Uhg

I'm potty training this week. Rather, I'm potty training Ashlynn this week. In all the things I have to do as a parent, this ranks right up there in the top 3 of my least favorite. Partly this is because the more kids I have, the harder it is just to concentrate on that. It's harder to have a few days when I don't need to do anything else. So I decided to do it after Christmas but during our Christmas break. The kids aren't doing school yet, except for their co-op classes, and that's just the older two. So this is as close to "free" as I get.

The other reason I think is that it is just constant discouragement at first. I know the accidents teach her, but I always go through a time when I think "this is it. This is the one that will still be in diapers when she's 10." Ridiculous, I know. But I do have some stubborn children...

That said, I am looking forward to not having to buy diapers. Ever. Again. At least not for my kids. I keep reminding myself "last time, last time!" And fortunately I have a few years before I have to start Ashlynn on phonics, so I'll get a break on that one.

My baby is two!

Ashlynn officially entered the "terrible twos" today, though I think she was born in them. :-) I've always said that threes are worse than twos, so we may be in for a couple of interesting years. If you want to see pictures of her the day she was born click here. If you want to read her home birth story click here.
The older girls have told me that I shouldn't call her a baby anymore. But she wears a diaper and sleeps in a crib. I think I'm justified in still using the term baby. You know what Ashlynn call herself? "Cute." No kidding.

Congrats!

Congratulations to my sister Jaime and her husband E.J.! My niece Callan will be receiving a baby brother or sister sometime in October. Brother? What's that?

On my side of the family we have my six girls, of course, my youngest sister has three boys, and then the middle one, Jaime, has one little girl who will be 2 in July. So we are definitely heavily girl leaning, especially if you consider my generation - my parents had three girls. (We are even more heavily skewed on Kelly's side: out of 8 grandchildren there is ONE boy!)

We are especially excited for them because they did not go through the infertility issues this time around. They dealt with infertility for over two years last time, and it was very hard for my sister. Praising God for this blessing, and praying for an easy first trimester!

Is the end in sight?

Ashlynn, now 21 months old, has started telling us when she has dirtied her diaper, at least part of the time. A couple of days ago, I came out of my room, and she ran up to me, saying, "Mama, oo-ee. Mama, oo-ee." This is, of course, short for shoo-ey, the smell.

None of my kids have potty trained early, and I don't really expect Ashlynn to either. I think you have to have an extremely motivated mother to train early, and that I am not. Shoot, when we are travelling, there are times I wished they all still wore diapers. Any chance I could get some of those astronaut diapers for the 11 and 13 year old before our next trip to Grandma's house?

Anyway, it does make me realize that our diaper days are nearly done. In the last 13 years, since we first became parents, we have had about 6-8 months of absolutely no diapers or pull-ups. We've had short times when we'd had no one in diapers during the day, but even then we still had someone in a diaper or pull-up at night. At one time, we had two in diapers 24/7 and another in pull-ups at night! But after Lauryn potty-trained, we had a few months before Ashlynn was born when she needed nothing.

I don't think diapers will be something I miss about having very small children. I KNOW a diaper bag will not be missed. And I definitely won't miss the potty training once that is behind me (no pun intended ;-) ). I think I will miss the puffy bottoms and the funny walk the diapers make toddlers have.

The Most Feared Word in the English Language: TEENAGER

That's right, as of today, a teenager lives in my house. Even weirder, I gave birth to her. Our oldest daughter, Kora, in turning 13 today! What a bittersweet milestone. The title notwithstanding, Kora is actually a wonderful daughter and a joy to have in the house.

Kora is very musically talented, and loves horses. In some ways she's still a little girl, but other days I get glimpses of the woman she will become. When I think that she has only a few more years in our household, it scares me to death. There's so much I want to teach her, and I can't imagine the house without her.

But most of all, what I want to know is who gave her permission to go from this:

and this:

to this:

or this:

and this?!?

Happy birthday, Kora! Thank you for making me a mommy.

Happy Birthday, Aubrey!

I can't believe my little Aubrey is 11 today. I may have told this before but here's a funny story about her birth:

I had a nurse practitioner/midwife deliver Aubrey in a civilian hospital in Oklahoma City when Kelly was stationed there. Like all of our babies, we did not find out via ultrasound the gender of the baby, so when she was born we were, of course, looking forward to finding out if Kora had a sister or a brother.

But the first thing I noticed after she was born and lain on my stomach was her HAIR. "It's got red hair!" I declared in that euphoric, rather stupid post-birth haze.

"She sure does," Ann, my midwife, agreed.

"So it's a girl?" Don't ask me to be grammatically correct after just delivering a 9 pound baby.

Ann split the legs like a chicken wishbone. "Yep!"

And so our second daughter, and first of two redheads, was born. And we have been thanking the Lord ever since. She's funny, got a very sharp wit, is great at math, and loves horses. She's also very mature for her age, I think. She's very responsible about getting her school work and chores done and has been a tremendous help to me in the last few months. She's the only one who hasn't been constantly sick or have a bum leg around here. She also makes us laugh at her wit and wonderful one liners.

Love you, Aubrey!

I love toddlers.

Really, I do. I think I love the toddler stage even more than the baby stage. They are unbelievable cute as they do ordinary things like run or read a book.
You really get to see their God-given personalities come to life.
The flip side is getting to see their little sin natures come to the fore more and more. Deviousness starts early, doesn't it?

"Life is so hard. You hurt my feelings so much! Boo-hoo-hoo!"

"Wait, are they still watching me?"

Offended

This little girl is 14 months old today. She can run, she can climb stairs, she can shove food in her mouth quite expertly. She can play peek-a-boo, pat-a-cake, she can point to her nose, mouth, tummy, and sometimes her eyes. She can blow kisses and wave bye-bye. If you lift her up so that she can reach them, she can turn doorknobs to open the door.
She's been saying "Da-da" and "Daddy" for months now. She can also say "uh-huh" and recently started saying something that sounds a lot like "thank you," though it comes out more like "Dah doo." But you know what she doesn't do and never has?

She has never said "Ma-ma."

NOT. ONCE.

NEVER.

If she weren't so dang cute I'd be mortally offended. After all, she's the first one who hasn't said it well before her first birthday. If she were my first child, I'd be crushed, probably in therapy. But I know that eventually she'll be whining "ma, ma, ma, ma, ma..." constantly and I'll wonder why I ever wanted her to learn to say that word.
For now, I'll try to figure out a way to hold this over her head when she's older. :-)

Games

Ashlynn has learned a couple of new tricks lately. Toddlers are so cute! First off is peek-a-boo. Sometimes she gets carried away and covers up her cheeks, mouth, or ears instead of her eyes, but this time she got her eyes. Well, mostly.

Where's Ashlynn?

Peek-a-boo!

And she loves pat-a-cake. I tried and tried to get a picture of her clapping at the beginning, but she usually only does a clap or two and immediately goes into "rolling the dough" which is her favorite part.

Roll the dough,

roll the dough,

pitch it in the pan!

Ashlynn's First Birthday

Last weekend, we finally celebrated Ashlynn's 1st birthday. We were waiting for my parents to come down and be with us - after all, Ashlynn didn't know it was 13 days after her birthday!

Here's the birthday girl now!
Since Ashlynn couldn't tell me what she wanted for her birthday cake, we went with my favorite: chocolate cake with homemade chocolate icing. Yum! My older girls call this recipe "Mama's best icing."
Daddy has to help blow out the candle.
What am I supposed to do with this, exactly?
Are you sure it's ok to touch it?
Ewwwwww! It's sticky! Get it off!
Wait... this tastes gooooooood!
Ashlynn, where'd your cake go? She didn't even make that big of a mess! I feel gypped - I was supposed to get a good picture of a chocolate smeared baby-face.
On to presents. Her favorite was probably the gear toy.
In fact, it had the whole family enthralled.
Happy birthday, sweet girl!

Let Me Outta Here!

A couple of days ago, the older kids were playing outside. Kelly raised the blind so that Ashlynn could watch. After observing for a while, Ashlynn turned to me and said, (really, she did!)

Let me out! I wanna go outside and play!

I'm as big as they are!
This is discrimination, I tell you! Hey girls, how 'bout a rescue operation?

Her life is so rough. Anyone feel sorry for her?

Happy 1st Birthday, Ashlynn!

A year ago today, Ashlynn Faith looked like this:
Ashlynn has probably brought more pure joy into the life of our family than any other baby. Not that she's loved more, but I think most of the girls were old enough to really enjoy a baby like none other I've had. Ashlynn belongs as much to her sisters as she does to Kelly and me.

We gave Ashlynn the middle name Faith because having her was an act of faith and I knew making it through the first few months after she was born would be as well. But I can say that God was faithful, allowing me to get through the nursing difficulties and keeping the PPD I usually struggle with at a minimum.

Happy birthday, Ashlynn! We love you!

Funny Face

Bath Time!

Ashlynn loves her bath! We've never seen anything like the way she splashes. Now she recognizes the word "bath" and will take off as fast as she can go towards the bathroom when she hears it. Just watch.

Ashlynn, do you want to take a bath?

Off she goes!

Now she's happy!

She even loves being sprayed by the shower head - even in the face!
I can't seem to get a good picture of how much she splashes. She really gives the bathroom and the lucky adult who's bathing her a good soaking!
She usually cries when the bath ends, but this night she was being good for the camera.But of course, that's when some serious fun can begin... LOL

One of those days

Yesterday started out pretty normally for a spring break day. The kids went outside to play after breakfast; I was switching out winter clothes for spring clothes.

Then around lunch time, Ashlynn (10 months old) started running a fever. By the time she went down for a nap, it was over 102. I had a late afternoon eye doctor appointment, and when I got home she had just woken up from her nap. Kelly said her temp was over 103.

Supper was just about ready, so I was sitting, cuddling Ashlynn when she started throwing up. All over me. Kelly took the baby and started cleaning her up, which included a bath. I had to take a shower too, because she got me good. I took all of our clothes and the towels we had used to clean up and threw them in the washing machine.

During our supper, Ashlynn kept throwing up. Poor girl. Meanwhile the girls and Kelly were wondering why the load in the washing machine was making such a racket. Suddenly it hit me - I had kept my cell phone in my pocket during the doctor appointment. Had I taken it out when I got home? Please, let it not be in the washing machine! I hurried to the machine, but of course, I found a very clean but dead cell phone in the machine amid the clothes and towels.

By this time, Ashlynn had crashed in Kelly's arms, and I needed to go to the store to get some Pedialyte and a few other things. Kelly told me to look at cell phones while I was there. I looked, but not for long - too expensive there. Kelly later found me one on Amazon. So for the time being we are down to 1 cell phone - his phone with my SIM card in it.

Ashlynn finally perked up a little and was able to keep down some pedialyte and breast milk. After she ewnt to bed, I was ready to crash in bed and read for a little bit before going to sleep. But as I went to get in bed, my book wasn't there. It wasn't on the school table, or in the suburban. Then it hit me - I had left my father-in-law's book at the doctor's office! (Don't panic, David, I went and retrieved it this morning!) Definitely not one of my best days ever.

Ashlynn was up a lot overnight, so I didn't crawl out of bed until after 8:30. And I'm already drinking a Dr. Pepper. But hopefully today will be less destructive!

I DARE you not to smile!

Come on, I double-dog dare you!

Because I know you just can't get enough baby pictures

She's really been standing on her own a lot.

She's even learned to let herself down gently...

... so she can crawl over and chew on my camera strap while I take her picture.