Little Man

Ascher turned 19 months old on Monday.  He’s working on learning to jump.  He stands on his toes.  He’s had a growth spurt and is outgrowing some pants and reaching high things.  He loves to help.  He runs things to the trash can, puts dirty laundry away, helps clean up toys and put away low dishes, fetches potatoes and onions out of the pantry and is very good at finding things with just verbal prompting and can use instructions like, “Your ball is by your table” or “Can I have the frog blanket?”.

This boy needed a haircut to be respectable for Christmas!

His favorite thing to help with is washing dishes.  If we stay at the sink for more than 2.5 seconds he runs over the table as fast as he can and pulls a chair over to the sink so that he can climb up and hopefully help.  Even if we aren’t at the sink he’ll try to pull up his chair throughout the day and we’ve had a few disappointed meltdowns as he learns we aren’t going to let him wash dishes all the time.  If he was five or six years older I’d be all for it, but…

So we turned on Curious George right after breakfast and got to work.

Wilona sat right next to me in her bouncy on the table.

His conversation skills are growing.  He’ll frequently be listening to us(or a song, or a movie) talk and he’ll pick out a word that he knows and will run to find the corresponding thing.  I told Ben(in a stream of other conversation) we needed to install toddler height monkey bars and Ascher ran to his toy box shouting, “Dey ee is!  Dey ee is!” (There it/he is!) and grabbed out his little sock monkey.  He says hi and dye(bye) and all don(gone) and shhhh and brrr.  He has a word for up now(that I’m not remembering, bad mama).  If my lap or arms are vacant for a second he’s over begging to be up.  He’s a cuddly snuggler and loves hugs and kisses.

So much better!

When he started running I had him sit down next to the fridge when I had to open the oven.  These days he runs over and plunks himself down at the first sight of the hot mitts.  He loves to look out the front window.  He loves it when daddy gets home.  He’s working on learning to get dressed.  He thinks mittens and gloves are lots of fun.  We took him out on a Christmas light tour drive that he really enjoyed.  H got excited and was shouting, “Dey ee is!  Dey ee is!” at decorated houses as he spotted them and at street lights.

He was not impressed with how itchy he felt afterwards!  He’s mid bath sign.

He mostly tries really hard to be nice to Wilona, rattling toys near her face and bringing her things to hold, but will occasionally still just whack her for talking to him.  A couple times she has tipped over from sitting up(!) and he’s grabbed her around the middle or by her shirt front and tried to get her sitting up again.  He has wiped her face after she spits, pulls out wipes for me for her diapers and tries to feed her toys.

I itch!

After our first snow last week I bundled Ascher up and put his new(used) snow boots on him and stood him up to go outside.  He wobbled.  He tottered.  He tripped and staggered and walked like a drunk all over the house for five minutes, after which he sat down and peeled the boots off his feet.  I then realized that those were the first hard soled shoes I’ve ever put on him.  He’s worn Robeez his whole life so far.  :)

Yay! All clean and nice hair!

It seems like he’s been making crazy leaps and bounds lately.  I so wish I could learn and improve at things as quickly as tiny people.  But, I think these days they’re just leeching all my brain power.  Good thing I had a decent amount to start with.  :)

Love you, Ascher boy!