's muddy shoe. She had mud up to her knees.

Saturday morning I decided we should carve our pumpkins. I thought that maybe the kids would help or at least be curious about the pumpkins. So I got the top cut of one and showed the kids what the inside of the pumpkin looked like. Next, I cut the top of the other pumpkin and asked if they wanted to help me scoop out the insides. Ashley decided to take the spoon and hit the screen door. Logan just looked at me like I was crazy, said no and walked away. So I scoop out the insides by myself and keep asking if they want to come and stick their hands in the pumpkin. A few times Logan came over and would stick his hand over the top of the pumpkin or have a toy hover over the pumpkin. Then, it was time to put face on the pumpkin and Logan decided to help with this part. He told me what shapes to do for the eyes, ears and mouth. As I cut the pieces, Logan would take them out for me. Finally we had Jack-O-Lanterns.

Logan & Ashley with the pumpkin tops cut.

Ashley & Logan with the final masterpieces.

With this being possibly the last year I have a say in both of my kids costumes, I decided to have them be a pair. My mom found Logan a Woody costume so I decided to try to find a Jessie costume for Ashley. I started looking at the beginning of October and found one in the right size for Ashley. Now I will be taking Woody and Jessie trick-or-treating this year.

Logan as Woody.

Ashley as Jessie.

Both of them together.

3 year pictures

We finally got around to doing Logan's 3 year pictures. Nothing like putting it off until right before Tim leaves for 10 weeks.

Logan's 3rd Birthday

Logan with his birthday cake

Trying to blow out those 3 candles

Logan doing the Grandpa Kies smile (great!)

1st Day of School

Logan started preschool on August 2nd. Sometimes it is hard to believe that he is in school. For the most part he enjoys school. There have been a few mornings where it is hard to get him motivated. The first week went really well. He was really excited about getting to play with other kids. By the end of the first week he was exhausted and a little tired of playing with other kids. Now he keeps telling me that he doesn't like his teacher but when I ask him why I can't get an answer. So every morning it is a small struggle to get him to go into the classroom but once he is in he forgets what was holding him back and begins to play with whatever project the teacher has for them to start the day.

Ashley has barely noticed that Logan is gone. We walk Logan to school, come home and she plays for 30 -45 minutes before she goes down for a nap. She then sleeps for at least an hour and a half and gets up to play for another 30 -45 minutes before we leave to go get Logan. She has noticed that there is no one taking toys away from her but I think she enjoys having her brother around to play with.

June Adventures

Dan & Lisa's Wedding

Logan & Ashley playing on the vent at the church

Mackenzie, Molly, Michael, Logan & Ashley

Logan in heels. Check out those legs.

Ashley & Logan our little monkeys

Logan getting up close to a jaguar

Logan driving the semi truck at Adventureland

Ashley fell asleep while riding the semi trucks

Ashley and Logan driving the boats

Logan driving a lady bug

Video Tour

I thought I would take a minute to show off our new flooring that we recently had done. We really like. For those who have visited us the tour will not come as a shock. But for those who have not been here, here is your chance to see the place (even though some rooms are messy).

The tour starts off in the living room/dining room area. We then proceed down the hallway with the kitchen on the left and going past the extra bathroom. Next is the master bedroom (which is quite crowded with furniture because we just don't have a lot of room). Finally is Logan and Ashley's bedroom.

Most of our construction work is done, we are just waiting for our vinyl flooring to arrive. All of our construction work started last Monday with the master bathtub being replaced. The faucet was starting to leak and the drain was corroding. On Wednesday they finished up the tub and started ripping out the carpet and replacing it with Pergo laminate flooring. The flooring was finished up on Friday. Finally on Monday they tore down the fence outside and built us a new one (since the association said it was our problem and not theirs even though we asked before buying). Now we should have all of our projects complete (before we move again next year).

Happy 1st Birthday Ashley!

I am still trying to adjust to the fact that my little Ashley is one. She has grown so much since the last post. Ashley started walking solo on Febuary 27, at just a little over 10 months old ( 3 weeks sooner than Logan did). She loves to wander around the house and explore where ever she is. Tim and I keep saying that we need to put a bell on her so that we know where she is because she keeps walking up behind us and we keep bumping into her. She has started to become more playful lately. I will tell her that we are going to change her diaper and she follows me into the room but goes on the opposite side so I have to come pick her up. Then she just laughs and smiles as I carry her to the changing table. Another game that she likes to play is pick up a toy and put it in a bucket, box or toss it over the gate into the kitchen.

As Ashley is getting bigger, I find myself comparing her to Logan. Here are the 1 year stats between the two of them.

Logan at 1 year weighed 20.25 lbs and was 29.5 inches long.

Ashley at 1 year weighs 18.63 lbs and is 30.12 inches long.

I was not surprised by Ashley's weight but I was surprised by how tall she is. I guess when I see her next to Logan I just think of her as being little. She is going to be one tall girl if she keeps this up.

For the most part Ashley had a good birthday. She opened a few presents and cards. I don't think she was a fan of her birthday cake. I made her a white funfetti cake (mainly because we didn't have any chocolate frosting to go with the chocolate cake in the cupboard). She ate a little bit of the cake but mostly played with it. I think if I would have made her the chocolate cake she would have gobbled it up because she really liked it when I shared my brownies with her a few weeks ago. So I guess I will be the only one in my family to like white cake. Oh well more for me.

Easter Eggs

A few weeks ago we saw stuff in the store to dye eggs and thought Logan would enjoy it. So Tim made some hard boiled eggs and Logan got to color eggs. He really liked dropping the eggs in the water and seeing them come out a different color. So far we have colored 2 1/2 dozen eggs using 3 out of the 5 colors on two occasions. It is a good thing that Tim likes to eat hard boiled eggs.

Getting bigger

This picture was taken August 30, 2009.

Ashley was 4 1/2 months old.

This picture was taken March 9, 2010.

Ashley is 10 3/4 months old.

She doesn't really fit the short way in the pack'n'play anymore.

Where is Logan?

So I go to check on Logan during his nap and this is what I see. I had to get closer to see exactly where he was. Can you find him?

A new laugh

This has been Ashley's new sound the past week. She uses it when she is happy but there is also a version of this when she is mad and crying.

Dancing Queen

Anytime Ashley hears something that sounds like music (i.e. Logan hitting the washing machine) she starts dancing. She loves it when we pick her up and dance with her.

It won't be long

Operation Anti-Escape

Within the last week or two, Logan has learned how to open the front door and get out. It is not that he just opens the screen door and goes out. First, we tried just locking the screen door and he figured that out. Next, we just shut the front door and he figured out how to open that up. Then, we tried locking the front door (both the dead bolt and the door knob) and the screen door. Guess what he figured out how to unlock everything and get out but it took him a little longer to do it. Finally after he took his big dump truck out in his underwear and ran down the sidewalk with it and me chasing after him, I decided to get out the other baby gate. As you can tell from the picture, he can open the door but he can't get out. Problem solved. Now we just have to do this everyday until he decides to listen to us when we tell him he can't go out by himself.

Logan update

I am always posting on what Ashley has been up to so here is what Logan has been up to.

This year for Christmas Logan really got into the whole Santa concept because we would watch movies and shows that had Santa in them. Christmas lasted over a month for us since we had family come visit and bring presents for the kids to open and we did some webcaming to open presents. Today Logan asked me "open presents" and I told him Santa was done with presents for this year. Now we will just have to see if he lets Ashley open her birthday presents by herself.

We have been working on potty training with Logan since the end of September. The first couple months were pretty rough and there were times that I wanted to quit. Right around Christmas Logan started telling us when he needed to go and we started to have fewer accidents. Now we are at the point where he just needs pull-ups at nap time and bedtime. Sometimes we get really lucky and he will wake up dry.

Logan's vocabulary keeps growing all the time. Sometimes he has trouble saying all the words that are running through his head because he starts to stutter and mix up the order. But for the most part we know what he is saying. There are times he tells me things and it makes me laugh because of how he is explaining what is happening (usually bodily functions).

A hard concept for a 2 year old is sharing. Logan does a pretty good job of sharing when he wants to. Something that we have been working on is that if Ashley is playing with a toy and he wants to play with that toy, he should give her a different toy to play with. Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn't because Ashley doesn't always want to give up the toy or Logan doesn't give her a comparable toy to play with. Another thing Logan has learned is that if he doesn't want Ashley to play with his cars, then they have to be somewhere where Ashley can't reach them (usually the dining room table). Now we just need to get him to interact with other kids his age more often.

Ashley is 9 months

It is hard to believe how much Ashley has grown and changed over the last few months. At Ashley's 9 month check up she weighed in at 16.5 lbs and was 28 1/4 inches long. I knew that she was going to be a little low with her weight because the week before she had the stomach flu and was not quite eating like she used to. But now she is pretty much eating like she used to but has started to let us know her likes and dislikes for food. When we feed her she likes to shake her head no while she is eating. Sometimes she is just being playful about but other times she is trying to tell us that she does not want what we are trying to feed her. The other night Tim was feeding her some roast beef (she only ate 1/2 the jar) and it was taking a while. Then, he switched to squash and she gobbled up the whole jar in less time than it took to eat the roast beef.

Ashley has become more mobile since the last post. Just before she turned 8 months old she started crawling. Shortly after she started crawling she began to pull herself up and walk along the furniture. Now her favorite thing to do is to hold on to our fingers and walk to where she wants to go. If she only has to go a short distance she will just hold on to one of our hands to walk. She doesn't quite trust the walking toy that we have, but she has used it to walk a short distance on her own. It would not surprise me if she is walking on her own in the next month or two. Logan started walking by himself at 11 months and Ashley has been right on Logan's heels for every milestone.

Some other things that Ashley has been working on are putting sounds together. She will start to say a sound and if you repeat the sound back to her she will say the sound again. A commonly heard sound is ma or mamama. When she wakes up from her naps or in the middle of the night, it almost sounds like she is calling for me because she is crying mamamamama.

Ashley now has two teeth so beware if you stick your fingers in her mouth. She got her first tooth on New Year's Eve and the second one about two weeks later. Since she has gotten her teeth, she has started to like the idea of putting solid food in her mouth. She now likes to eat puffs and cereal. Every now and then we will find a leaf, or twig or some grass in her mouth because she still likes to put anything and everything in her mouth.

Ashley loves to look out the window and see the world around her. She enjoys going for walks in the stroller. The other day we went to the zoo and I would get her out every once in a while so that she could see the bigger animals moving around. We also took her to the playground and she got to go down some slides by herself (one parent at the top of the slide and the other at the bottom of the slide). She seemed a little shocked by what was happening but enjoyed it. She is starting to become a big girl and we get to have more fun with her as she grows.