More Ashley Than You Can Stand

Since the weather has turned officially fall  here, we made a rather large trip to our storage unit this past weekend.  We had several stacks of the  girls' clothes that we needed to store away or trade out.  Thank goodness for having a ready made wardrobe for Ashley just waiting on us!  Despite her squishy thighs and bulging belly, Ashley still seems to fit into clothes that are small for her age, which could be trouble if all those 12 month winter clothes don't fit! 

In digging through tote after tote of clothes stashed away, I realize how often I would pack the clothes up and think to myself I'll come back later, fold them neatly and organize. Ha!  I have a feeling there's going to be a whole storage unit full of totes that are haphazardly thrown together!

One of the things we ran across in the big clothes shuffle was a box of teeny tiny shoes.  Ella's first shoes, to be exact.  I was so excited to see these little bitty things, remembering how cute they are and how cute she was when she was learning to walk.  I brought a couple of pairs home because even if Ashley's not walking in them, it will still be nice to have them on her feet once it gets cold.  That, and maybe she can practice her walking in them?  She is at the very, very beginning stages of putting one foot in front of the other when I hold her hands and 'lead' her.  We've got a while, that's for sure, but  I will at least be prepared when the time comes, right? 

This morning I outsmarted myself with the shoes, though.  I went ahead and put a pair on her, just for kicks.  As soon as I did her eyes got real big and she opened mouth, inserted foot (shoe).  You see, shoes are a bit of a hot commodity for Miss A.  She will absolutely beeline to the shoes by the door when she's on the floor.  You can imagine that anybody's shoes are going to be dirty when it comes to a baby putting their mouth on them, but ours especially.  But oh no, she wants those shoes!  So when she folded herself up like a pretzel and shoved that shoe in her mouth I thought Gooood one, Megan, just GIVE her a handy dandy shoe to put in her mouth!  Maybe this wouldn't be all that bad if, when I had put that certain pair away, I had actually cleaned them up like I should have (see above).  But I didn't.  So there I was, offering my sweet little baby a veritable feast of dirt and germs and poop, right there on her foot.  And now in her mouth.  I am such a genius sometimes I hurts.  For real.

All this shoe talk reminds me that a) maybe baby Ashley will take after some of the other women in the fam who have quite a thing for all things shoe and b) Is it a faux pas to let younger children use the much revered FIRST PAIR OF SHOES of their sibs?  Of course one of the pairs that I brought home was Ella's first pair, bought for her by my mom, because they are a good, stable pair of shoes to learn to walk in.  But should I have left those alone and let them be Ella's for eternity?  Does Ashley deserve her own pair, or am I just being silly?  I can see me, many years down the road (or maybe not so many years, as I paused in the storage unit and gazed at them longingly) looking at the first pair of shoes of my children and just wanting to bawl.  Will one pair mean even more because they were worn by more than one pair of feet?  Or should I spread out the sweet pain into several pair? 

 

Ashley's utilization of her first pair of shoes, no matter what they are, may be a ways off.  Just like the day that she gets a tooth! Who knows when one of those  will show up.  Ella's first came at ten and a half months, so it cold be any day now... Or not.  I don't see any real sign of one coming in, but I'm not complaining.  She can gum h er food as well as any toothless adult!  Ashley is also learning by leaps and bounds about pulling up.  She hasn't done too much on her own as far as discovery goes, but once I 'teach' her a little, she catches on in a flash.  I feel a few pangs of guilt about this since I'm not at home to help her along like I was with Ella.  I just have to remember to make time each evening when she and I can trot off to do a little exercising.  Ashley will get what I'm showing her for that little session and I'll just clap and say Yea, Ashley!  You did it!  Yea! and she just grins that toothless grin and seems so incredibly pleased with herself.  That, in and of itself, is enough to make me want to do it over and over again, much less the fact that she's learning some skills!

 

Where Ashley Kat e's physical skills (and toothical skills) might be lacking, she definitely makes up for in her vocal skills.  She has long since been vocalizing various sounds, the first of which was ma ma ma ma ma!  Then baa baa baa baa baa!  Always with the little higher inflection with the last syllable.  Beyond her sounds, it would appear that Ashley has also been exercising her volume.  My daycare provider recently mentioned AK's ability to be really loud with her babbling.  I kind of snickered, because usually I just laugh at her when she does it at home, but apparently when you combine her with the other little girl at daycare w ho is Ashley's age, they make quite a racket.  Actually, the other little girl is INCREDIBLY loud, as I have experienced first hand, so I did what all good parents would do and blamed Ashley's behavior on the other baby.  Hee hee!

One thing that Ashley has done, where David and I just looked from her, to each other, and then back to her, took place one night as David was doing a little leather working.  Ashley was in her seat, gumming some of her absolute favorite star puffs, when David started making some pretty loud noise as he hammered.  Ashley looked at him, kind of startled-like, and put one hand over each ear.  We both noticed her response so David quit hammering.  Down come the hands.  I told David to do it again, just to see, and sure enough, as soon as the hammering started, back went the hands on the ears.  Pretty clever, I thought!  Now that I really think about it, I'm sure it was a Holy moly this makes my ears HURT, rather than I'll just block the noise, but whatever.  Pure genius is filling up that huge melon of hers, I tell you!

Genius or not, poor baby AK has been cursed with something that her smarts can't get her out of: the absolutely killer susceptibility to being tickled.  She and Ella both get it from their daddy and it's pretty fun for me, being the tickler.  I'm an OK ticklee, but David, not so much.  Right now Ella thinks it's fun to get tickled to the point of peeing her pants, but I'm sure one day that will wear off, much like it did for David.  If I'm feeling dangerous and would like to gamble with the safety of my hands and arms, I'll give David a quick jab.  I don't often feel this way, since should I lose my hands in some terrible 'accident' I'd never be able to tickle Ashley, and that would be missing out on one of the most wonderful experience  s a person can have with a baby.  There's just something about those peels of laughter that can make you look past all of the other, not so glamorous aspects of parenthood.  It's a good thing those poor defenseless babies have on diapers, isn't it?  Ella Grace is another story all together.  If I had a nickel for every time she has yelled 'Stop! I'm going to wet my pants!' (only to take a 3 second break and then beg 'Tickle me again!') or actually run off to the bathroom...  I'd be one rich mama, I would.

 

Daaang, look at me,  writing more here than I have in a long while!  I suppose an update on Ella is the only fair thing to do next, isn't it?  That could take more time than I've got, to tell you the truth!  Sometimes the things that come out of that girl's mouth just astound me.  As of late, it's been shocked-at-the-audacity astounding, unfortunately, but there have been some shining moments of pure-genius astounding too.  Maybe calling her daddy 'Dude!' would fall more into the audacity category, and not the genius one, I think.  Oh, and as far as the gloves that Ella Grace was wearing in her crazy get up picture?  Those are leather work gloves, just for little childrens.  You should know that we would have all of the appropriate accessories so that we can be hauled off for breaking child labor laws!  We're putting that girl TO WORK!

 

PS: A loyal blog reader, Karen, welcomed a beautiful baby girl to her family last week.  Meghan Gloria arrived, much to Karen's delight (yea! pregnancy is over!) and dismay (WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT'S TOO LATE FOR AN EPIDURAL?).  I'm pretty sure it was 99.9% delight, though, since baby Meghan is absolutely gorgeous and fantastically healthy.  Even better is the fact that it appears that Meghan takes after Karen and her Filipino family!  (Karen's first daughter, Faith, is a gorgeous little girl herself, but is as white girl as they come.)  Congratulations to Karen and Jason!