19 Months Old!

Ashley Jane...

Here's my little peanut getting up from her nap. She's just getting SO big. On Sept 14th, Matt and I also celebrated our 6 year anniversary.

On of Ashley's favorite things to do is lay down on a big pile of blankets. As of Friday 10/10 Ashley can now say blankey. She still says kee for her small blanket but all other blankets and blankeys.

Here's Ashley getting ready to go for a walk up to the park. We like to walk to the park because the park has side by side slides that Ashley and I can go down together.

Here's Ashley with Maddy. Maddy loves to squeal as loud as she can. As you can also see, Ashley now carries her kee and ducky. In fact, she is obsessed with ducks. If she hears the geese on the lake, she squeals with excitement and begs for you to take her outside or hold her up in the window to see the ducks. She then tucks her arms into her armpits and flaps her arms like the ducks. It's adorable.

Maddy and Ashley having a thumb sucking contest. Their both the "best at that".

My little sweetheart! I left the ponies out for the day and she looked like a completely different kid. In this picture she was sitting at the breakfast bar eating doritos. She's a big girl!

Here she is enjoying her slide and the nice fall weather.

Yesterday for Ashley's 19 month birthday, we went to visit Violet and Henry for a cookie decorating/halloween party. Here is Ashley and Violet posing with Drama and Vince the goats. Maddy and Allie were there too...just not pictured above. It was a lot of fun. The kids loved decorating...and eating the cookies...so did us mommas.

Here Ashley and daddy sit down by the lake taking in the nice morning while searching for ducks.


What else is new this month? Well, Ashley now has 14 teeth...the last two were miserable. She was up every 2 hours or so crying oweeee, mommeee, oweeeee. Strange moment- she can now tell me when things hurt and she also decided she didn't want to take any medicine. The days of being able to simply squeeze tylenol into her mouth are over... What else? Oh, she went poopie in the potty at daycare! This only happened once, but none the less, it was exciting! Ashley can now repeat just about anything I ask her to say. This morning my favorite was how she said waffles.

Our house is officially on the market. We've had open houses all weekend and let me tell you what a chore it is to keep the house showcase clean with a 1 1/2 year old and a husband. If we all survive this transition it will be a miracle. I start my new job on 10/20.

18 Months Old...A YEAR and a HALF!!!

Ashley Jane- 17 Months Old

Here Ashley and Grandma stare into the lake...my guess is that they were talking about the big bass I was about to catch. Yep, I won the contest and caught the first and the biggest fish of the night. See the big raft in the background? Grandpa Randy bought that for the weekend...it has a mesh bottom, sits 4 and comes equipped with a floating cooler. Ashley enjoyed every moment in the raft and bounced from Grandma to Grandpa to Momma to Daddy.

Here Ashley enjoys her very first DQ cone in a cup. She of course LOVED it.

We took Ashley to the Ki Chi Saga celebration a few weekends ago. The festivities included an old farmer who packs all kinds of farm animals and household pets into the smallest trailer you've ever seen. Ashley enjoyed following the animals around and playing with the bunnies.

Here's Ashley scootin' around the house in her ducky slippers.

See all of her beautiful teeth? She's got 12 teeth now!

Ashley had to bring a family photo into daycare to put into the daycare photo album. I searched high and low for a recent picture of the three of us and couldn't find one. We have tons of pictures of Ashley, a few of her with either Matt or I but none of the three of us. Anyhooooo, that prompted us to take a quick family photo while we enjoyed a beautiful day at Ashley's friend Elsa's, 2nd birthday party.

Here's Ashley on her 18 month birthday.

What else has happened this month? Ashley continues to learn a handful of words a day. When she gets fussy, I try to distract her by asking her if she can say, red, purple, daddy, school, Molly, Elsa, Grandpa, Grandma etc. We play this game till Momma can't think of another word to test her on. On our refrigerator we have a picture of Ashley with her Mommy, Grandpa and cousin Jessica. I point to the people in the picture and say their names and Ashley will repeat their names. She thinks this is really fun and made sure to point out that I forgot to mention the most important thing in the picture...her beloved KEE (her blankey)! It made me laugh so hard. Tonight while she paged through one of her books, she pointed to the bunnies on the page and said, "bunny". I didn't prompt her or anything. Bunny isn't even one of the animals that we regularly practice. So COOL! Her favorite indoor activity is to run and fall into a pile of blankets. She rolls around and just loves all blankets. She's picked up a few new dance moves...in addition to the Frankenstein dance, she now spins around slowly and she has started to try to jump. It's adorable.

17 Months Old TODAY!

Another month flies by and...she's now 17 months old. Wow.

Here's our little peanut wearing her new sunglasses. She's hot stuff.

Another cruise in the boat. She's a pro at this now.
This picture cracks me up. Matt put Ashley's sunglasses on Ruby and at the same time I was taking the picture, she licked her nose.


I took over a week off from work. I started my week off by leaving for an annual girls weekend on the evening of Thursday 7/24. We had a fantastic time. This was our 7th year..or was it the 6th....any way, we laid in the sun, laughed a ton and drank a drink or two. We eeked out every minute of it arriving home at 9:30pm on Sunday night. Then on Monday, Sheli and I took our girls to Fawn Doe Rosa in St Croix, WI. What a fun place! We had a blast.
Ashley and a deer. She wasn't scared at all. (I was!)
Ashley visiting with a goat. Ashley loved all of the noises the animals made and walked around saying baaaaaaaaaaa!
We were very lucky to be able to bring along Ashley's cousin Jessica. Jessica was visiting from North Dakota for 2 weeks and staying with Grandpa Larry and Grandma Sue. Jessi was such a big help and really fun to have along.

Jessi's favorite part of Fawn Doe Rosa was all of the different rabbits. They would hop right up to her (most of the time). The little girls loved the bunnies too. Ashley kept calling the bunny key key (kitty kitty)... I believe this is because our kitty is white just like the bunny? Notice how well Ashley and Maddy match? They called each other that morning to say...what are you going to wear to Fawn Doe Rosa? :)
Then on Wednesday, Ashley and I met all of our friends at the beach! All 5 little girls, plus Henry (3 years) and Lila (4 weeks old) were there too!
We started by having a picnic. I was so impressed with how well all of the kids did. They all sat and ate lunch- much different that what I had envisioned. Jessi came along to the beach too. Again, she was such a helper. I wished that I had an 11 year old to help all of the time!
All 5 girls playing in the lake. From left to right- Gracie, Elsa, Violet, Ashley and Maddy. We were at the beach from 11:30- 2:30 with out a single melt down from any of the kids. They loved playing in the water and looking at rocks and eating the sand.
Ashley and I also hit a few garage sales during my week off. Here she is showing off her new water shoes. This girl is obsessed with shoes.

Yep, she can now open every single door in our house. When we moved in 3 years ago, we remodeled and put in all of these awesome door handles that could be opened even if your hands were full. For example, you can use your elbow to push the handle down. Well, these door handles are not so awesome now... we are constantly saying, "Ashley, shut the door." She's getting so big- just look at the picture. So big!

Here's Ashley on her new outdoor climber. This was another score at one of the garage sales. She loves playing on it and going down the slide and saying eeeeeeeee!
Here's a picture of Ashley from this morning...her 17 month b-day...just before daycare. She is such a peanut!
At lunch time, I received a call from my little brother that he and his wife Marianne had welcomed their new little son, Jacob Robert into the world. I rushed over to the hospital to see my new little nephew.
Jacob Robert, just a little over 4 hours old. I think he looks just like Dennis. AND wow, 7lbs 10 oz sure is small. Ashley weighed 7 lbs 8.9 oz when she was born. I can't believe she was that small just 17 months ago.

Then we hit another milestone tonight...Ashley had her first bath in the tub. She has officially outgrown the sink. Actually, she still fits in the sink but she makes a huge splashing mess so I decided it was time for the tub.
Here she is making fish lips at me.

Other events this month: On 7/21 while reading Ashley her favorite book about Thumper the rabbit and his friend the hedgehog, we turned to her favorite page which has Thumper and hedgehog playing in a berry patch. The page has bubble bees on it. I always point to the bees, make a buzzing noise and then bring my finger to her arm or tummy and tickle her. Well on this particular night, she pointed to the bee, I made the noise and then she brought her finger to my armpit to tickle me! Oh boy did we laugh, then we rehearsed the above about 25 more times. Another amazing moment...what a sponge these kids are. On 7/23 I noticed that both of Ashley's first molars had popped through- this makes 10 teeth now. On 7/28 Ashley had her 15 month check up (at 16 1/2 months)... she weighed in at 24 lbs 6 oz (63%), and was 2 feet 9 inches tall (94%). Ashley's doctor asked if Ashley was still getting bottles to which I relied yes, at nap time and bedtime. She then said, ok but the longer you wait the harder it is going to get to take them away. For some reason, that really hit me. My baby is getting so big! That night- she went to bed without a bottle. Yep, she no longer gets any bottles. She'd asked for it randomly that week and would go to the cupboard to look for them but taking them away didn't affect her naps or bedtime. She survived the transition...and I guess, so did I. Yesterday on 8-10 Ashley began chanting no, no, no, no over and over. She also chatters with herself and seems to be answering her own questions with no. It's very funny.