The Blizzard!

Nothing like ringing in February with 2 feet of snow!

Tot Rock

Every Thursday morning Ashley and I go to the park district for tot rock class.  Class is at 9:15, so she's usually a little out of it when we get there.  We've had two classes so far.

Both times she has taken about 5-10 minutes of being shy and stuck to my side.  Parents are involved, so it's not a huge deal.  The first class, everyone was sitting in a large circle and Ashley got up and sat in the middle of the circle!  She was very lucky since they were setting up instruments in the middle so was the first one to play on the piano.  After class was over she got a stamp on each hand, which she was quite curious about.  

After Ashley was comfortable and awake at the second class she was know for cleaning up.  A few of the songs/games involved picking up paper bananas off the ground over and over, so she was good at that and she quickly learned to give them to the instructor and not me.  During station play, she didn't play with the items, instead, she picked up all the items and put them in the storage containers.  It's quite funny to see her in group situations and how she acts compared to the others in the class (which age from walkers to 24 months, and most are probably 15-18 months).

We have 3 more classes of Tot Rock and then our first plane ride with Ashley to Maryland and then she starts Tumble Tots!

Ashley's Christmas Toys

I finally gave in and got the rest of Ashley's Christmas presents out of the boxes.  Now she has a baby that she plays with upstairs and one she plays with downstairs.  She could push her stroller around all day long!  And of course, she's going to be a great piano player or DJ when she's older :)

Talk, talk, talk all day long...

Ashley's becoming more and more understandable by the day.  You can tell she is forming sentences but we can't fully understand what she's saying.

The most common words include: Hi, Hello (when using random objects as a phone and it sounds like Aloe), More, Jada (which refers to any dog), uh oh (which is commonly followed by spaghetti, she hasn't gotten to the Os for Uh Oh Spaghetti Os), and of course, we um um away from her favorite song, the lion sleeps tonight, which sounds like we mom mom away which after several attempts I think I finally got it on video (you would think it would be easier since she says it all the time).

She hasn't put the words together but we have taught her that holding her hands up in the air means all done and also ta da, which she has done often when we enter her room and she'll pop up with hands in the air while we say Ta Da!

Ashley saying Hello on the baby monitor...it has buttons and makes noises, therefore it's a phone to her.  

Singing to The Lion Sleeps Tonight (with dancing Hippo and Dog).  I paused the music video at the beginning so she would say uh oh :)  FYI, you can stop the video after 35 seconds...I'm still working on learning to edit videos!

Happy New Year!

2010 was exciting watching Ashley go from a baby to a running and jumping toddler!  

We are looking forward to what 2011 will bring!

Daddy's little helper

 Posing for the camera

Checking out the rain, 50 degree weather and no snow on Dec 31st :)

Christmas!

I'm not sure who was more excited about Christmas, Ashley or us!  She had more gifts that imaginable, and it took several rounds and assistance of gift opening to get through them all!  To open she had to rip small pieces off and hand them to someone (Steve seemed to be the person of choice).  Then she had to try each one out as she opened them so it took quite awhile to get through the piles.  Now that all her presents are home, we realized we'll have to move to fit everything in the house!!

 Ashley took a break from opening presents and decided to play with old ones, like Thomas the train!

Santa!

Ashley had no clue what she was in for, luckily, I got a quick picture and grabbed her and she was instantly happy.  Santa was a good sport and smiled for me :)  She'll learn to love Santa when she realizes he brings her presents!

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