two...

Two is a much better age for celebrating a birthday than one.  This year, she actually got the whole birthday thing.

We invited Papa and Nana over for dinner and cake (aka rice crispy treats), and Anson and Kieren dropped in to celebrate with us and give J a cute matchy-matchy nightgown.  She loved all the attention and toys.  

Happy birthday to our beautiful girl--we love having you in our family!

Jane's 2-year stats:

weight:  26 lbs. (41%)

height:  24.5 in. (71%)

head circumference:  19 in. (70%)

Nicknames include:  Jaygee, Janey-Lane, Janaygee Zampagey, Zampajito, J-Chicken, and J

our goofy girl...

Janey is such a funny girl!  She has a strong personality and a great sense of humor.  She loves to stack and organize random things (although this doesn't carry over to her toys, unfortunately).  She also loves to put on multiple layers of clothes.  I've taken several pictures over the months and made mental notes, but it is time to dedicate a post to her silliness.

She is obsessed with Asher.  She just can't seem to leave him be.  She can be super loving (aka: mauling) and is just so curious to learn all about him.  She loves to sit, stand, and jump on him (which does NOT make Mom and Dad happy) and is dying to see what his eye feels like.  She also thinks he should have a taste of everything (food or non-food).   She also loves to pluck at his little hairs and see if she can pull them out.  If he's in his crib, she wants to be there, too.  One of our favorite things is the Asher-car-dialogue.  It happens when we're in the car (duh!).  It's most entertaining when Caleb and I are both in the car because then she is usually interrupting us with her Asher-dialogue.  It goes something like this:

(Imagine that Caleb and I are discussing some important and inspiring topic as we drive along)
Jane:  MOM!!!  MOMMMY!  MOM!  MOMMMA!!!
Me:  What?
Jane:  (long pause, then in a subdued tone) Ashah.
Me:  OK, thanks.

Then repeat.  A lot.  About 10 times per minute.

If it didn't crack us up so much, it would be really annoying.

Jane is talking a lot.  She says most of her words well enough, but there are a few that are still completely her own language.  For example, die-lim means "vitamin", loli  is "little", key-at for "kitty cat", Baby Cooker is "Baby Cooper", cute-cummer for "cucumber", and noli bar is "granola bar".

Also, Jane's hair is finally long enough to put up in little "ponies", as we call them.  We often get a good laugh at her crazy hair once we take the ponies out.

Is it wrong that I think this is so funny?  And is it wrong that I let her diaper get so wet that this happened?

Jane is starting to potty train herself.  I finally bought her some unders, and as soon as she found the package, she had to try them all on.

From these pictures, I guess I let her run around undressed a lot.  And I'm pretty sure that this last picture will be super embarrassing to her at some point.

scrumptious...

Our little chunk muffin is 5 months old!

We love our little Pashy Pie.  His chubby little self is just so enjoyable--to touch, to hold, to pinch, and to simply feast your eyes upon.  A few weeks ago I was holding Asher, when a lady I know drove up.  As she saw him, she exclaimed, "He is just scrumptious!"

I couldn't agree more.  I could spend hours gently pinching his soft skin between my fingers and stroking his enormous thighs.  And he is so easily pacified.  Usually a big smile and a little baby talk is all it takes to get him to stop crying.  His smile is so wide, it looks as if he's trying to catch flies with his mouth!  And he is as sweet as he is big!  He currently wears 12-18 month clothes, although I put him in a 24 month onesie yesterday and it fit quite well.  I have actually been having troubles with my back from hefting him around, but he's worth it.

He just started sitting on his own a few days before his 5 month mark.   What started out as a slump using his chubby belly and thighs kind of like a kick-stand turned into real sitting after a few days.  He loves to squeal and laugh, and his laugh is almost always accompanied by a funny intake of breath that squeals.  He's also very alert--he loves to watch everyone and everything around him.

Our current nicknames include:

Pash (and all variations imaginable:  Pasher, Pasher Pie, Pash-Pash, Pashalina Brashalina, etc.)
Ashauntay Pashauntay
Bubba
Asher Bo Basher
Der Bubbin Snubbin

Behold the scrumptious-ness for yourselves:

pumpkins and meerkats...

I tried to be a little more festive this year.  I bought pumpkins at the farmers market, but could never find time for us to decorate as a family.  So we invited a few cousins over.  Despite a little paint ingestion and a tumble off the chair, I think it was a hit!

And costumes were a breeze--store-bought last year from the after-Halloween clearance.  Our little "kollar bier" and baby meerkat:

Ash loved his costume.  It seemed to lull him into a dormant state.  I'm not sure if it was because it was multiple layers of warmth, or if it was the super soft, silky lining.  Either way, he seemed to love it.   I'd consider using it for jammies, except that he's already almost outgrown it (despite its 12 month size).

Caleb and I were invited to a couple's Halloween Prom.  He borrowed fireman gear from a friend, and I burned a pair of pajamas I had in the DI box and ratted my hair.  By far the easiest costume I've ever conjured up!

We also took Jane trick-or-treating.  She is officially a candy addict, just like her momma.

<sigh>

Happy Halloween!

the healing powers of raw meat...

As I was searching Amazon.com to find play food for Jane, I stumbled across a strange item...bacon bandages!  I thought it might make a funny gift for Caleb, as he loves him some bacon, but before I could buy, I had to do my customary review check.  I was delighted with the reviews (I happen to think that witty product reviews make fantastic entertainment).

I picked out a few of my favorites.  Enjoy.

"I picked these up on an impulse, tired of sporting Dora and Strawberry Shortcake bandages over my manly shaving-related mutilations. Just an impulse, good for a few chuckles, but I'm glad I did.

I like these bacon bandages. I love bacon, it makes everything tastier. You ever have scallops wrapped in bacon? Or, where I grew up, we had the francheezie, a quarter-pound dog, split up and filled with cheese, and wrapped with bacon. I love the idea of garnishing myself with bacon, and all it symbolizes. To my kosher cousins, the bacon serves as a slight, a defiant declaration that I will not be laden down by dogma and delusion. To my vegan brothers and sisters, the bacon is a visible symbol of my dishonor, a white-meat scarlet letter confessing my lack of grit: "I'm with you in spirit, comrades, but the flesh is weak."

I'm so fond of these band-aids that it's a little bit of a downer when my wounds heal up. I eagerly anticipate paper cuts. I'm actually contemplating getting a bacon tattoo. Let me know what you think."

"I thought this was going to be a fun item but boy had I thought wrong. The product arrived as promised, looked like bacon but little did I know that it was cursed. Shortly after the bandages arrived, I rolled my ankle on an acorn & fell hands and knees first on the sidewalk. "Good thing I have my new bacon bandages", I thought. I applied the bandages to all of my affected areas as directed and headed back out to face the world like a walking meat cooler.

About three blocks from home I saw this real sketchy looking guy standing by a dumpster naked. So I pulled out my cell phone to get a picture to Tweet and this crackhead guy come running at me! I tried to hit send & run at the same time, but considering my prior injuries, it just wasn't going so good. This guy must have been on bath salts or something because when he caught me, he tried eating my knees & hands. I guess the bacon looked too real. Luckily another naked guy on bath salts tried to get my bacon bandages too, and they started fighting each other which gave me my out.  I ain't ever wearing bacon bandages again."

"What's wrong with using raw meat to cover your wounds? This is a poor imitation of the actual healing properties of bacon."

"This thing may seem like a cute little novelty item, but it can ruin your life. I being a very big bacon fan thought it was pretty cool and ordered myself a box. Well low and behold I get a cut on my forearm and decide to use it. I start my day of work and everything goes well, I get a few laughs from my coworkers and I think nothing of it. Well come after lunch we have a meeting with a big client for our firm, I being a junior member was not supposed to be in the meeting. However after they decided to bring the client to my desk because apparently we graduated from the same University, that's where everything went wrong. I got up to shake the woman's hand, extended my arm, but she didn't take it. Instead she stared at my forearm for an awkward moment or two. Then she looked up at me with this venomous glare and spit at me. She screeched at me about offering an unclean hand to her and that the band aid was terribly offensive. I apologized to her profusely and pleaded to her playing the Alma mater card. She had none of it. And continued to scream, and finally stormed out the building. My supervisor fired me on the spot... well after a 30 minute rant about how I had lost the company 25 million dollars. Also it makes you entirely too hungry all day."

"These bacon bandages are so realistic that they may cause secondary injuries. I applied a bacon bandage to moderate cut on my left thumb and within 2 hours, 4 people attempted to bite me. These bites required more bacon bandages, which, in turn , were responsible for more bites. The amount of bites per bandage applied rose exponentially to the point where I may die from blood loss. I am in desperate need of some liver and onion bandages as these would be appealing only to geriatrics who would be easily fought off."

before and after, the first...

RELIEF!!!

We are finally in our house!  It has been a rough road getting here, but we are happy.

This house is a fixer-upper, and Caleb and I have all sorts of plans for it.  I'll tell more about the whole home-buying story later, but I wanted to keep up on before and afters since I'm addicted to home renovations (I might be HGTV's biggest fan).

Due to the enormity of the task at hand, my first two projects were the kids' rooms.  These rooms were much more manageable than the rest of the house and only required some paint and decorations, so I put my first efforts into them first.  At least this way I have something that is finished.  Or close to it.

Jane's room:  before

Jane's room:  after

Asher's room:  before

Asher's room:  after

 

I still have a few tricks up my sleeve for these rooms, but if I wait until every last detail is finished, it might never get done.  Now hopefully I can get moving and keep finishing rooms.  Slow and steady, right?

back in business...

After getting a blank screen every time I tried to post the past couple of months, we finally set up our extra laptop in the office and...success!  Or semi-success, I guess.  See, this laptop is called our "extra" for a reason:  it has issues.   One of them being the battery works not at all, so it has to remain plugged in.  It also overheats and is really slow.  All of these things = not a problem.  However, it freaks out (aka shuts off completely) any time any type of foreign port or driver (if those are the right terms) is introduced.  It cannot be connected to a printer, external hard drive, or memory card.  The only way to share documents is to email them.  <sigh>

But for now, it will have to do.  I will email myself pictures and blog away.  When possible.  Which just so happens to be 12:08 am on a Thursday.