PEARS!

This weekend I decided to try some other foods besides cereal with Ashley. The first food we tried was pears. She seemed to like her cereal much better than the pears. She liked to spit to pears out as can be seen from the picture. Mommy is still working to master the art of keeping baby with a clean face while eating all of these soupy foods.


Here's another picture from the first attempt with pears. The faces they make are so funny!

Here's a picture of our family today. We received exciting news from Brent and Lydia- they're engaged!!

Grandma J and Ashley playing with the beach ball.


Ashley loves to chomp on her toes and she finds her changing table the best place to do it.

And this could be my new favorite picture. One of my favorite parts of the day is when I get home in the evening and get to see my family and I get to see what cute little outfit Gina dressed Ashley in. Now this one just about brought me to tears, yes, it could be the I love Mommy onesie or perhaps the little jean shorts, or the little barrette in her hair but, I just think she looked so cute!

Ashley is 5 Months Old!

Here's a picture of Ashley attempting to hide from the Paparazzi.

Here is a picture of Ashley with her friend Violet. Ashley and Violet are only 10 weeks apart. They weren't to sure of what their mommy's were doing sitting them next to each other on the couch. Violet started crying and then so did Ashley.

Another picture of Ashley and Violet.

This Saturday, Ashley turned 5 months old! She loves playing in her exersaucer.

Here's a picture of all my girls- enjoying some time in the morning sun.

Here's Ashley with Daddy and Ruby. As you can see Ashley has her arm around Ruby and was even petting her. Ruby loved this- another person trained!

Miniature Human

This weekend we spent nearly every minute outside. It was cloudy and warm- perfect for hanging outside with the baby. Although you can't see the bubbles, this picture is a close up of Ashley while we were blowing bubbles towards her. She isn't to sure about the bubbles...

Ashley is now eating cereal once a day and doing very well with eating from a spoon. She looks so dang cute in her highchair, I just had to show you.

I figured out an awesome feature on my camera! I am always zooming in on pictures once I've taken them and low and behold- I figured out how to then save the new zoomed/cropped image on my camera! This way the picture doesn't get all fuzzy like it would if I tried to modify it at Proex. I was SUPER excited. To show you just how cool it is, I have pictures of baby birds below that show the true awesomeness of this feature. :o)

Matt asks just about every weekend if we can go camping on the St Croix, and every weekend I explain that Ashley isn't big enough yet to attempt that. See, the expert baby raisers state not to apply sunscreen or bug repellant till 6 months if it can be avoided. In addition to that, I worry about it getting too cold at night, she doesn't sit on her own yet and our tent isn't big enough for our air mattress and the pack n play. John has graciously offered to allow Ashley to sleep in their big tent but....to all the mommy's reading this- you know that ain't happenin'! So anyway, we did the second best thing to camping on the St. Croix- we camped in our backyard on the lake. It was great, we even had a campfire. Where was Ashley you ask? She hung out at the fire for awhile and when it was time to go to bed, Ashley slept in her crib in the house and we had the baby monitor in the tent with us. Perfect!!

Matt's comment when he saw this picture was "OH, she looks like a miniature human!" How true. This picture was taken right before Ashley headed to bed. Man, footsie jammie pictures are the best! PS- Jere, since I know you will catch it...yes, Ashley is flippin her momma the bird! I'm pretty sure this was her discrete way of telling me she had had enough of the camera flashing in her eyes. :o)

And finally, the bird picture. Much to Matt's dismay, we have a couple of persistent swallows who decided underneath our boat lift cover would be a wonderful spot to build their nest. Matt knocked down probably 7 nests before finally giving in. The swallows won. See, the nests are dirty and the birds poop all over our boat, so it's not ideal. Anyhow, now we have baby swallows. As promised, now to show you how awesome this new thing I figured out on my camera is, check out the picture below. It's the same as the one above, just zoomed and cropped from my camera.

Lastly, I apologize for the wacky formatting. I always have to fuss with this blog to get the words underneath each picture and for what ever reason, it's being a real pain tonight and now Ashley is awake so there is no more time to mess around. I figure this is better than nothing. :o)

I'm Home!

Hello! Well, I am home today. With the collapse of the 35W bridge, I just have no idea on what my commuting life will be like now. On a normal day, it takes me 1.5 hours to get to work and 1.5 hours to get home for a total of 3 hours commuting. I cringe to imagine my commute going forward...and how on earth will I make it home in time to keep up with breastfeeding my baby girl?

Well, on a lighter note, here are some new pictures of Ashley. I took her for her 4 month check up on Friday. The doc says she's long and skinny! Oh to be long and skinny. She's 2' 3" tall (98 percentile) and 13 lbs 10 oz (36 percentile).



















Ashley has found her feet! She loves to grab her toes and she seems to always have her legs high in the air. She's also started to suck on her lip. Too cute!!


























This past weekend we headed to the family cabin. It's a 2.5 hour drive and it wasn't Ashley's favorite part of the weekend. I imagined her sleeping the whole way there...THINK AGAIN! She slept for about a 1/2 hour and the other time was spent playing and screaming! At one point I jumped into the back seat and pulled a Brittany Spears. I was nervous the entire time but Matt promised he would drive extra careful so that I could feed her. Once at the cabin, Ashley enjoyed time with Grandma and Grandpa and Uncle Doug, Auntie Sonya and cousins Samantha, Dougie and Dallas. We fished, skied, wake boarded and tubed. It was a beautiful summer weekend. We couldn't have asked for better weather.





















This picture captures Ashley's feelings about swimming. She liked her feet in the water but as soon as the water hit her diaper, she made gasping noises I haven't heard before.

























Daddy with Ashley as Ashley gets her feet wet.

Another cute picture of Ashley hanging out on Daddy's lap. If you'll look closely, you'll notice Matt is sporting some of Grandpa's old swim trunks! I couldn't help but sing, If you dare wear short shorts, Nair for short shorts...or how ever that commercial song goes. I bet he will remember to pack his swim trunks the next time we head to the cabin. :o)