9 Months

Asher turned 9 months old on Wednesday. He is changing and growing so fast! I can't believe he'll be one in just three short months! He almost doesn't even feel like a baby anymore. He had his 9 month well baby check yesterday. No shots this time, yay! The dr said he is doing perfect. Here are his 9 month stats:

Weight: 20 lbs even- 42nd percentile
Height: 29 inches- 74th percentile
Head: 16th percentile

He is still a tall boy! In fact, it's just about time to switch to a convertible carseat already since he is so long. We certainly didn't get as much time out of this one as I thought we would but it will be nice not to lug that big thing around anymore.

So this is what he's up to these days. For awhile now he's been doing this funny worm crawl where he just uses his toes and wiggles himself around with his bum in the air. A couple of days ago it turned into an army crawl which has been much more efficient for getting around. He still doesn't go far but it gets him where he wants to go. He has started to clap every now and then, which is so cute.
He does a great job feeding himself finger foods. In fact, he hardly even lets me put food in his mouth unless it's on a spoon. If it's not on a spoon he wants to do it himself. The only problem right now with food is he does not seem to like the texture of fruits or veggies if they aren't pureed and won't eat them as chunks so we are working on that.
He has turned into an AMAZING sleeper. He sleeps from about 7:30pm til about 7am and naps twice a day for about 1.5-2 hours each. I guess all that sleep training has finally paid off! He even falls asleep on his own in his crib for naps now too. It makes me one happy mama :)
He loves books, songs, tickles, peek-a-boo, when we babble back to him, and he especially loves bath time. He also loves to stand up while holding our hands.
He's not much of a cuddler because he is always too busy looking around to lay his head down but he loves to be held and carried around. His stranger and separation anxiety has picked up a little lately and he does not like when we walk away from him. He has started this new thing when he gets mad now and "yells" at us. He yells "Da da da da ba ba ma!" or some other combination of those sounds. It's pretty funny, even though I probably shouldn't think so.
Overall, he's doing great and we are having more fun with him everyday. We love our sweet guy!

Even though this is so not a good picture of me Asher's face here is just too funny not to share! This is when we went to Thanksgiving Pointe a couple of weeks ago with my mom, Ashley, Hunter and Brinley.

I don't usually have many non-Asher related things to post but we are super excited because Tim just got a new job! Today is his last day at Universal Systems and he'll be starting with a company called EMC as a technical support engineer on Monday. It's only like 5 miles from our house so he'll have a much shorter commute and more time at home with us, which we love :) I am so proud of him and hope he loves this new job!

Family pictures 2012

Last week we decided to finally take some family pictures. I had been wanting to do them for months but was waiting for the weather to warm up. My sister came along with us to help us out and take our photos. We had originally planned on taking them at a dock in Daybreak but once we got there it was way too windy. We came back home and headed to a dirt road behind our house. It's a great spot but the lighting was terrible, thank goodness for Photoshop! There are still a few things the photographer in me wishes I could fix but I'm actually really happy with the way they turned out! Thanks for your help Ashley!

8!

Asher turned 8 months old yesterday! He is getting more and more fun everyday. He is growing like crazy and even though I don't know exactly what he weighs he has definitely hit the 20 pound mark this month.

Some of his latest accomplishments include feeding himself finger foods and putting his binky in his mouth all by himself. He rolls all over the place. He still isn't really crawling yet. He really tries but just can't figure out that he needs to use his arms. He pushes great with his feet/knees but not his arms. It usually results in a face plant and then scooting his head across the carpet. He can pretty much get whatever he wants by rolling though, so he usually sticks to that. He has 2 teeth now.

Some of his favorite things to do are play in his exersaucer and hold our hands and stand up. He has this giraffe shaped pillow that came with his play mat and for some reason he loves it lately. He likes to hold it up to his face all the time. Whenever we try to get him to work on his crawling we just have to show him that and he tries so hard. It's pretty funny. He also really likes this nursery rhyme book that we borrowed from Ashley. He loves to be thrown in the air. He also thinks it's funny when he's holding our hands to stand and then falls down or wobbles. Apparently, he is going to be a little dare devil. He loves the bath, we are usually all soaked by the end of it. He gets super excited when Tim gets home from work and always has a big grin for him. He does not like to sit still. He is always wiggling. His little hands and feet are always moving. He's also gotten pretty grabby in the last little while, especially with hair and earrings :( Maybe one day I'll be able to wear earrings again...

He has just grown so much in these last 8 months and we love him more than anything. It's certainly not always easy to be a parent but the good stuff sure makes up for the hard parts. We love you Asher!

Our Valentine

I just wanted to share some cute photos of our sweet guy from Valentine's Day :)

7 Months!

Asher turned 7 months old last week. He has sure changed and learned so much in the last month. It really is so amazing to see him grow so fast! He is so much fun and already seems to have a sense of humor. He makes us laugh everyday.
He has become a much better sleeper this month. He sleeps through the night almost every night now. He goes to bed at 7 and sleeps until at least 4, usually longer. Most of the time he makes it until about 5:30 or 6. He falls asleep in his crib on his own even. Most days he takes one 2 hour nap, and two 30 minute naps.
He has started to chatter a lot. The first sound he repeated was baba. He now also says dada and an occasional mama, (not referring to us) baba still seems to be the favorite though. He has gotten really loud and loves to yell. He does it all the time, whether he is excited, happy or mad. He also laughs at just about anything these days. I must need to work on my speed diapering because lately he decided he has to go almost every time I take his diaper off. The funny part about it though is that every time it happens, he laughs! I think it must tickle when it gets him but he thinks it's hilarious. Silly boy!
He sits like a champ now and rolls all over the place. He seems to want to get around but still doesn't love to be on his tummy. I think he is getting more motivated to crawl though so maybe by next month! However, he is way more into walking than crawling so we'll see!
He also got his first tooth about a week and a half ago. It's so cute! He really wasn't too fussy with it. He woke up crying once the night it came in and had a pretty runny nose but other than that he was as happy as could be.
He is now eating solids regularly and doing great with it. He has liked pretty much everything he has tried, except avocado and green beans (who can blame him?). I make all of his baby food and I really like it. I like knowing that it's fresh and much healthier for him. It has been super easy so far. He also is learning to drink from a sippy cup. He can drink from it if we are holding it. He tries to do it himself but just can't seem to tip it back far enough, which is funny cause he has been holding his bottle himself for at least 2 months now.
Overall, Asher is doing great! Here are a few pictures from about 6 1/2 months old.












We love our silly, handsome boy!

Asher's First Christmas

Yes, I know Christmas was over a month ago. I have been putting off blogging about it because I am disappointed in the pictures we have from Christmas, and yes, I know that is a silly reason. Now it's time to blog about other things though so I have to catch up.
We had a wonderful Christmas. Even though Asher is still too little to know what's going on it was still so much fun. He did like the wrapping paper so he actually did help open his own presents. We started out Christmas Eve at the Tim's parents. We were able to visit for a while and exchange gifts. Unfortunately, we forgot our camera so we have no pictures from Christmas Eve. We had some on my sisters camera but they didn't turn out very well :(
We headed over to my Dad's next for dinner. We also decorated cookies for Santa. It has become a fun tradition to go over there every year on Christmas Eve. Asher opened his Christmas jammies while we were there and he looked so stinkin cute in them!

I stole this picture of me and Asher from Ashley's blog, at least she got one with Asher in his Christmas pj's!

Christmas morning we got up and went over to Ashley's house to have breakfast with her little family and my mom and Rudy. We didn't even open presents at home before we left since we didn't have a lot of time, and we didn't think Asher would mind waiting :)
We had a delicious breakfast and a lot of fun! We even played a little Just Dance on the Wii. Here are a few pictures from our day.

Asher with his cute new hooded towel, it even has his name on it!

I'm going to pretend like he really is trying to open his present here.

Here he is with some of his fun new presents

Tim and Asher, love my boys!

Going through Asher's stocking after we came home, his new walker from Santa is in the back. He loves it!

He got a new highchair from my mom and Rudy. We put him in to try some of the Puffs that were in his stocking. He made this face a lot. It was pretty funny. I guess he just needed to get used to them because now he loves them and smiles every time I pull them out.

He also got an exersaucer from my Dad and Leslie. It's super cute and he really likes it, he loves that he can jump around in it.

We had a great Christmas this year spending time with our sweet Asher and our extended families. We are so blessed!

FREE photo shoot giveaway!

Be sure to head on over to Patchwork Photography and enter my New Year's giveaway. I'm super excited for 2012, I feel like I finally have to opportunity to invest the time in my business that it deserves. What better way to start off the year than with a free photo shoot? Don't miss out, the giveaway closes Sunday.