Excess

I am in love with my sweet baby, what can I say.  He went for his first official haircut today (even though he's had several mommy-versions already) and he had so much fun!  I was expecting a protest, but he was perfect and flirted with the hairdresser and smiled and loved it.  I know most of these look alike (to everyone else) but I just can't pick which to post.  So you get to skip over them, or appreciate the particular cuteness of each one along with me! :)

Young Asher Swint Not So Young Anymore

In the past week...
Crawling
Master of going from belly to sitting position
Pulling up on low surfaces...like a lap.  'Stands' on his feet (even though he's not completely vertical, it is the basic pulling-up move).

Wow.  Life's about to get more energetic (as if it wasn't already).  I did a thorough sweeping of the hardwood last night as there were oh so many delectable dust bunnies to put in the mouth. 

Trike!

Asher has had quite a conversion over the last couple of months from being a *fairly* laid-back baby to, honestly, quite a fusser.  I attribute a lot of it to body-not-caught-up-with-mind syndrome.  The kid has been so ready to crawl, run and jump with his big brother, but his body hasn't quite worked it out yet.  He's been rocking on all 4's for months now.  He ooches backward, spins around, and throws himself forward by half a foot at a time (sometimes landing in a face-plant, which he doesn't enjoy), but he just hasn't coordinated crawling yet.  He's getting there, but slowly.

Well, I just had to steal my fabulous friend Isabelle's idea.  As an aside, she is Scotch, South African, and German...and is shortly moving to Tokyo.  If that's not the true definition of multicultural, what is!  She shared some pictures of her little Evie (just a bit older than Asher) on a trike, strapped in, and she seems to looooove it.  (Aside from a recent mishap which landed her in the hospital...umm, read about that literally 3 minutes after setting up the trike I bought for Asher.  She is fine now, praise the Lord, and I decided to press on.)  Asher has been getting a kick out of riding it, but I don't think quite as much as Evie does.  He likes it if he is riding toward Owen, then he's all giggles.  But if he's riding so that he can't see anyone directly, same response as a stroller...no thank you!  (Aren't kids supposed to like stroller rides?  Neither of mine have at this age.)

Well, they have been having fun.  Owen especially loves riding with anyone else, makes it much more fun than riding alone!  He is quite a speedy daredevil on his bike these days, enough that I get scared he will wipe out :}  But once we get the helmet on I can relax and he zips around.  He loves to crash into Asher on the trike!

What a gift!

Well, Aunt Karen sent us an interesting gift to play with!  Who knew that there are radio-control goodyear blimps and personal-size helium tanks for sale at amazon.com (what can't you buy at amazon?!).  Last weekend, we had some good family fun trying out the toy.  *Definitely* not something to be taken outside...it would be whipped away by a gust of a breeze.  I wonder how the real blimp navigates the skies?  The boys were pretty taken with it, and Owen and Asher thought it was pretty neat too!  Thanks, Aunt Karen!

haircut

[Some of the] Things I've learned this week:

1. Giving a super-energetic 8 month old a haircut is not that easy. The $17 I cheaped out of paying Snip-its to do the job probably would have been worth it. At least hair grows back! I cut off at least 1.5" in some spots! The first picture is pretty bad b/c I hadn't combed it after the cut. 2nd picture is more representative of the final product.

2. No, all the people who tell me starting my child in the nursery earlier would have helped with separation issues, you were not right. Asher, unlike his big bro Owen, started the mom-to-mom nursery at around 5 weeks old. Asher, as of about 7 months old, began to have as bad or even worse problems in the nursery than Owen. He lasts about 15 minutes before he is so fussy a worker has to try to distract him. All distraction techniques fail and by about 10 minutes after that they are forced to buzz my pager. He is hysterical and I can hear him before I even get downstairs. As soon as I retrieve him, he cheers up right away (although the heaving chest shudders take a while longer to subside). Well, there are just a few meetings left for the year, so at least we made it most of the way.

3. Never underestimate the power of sleep-deprivation to affect your child's behavior. Owen and I have really been at it with each other the past few weeks. Owen has virtually ceased all napping the last few weeks. It is very difficult to get Owen to bed early enough to compensate for lost naps and keep him rested. Boy does it show! He gets so defiant and intentionally naughty and cranky and volatile. I know the signs because I get that way myself when tired. The mom-to-mom speaker this morning (and mother of 6 kids) spoke straight to my soul and her talk must have been written with my week (and general experience) in mind. You think you adequately handle this job if you talk to the right people and read the right books, you don't find it *too* tough to be patient with your child, you think your love for your children is unquenchable. Then slowly, over months and years, with increasing complexity of life and needs, your own resources start to get sapped. You find that the seemingly bottomless reserves you started out with are not bottomless. You think a few nights' sleep or a good vacation will refresh your supplies, but a good night's sleep buys you about 15 minutes of patience first thing in the morning and then you're right back to sapped. You start becoming more irritable, more grouchy, more short, more explosive...and not the mom you *ever* planned to be. You are shocked that you act the way you sometimes do. Oh how I feel this lately, and I'm not yet at the end of year three of this lifelong journey. Answer: Allow God to teach me through this experience that I on my own will always fall short, that I am not enough, that He is the source of life. He is stripping away my self-reliance through the nitty-gritty of motherhood, and the things I really need I can't drum up...but the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, etc. Practice the presence of God with habits of time and mind...the speaker's prayer was a deep breath and a constant, short, 'God, be _______ in me right now (patience, wisdom, etc.), and a pause, full of faith for the answer. The speaker had such an exact summation of my struggles that I had to record this for later reminders.

4. Deciding to night-wean Asher was tough, and doing it was tougher, at least the first night. It seemed to be time, because he started getting confused...staying awake and expecting nursing at other times of night if he woke (rather than just the one feeding we'd had consistently for a long time), and I think getting up at night is tiring both of us out, after 8 cumulative months of it. That feeding was not going away on it's own, and it would probably only get harder to get rid of once he's pulling up and smarter. Well, that was the reasoning at the start of the night, but after sending in Daddy to pick up, reassure, and sans feeding apparatus at 3am, and not getting back to sleep with fussing and crying til 4:45am, one's resolve starts to waver...he was more persistent than Owen!! But, night #2 involved only 2 brief 5-minute cries. Hopefully tonight he will just sleep on through, and not test to see if we were really serious :{

5. I love my family! I am so extraordinarily blessed.

Easter!

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.  1 Peter 1:3

After a family trip to Park St. on a beautiful Easter weekend, we enjoyed playing outdoors, a special meal, pictures and a little egg hunting.  A wonderful day!  Owen was completely disobedient all day with regard to eating his candy.  TOTALLY NAUGHTY!  We kept telling him he could only have, say, one egg before lunch, and I'd find him in the corner wolfing down chocolate!  Ooh boy.  It was hard, because something just doesn't feel right about time-outing the kid over and over about a gift he's not supposed to touch??  I think my Dad might have him on a constant sugar high due to butterscotch dispensation and he was trying to keep himself from crashing since my parents drove to Baltimore to visit Deb this weekend. (Just kiddin', Dad ;)  Anyway, I figured out why parents do egg hunts...what entertainment!  It was fun to watch him be 100% full-tilt excited about finding eggs around the yard.  "A YELLOW ONE!!!!  Daddy, aNOTHer yellow one!!!  And a GREEN ONE!!!  Wow, isn't this so neat, mommy???!"

Before I forget to record it...

1.  Owen 'read' his first word this week!  He has some videos called 'Meet the Sight Words' that he's watched a few times in the last couple of weeks.  Well, sometime this last week as I was reading to him at bedtime, he stopped me and started excitedly saying, "Mommy, Mommy!  That word is 'look'!  That word says 'look'!"  Indeed it did.  By chance, the word 'Owen' was right next to it (in his Owen the Mouse book).  He recognizes that word, and so we were able to read a two-word phrase and he was very excited.  Suddenly it clicked that what I say is associated with the words, and he ran his finger along under the sentences while repeating them from memory.  Very cool to watch the gears turn!  Then, he was finding words all over the place...but not completely correctly.  He'll point out any 'it' in sequence, say, in the middle of a word, and say, 'That's IT, Mommy!'  But he's definitely catching on!  At the end of our little session, he said, 'Mommy I don't want to learn more reading.' (Meaning behind statement:  I want you to read to me!)

2.  Owen has hit the 'why' stage.  I hear that question about 500 times a day.  About things he completely understands already too.  By reputation, you hear about this stage...it is ALL true.  Why?  Why?  Why?

Other cute conversation while tucking him in.  (Nunu had just said goodnight and was walking downstairs.)

O: Mommy, why is Nunu going downstairs?
Well, she has to get ready for bed and go to sleep. (White lie)
O: Does Grandpa have to go to sleep?
Yep
O:  Does Grandpa rock himself before he goes to bed?
I guess so.  Nobody else needs to rock Grandpa, he's a grown up guy.
O:  He doesn't have to have a kid on his lap?
Nope.  He can rock all by himself.

All said in such earnest desire to understand how the world works!

Owen with a red curly wig.  Didn't really work out as planned, ah well :}