That being said. Ash has been a busy girl of late. She is in to everything. She has learned that magic key that toddlers do eventually learn. If she grabs something over here and fights for a few seconds to keep it and then runs as fast as she can to something in a different area of the room and wreaks havoc and then runs when she is stopped at station number two to station number three as fast as her legs can carry her, she can cause more damage. And in case you didn't know the toddler Credo is cause as much damage as you can before they stop you! Then laugh hysterically. Nothing is safe. She has learned to climb onto chairs to get what she want. She has climbed up bookcases. She WILL find a way around things over, under, or through the impossibly small space that sh
e shouldn't even be able to fit through. She has learned to take advantage of Mom being slower. As I am roughly the size of a lumbering elephant and move slower than maple syrup runs in January it is easy to take advantage of me. Now that we have passed most danger zones with Taryn I have started picking her up a little bit more... that makes mommy winning a little easier.Ash has started hitting. It happened over a weekend. On one side she was this mild mannered little girl who would never dream of hitting, and on the other side she is hitting every human being on the face of the earth. She thinks it is remarkably funny and it has most of the adults in her life completely confounded. We are a no hitting or spanking home. Dave and I both agreed on that before we started having children. Hitting a child is in our opinion counter-intuitive. She is too young to understand a "time-out, and she thinks it is funny when you tell her "NO". So we have settled on holding both of her hands and telling her no repeatedly. We also say " Owwie" when she hits us to let her know that it hurts. A few more trillion times and she just may get it. She also has taken to kicking me in the stomach when I change her rear too. That one is just as tough, and it is complicated by the fact that I am already dealing with a mess that I don't really want to mess with! To be fair that tummy is way out there right now... but it can't keep up. It hurts now with a baby in there, I can just imagine what that will feel like with a new incision. But these are the things that a toddler goes through and the lessons that we as parents are responsible for helping them to learn. She is not doing any of it maliciously ( no matter how it may feel when you are the one who just got clocked!)
She has also found a remarkable helpful streak. She loves to clean up clean up... and will take out the broom to sweep up. She will pick up clothes, and will put books and toys away. But only if she is in the right mood. If she is in the mood to take things out... then watch out, because anything that you put away will immediately be pulled out and tossed on the floor. She is as fast as a tornado and causes twice as much wreckage when she wants to.
She now knows most of her books by name and will ask for them by name to be read. We had her at the book store a few weeks ago and she saw a book that she had at home and pointed it out by name to me. She also knows what words should be said for the page we are on. So Daddy's habit of making up the story by the pictures instead of reading the words makes for some interesting conversations between the two of them. Reading a book is not a straightforward ordeal anymore. She will tell you what the page says and she will turn quickly to her favorite pages not allowing time for the book to be read. Also she has so many words and recognizes so many things that she can point out that some of the books have pages that we will be on for fifteen minutes before she is done pointing every thing out and telling you what every one is doing. She also can point out the numbers 6,7,8,9,and 10 by sight. Don't ask me why those numbers rather than the first in the series. And while she cannot recognize the numbers by sight she can count to three. When there are more than three objects she just starts over at three... or skips to six. She also can sing the entire alphabet song. And if you sing one part she will pick up where you left off and sing back and forth in a series with you. She knows the shapes of heart, star, circle, square, and triangle on sight. And she knows her colors really well. Orange is often still called red, but most others have been ironed out for her. We have books that cover all of those concepts plus when she was younger we went and got wall hangings that deal with those concepts that we have put up on the wall and we have gone over before she goes to bed at night. They are not on the wall anymore... as we got to a stage where she wants to touch everything and when she asked if she could touch the wall hangings we let her. Now the wall hangings are spread all over the house... but she still has fun with them. They don't last very long as they are just paper board but we have more than gotten our money out of them, and we have a ton of fun together.
She doesn't play with toys much. She mostly wants to be read to or will read a book to herself. She plays with toys for a few minutes and then moves on to something else. She has a few favorites that she plays with periodically through out the day. And she has a ton of stuffed friends all of which she loves dearly. The bed is littered with her stuffed toys which have to come to bed with us, and must all be near her in some way. There is an stuffed bear made out of Alpaca that my mother got for her that is a particular favorite, as it is very soft. She falls asleep most nights holding pink bear bear as she calls it. One sure way to ensure that she spends all day playing with her toys however is to put them away. If she wakes up and the toys have been put in the toy box... if there is clean space on the floor then she will take hours figuring out which toy would best fill that space. It is guarante
ed!I am amazed that any woman who has a toddler and is also in her ninth month of pregnancy survives. The floor is constantly cluttered with her toys. I can't breath if I bend over to pick them up so I don't, and I can't see them when I am trying to walk through the room so i trip over them. Ashlynn has also developed a need to at times be glued to my leg or her new favorite to use my legs like a tunnel and walk through them. Put that together with a dog that is right at knee level and a cat and then compound the issue by living in a house that is less than 500 sq feet and watch momma fall and then laugh. I am tripping over things continuously. I have stubbed my toe so many times that I can't even feel it any more. And my shins are a mass of bruises. Ashlynn and Dave think it is hysterical and laugh all day at me... I am so glad that I can do my part to keep them in stitches.
Alright enough bragging for the time being... there are so many things to tell you and so little time to do it in. But there are other days. And my daughter is doing nothing but marching forward to keep us filled with stories to tell you. So I won't run our of things to tell you. Right now she is faking a tantrum to make me feel bad for taking something away from her. She is going to be a great actress when she gets older let me tell you.
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