5 Months

Here's a rambling update and lots of pictures of Baby Jack at 5 months old.

Baby Jack is getting so big and chunky that his legs keep getting stuck in the Bumbo chair. I'm not sure how much he weighs now, but it's definitely more than he did a month ago.

He drools and likes to have something to chew on all the time. His hands are preferred, but he will sometimes chew on his toys if he can get them into his mouth.

We spend our afternoons studying Thai with Jay. She loves Jack and Jack seems to like her quite a bit, too. The rest of the day is spent playing and occasionally making the journey to pick up Asher from school. Wednesday's have become our special play date day with Baby Daniel. Jack and Daniel love to look at each other and giggle.

This month we started using cloth diapers at night. I didn't think they could last the whole night, but they actually do better than the disposables. During the day I try to use the cloth as much as I can. I think I need a few more diapers so that I can not run out of clean diapers while washing the dirty ones.

Jack can roll over when he really wants to get something and he is getting closer to being able to sit up on his own. He is pushing up higher and higher when he's on his belly and he tries to grab and bat at everything near him.

Still no teeth and no solid food, but I'm really not in a hurry for either. I'm pretty satisfied with Jack staying little and low maintenance for a while longer.

He is sleeping better than he was a few weeks ago. At night he always sleeps good and he usually will take at least one long nap and a few shorter naps each day. I keep trying to get him on a schedule, but things are always changing and it's been hard to be consistent with his nap times. I did try to take him out of the swaddle blanket recently. After a few nights of him waking up a lot we decided he wasn't quite ready to sleep with his arms free.

Jack's favorite things are getting tickled by Daddy and being near Asher. He is always giggling when he is around those two.

Smiles and Non-Smiles

Yes, Baby Jack has learned to smile.

It was about two weeks ago (when he was 5 weeks old) that all the sudden he just looked up and gave us a big, gummy grin.

He will pretty much smile at anybody, but he prefers to smile at Asher and Daddy.

Asher prefers not to smile for photographs.

But really, if you were busy making sure all of these cars were in the right place you wouldn't have time to smile either.

What a Poser and Updates

I've been trying to interest Asher is something other than playing cars, watching Cars (the movie), going outside to wash our car, going to the mall to ride in the cars or going for a ride in a car. My latest venture is the world of coloring. Of course in order to interest him I did get a Cars coloring book. Oh well, he's a boy and his life revolves around transportation.

I grabbed the camera while he was coloring the other day and tried to capture a few candid shots of the young artist at work.


I only got one shot before he started posing for me. Where did he learn to do that?!?!?


Asher's favorite part of coloring is dumping all of the crayons on the floor....


...so he can pick them up again. What a funny kid!



In other Asher news....

He has now started saying little two word sentences although they are pretty funny and mostly involve discussing his cars. Current favorites are:
Pool Quack - The ducks are in a pool.
Light Car, Light Truck, Light Taxi - Referring to headlights. I love that he's evidently picked up a bit of Thai grammar and puts the adjective before the noun.

We spent most of the morning at the hospital today because Asher has been sick for the past few days. Turns out he has RSV. He had a blast playing at the indoor playground while we waited to see the doctor and he had all of the nurses singing to him during his nebulizer treatment. I was letting him watching the Chaang (elephant) song on my phone and when they realized he was watching a Thai video they all started singing the song to him. I really like our doctor here in Bangkok, in fact he may be one of my favorite pediatricians that Asher has had (I think we've had 4 so far, one in each country).

In non-Asher news:
Roger and I recently did our first language evaluation and both received excellent scores. Our supervisor thinks that Roger can be done with full-time language study in the next two months. This might not sound like a big deal, but this means Roger will complete this part of his studying in only 9 or 10 months. They expect most people to reach this level in 18 months. Way to go! I'm just a little ways behind Roger and have a glimmer of hope that I may finish before the baby arrives.

Twelve Months

Asher is twelve months old! He is walking everywhere and getting into everything. He can eat almost anything, although often he refuses everything except for Cheerios and grapes. Over the past month he has mastered his sippy cup and gets a big kick out of carrying it around and drinking water. Sometime soon I am going to let him try real milk and over the next month or so I am hoping to get him drinking only real milk from his sippy cup. Asher is starting to talk more, he can say mama, dada, bye bye, hi and quack.

I can't believe how fast this first year has gone! Asher continues to grow and change so much everyday. He is so much fun now, he loves to play ball and to hit things. He is all boy.

Asher's School

For the past 8.5 weeks Asher has been in daycare. At first we hated it, he hated it and there was a lot of crying every morning.

But after a few days that all changed. Asher no longer cried when we dropped him off and in the afternoons he didn't even seem to eager to come home with us. He learned to crawl at daycare and to say bye-bye. We are pretty sure that he also learned to blow kisses, quack like a duck and hold up his finger when he hears "This Little Light of Mine" while he was at daycare. Overall it has been a great experience for all us, but I am looking forward to having Asher back at home with me.

These are Asher's teachers. They are very patient and have a very tough job, every 3 months they get in a fresh set of babies to work with. Most of the babies they take care of have never been in daycare, but they do a wonderful job playing and loving on all of them.

Everyday at school all of the babies load up in a big 6 baby stroller and go for a walk. After that is nap time, and from what I have heard Asher is usually the reason everybody else wakes up early. He talks so much he can't go to sleep and then he is so excited to get back to playing he wakes up early to talk some more. In the afternoons they play outside and take another nap before it's time to go home.

We are definitely going to miss Ms. Ealier, Mrs. Carolyn and everything about CERC when we leave!

Asher in Virginia - Week 5

Another week of training finished, another week closer to moving somewhere else. Here's another week of Asher in pictures.

Sunday night after "Sub-Saharan African Peoples Worship" we went down to the lake to get some photos of Asher. The light was perfect and Asher was full of smiles. By the way, Asher loved the African music and bounced and clapped the whole time we were there.

Monday evening after dinner we skyped Mimi. Asher had taken a few steps before this, but while Mimi was talking to him he stood up and walked all the way across the room. Look closely in the background of the picture and you can see Mimi on the computer screen. Some additional random trivia: this outfit is identical to the one Asher wore the first time he met Mimi at the Surabaya airport.

Tuesday afternoon after school Asher practiced pulling up. He learned to walk before he learned to stand.

Wednesday afternoon after school Asher was checking out what was going on outside of the quad. He is getting better at standing on his own, especially when there is a door to hold on to.

Thursday evening Asher and Daddy had fun while Asher cruised around the bed.

Friday evening we put Asher in a box and tried to mail him back to Kentucky. It cost too much so we decided to keep him here with us for the next 3.5 weeks.

Saturday we went to Washington, D. C. to explore our nation's capital. We visited The Capital Building and The White House. Asher was obviously very impressed by The White House even though we didn't get to go inside and we didn't meet our buddy (and fellow former Indonesian resident) Barack.

Look Who's Walking Now

We were skyping with Mimi the other night and Asher decided to stand up and walk across the room.

He took his first few steps on Saturday night, so we were not expecting him to go this far so fast. His main problem now is that he would rather run than walk and this (and his big head) makes him fall down quite often.

Now that he is sort of walking I am thinking I may need to buy him some shoes. Any suggestions?

Eleven Months

At eleven months Asher is learning more and more everyday and changing so much everyday. He loves going to daycare and doesn't cry when I drop him off. He still loves to swing and to be outside and during the times we have church with lots of people he loves to bounce up and down to the music while on top of Daddy's shoulders or in the sling.

It only took Asher 8 days of daycare to figure out to crawl and after another two weeks he is pulling up and standing by himself for a few seconds. Saturday night he took his first steps and I think in another few weeks he will be running.

He still weighs right around 20 lbs. and I'm not sure how tall he is. He is starting to outgrow some of his 6-12 months clothes and he looks really cute wearing his big, baggy 12-18 month shorts.

Asher is still a big milk drinker, but he loves to drink water out of his sippy cup. He is starting to eat a lot of table food and he can chew pretty much anything as long as it is a small bite.

I can't believe that next month he will be 1!

Hats and Sleepers

Now that we have settled into our life in Virginia we have gotten Asher to start falling asleep by himself again. It still involves some crying, but each night he gets better. After the crying stopped one night I went in to check on Asher and cover him up and I found that he had fallen asleep, but he was sitting up. Asher has just recently mastered the skill of going from his belly to sitting up and he is always very eager to practice. The first night I thought it was just a fluke, but every night since he has fallen asleep sitting up and I have had to go in and lay him down. We got the camera out two different times to capture his new sleeping position.

Besides sleeping in all sorts of odd positions Asher has been subjected to several shopping trips lately. Friday night we found ourselves in a Baby Gap and we came across the perfect hat (and matching mittens) to keep Asher warm during his upcoming Winter in Canada adventure. It straps onto his head so he can't get it off!

The very next day we were in the Gymboree outlet (I love shopping at outlets!) and found a baby cowboy hat. While Asher was crawling around we stuck the hat on his head and snapped a few pictures. He was so focused on the other kids in the store that he never noticed the hat.

First Words

It is only fitting that Asher's first words would be bye-bye. After all this is the baby that is in his third home in the first 10 months of his life and the baby that will have lived in 4 countries by the time he reaches 18 months old.

Asher came home from daycare the other day, sat down on the bed next to me, raised his chubby little fist and waved to me while saying in his tiny little voice, "bye bye." We spent the next ten minutes waving at each other and saying bye-bye over and over again. Roger came home and got out the camera to document this momentous occasion and of course Asher stopped talking. We managed to capture the wave and if you listen very closely you can hear that sweet, tiny voice speak those sweet, tiny words.

The Worm

Asher's crawling has progressed from The Scoot to The Worm.

Enjoy the video.

Asher in Virginia - Week 1

Asher's first week in Virginia is coming to a close. I have made it my goal to take a picture of him each day during the eight weeks that we will be here.

Here is Asher's week in pictures.

We left Paducah on Sunday and drove to Richmond, Virginia. We stopped in West Virginia for Asher to stretch his legs. The motto of West Virginia is "Wild and Wonderful" and we think Asher is pretty wild and wonderful, too!

Monday we moved in to our new apartment, we have our own bedrooms, kitchen and bathroom and we share a common area with 3 families and 2 single guys. Asher settled right into his new home and enjoyed his lunch.

Tuesday we had lots of free time to get unpacked. We spent most of the day running errands and playing. Roger and Asher had lots of fun wrestling on the bed.

Wednesday was Asher's first day of daycare. I think the picture captures the experience quite well. He cried a lot when we dropped him off and he cried a lot when we picked him up. His teacher says he is improving and I think in another week he might even enjoy himself.

Thursday. Another day, another meal. Asher was enjoying an avocado for dinner after another busy day on Thursday. His teacher reported that he was "spoiled" but that he is improving and starting to have more fun.

Friday night we went for a walk and then went to the playground to swing. There are several playgrounds on campus, including one right outside of our apartment. We almost always spend time swinging right before Asher goes to bed. There are also swings at Asher's daycare. Asher didn't cry Friday when I dropped him off at daycare because he got to go straight outside to the swings.

Saturday was a day of rest for Asher, he took a great morning nap and a great afternoon nap. We tried to keep things as normal as possible for him, so we brought his bumper pad with us. His bed is smaller and in his own room (for the first time ever!), but he still sleeps well and he still looks very sweet while he sleeps.

Daycare has been good for Asher so far, he has come back to us each day full of new things. His crawling has gotten better and he has picked up some cute new tricks. I have new videos of Asher performing and I am trying to upload them. The internet here is slooooow, so check back later to see them.

Ten Months

Asher is ten months old. He is starting to crawl, although at this point it's more of a lunge/scoot and it usually ends with him being frustrated he can't get to where he wants to go. One of his favorite things to do is to walk around holding our hands, he gets so excited and can walk pretty fast.

Asher still loves to be around people, but he still prefers to be held by me or Roger while he is with people he is unfamiliar with. I have been told that in the church nursery he gets more excited very time a new baby gets dropped off. Hopefully this will make his transition to daycare easier. Starting next week Asher will be in daycare Monday - Friday for about 6 hours a day. This will be the first time he has been without Roger and I during the day (I'm thinking this will be much harder on us than it will be on him).

Next week will also mark our move to Asher's third home in the past ten months. This one will be pretty short term, only eight weeks. We are praying for a smooth transition for all us and I expect Asher will do great as always.

Coming soon, in honor of Asher's Ten Month birthday, another "Asher's Top 10 @ 10"

Nine Months

This past month has been full of milestones for Asher. He can feed himself and he can stand up.

He still will not crawl, but he does try to pull up to standing. I am starting to think he is going to skip the crawling and go straight to running. Asher also started clapping his hands this month, he likes to show off and clap them when there are lots of people around.

The past few weeks have been pretty rough for Asher. He has gotten 4 teeth, had an allergic reaction to yogurt and he currently has his second ear infection. Before the past week I had never called the pediatrician, I think I have called at least five times since then.

At our most recent trip to the doctor's office Asher weighed 19 lbs 4 oz.

And, oh yeah, this month Asher decided he loves to eat grass.

Eight Months

Eight month old Asher still loves to eat, still loves to smile and he still loves to have his picture taken.
I have started making his baby food chunkier and giving him little cereal puffs to snack on.

We haven't been to the doctor lately, but I think he probably weighs around 19 lbs.

Asher has gotten more interested in his toys lately, he loves to sit in the floor and play. Of course, his favorite part of playing is putting everything in his mouth.

All of his top front teeth are coming in right now. So far only one has broken all the way through, but I think the others will be here any day now.

Asher has started pushing up on his arms and he can scoot backwards when he really wants to. He seems a little more interested in trying to crawl, but he hasn't quite figured it out yet.

The biggest challenge this month has been the appearance of some separation anxiety, mainly when Mama leaves the room. Luckily Asher is easily distracted by pretty much anything.

Asher talks more some days than others. He still sticks to the "mama" and "dada" sounds most of the time. Roger claims that Asher almost said dog and ball the other day. I'm not sure if this really did happen, but I do know that Asher loves dogs and balls, so it is a definite possibility.