Half a year of discoveries and reflections

Asher turned 6 months old this week, and over the last 6 months I have noticed how becoming a parent changes... well everything. For me it has changed how I look at the world, the people in it and how I interact with both!

Social Isolation

Before you have children and especially before you have a baby who is breastfed, get-to-gethers and parties are great; you socialize, eat, help set up and clean up etc. etc. etc. Once you have a child it's a whole new ball game. It starts before you even leave the house, making sure you have absolutely every possible item your child might need packed in a bag that never seems big enough. Then once you get to your destination, it's a balance between trying to be sociable and keeping your child content (AKA quiet). This leads to very unfulfilled conversations. For me it always seems like 30 minutes later while I am feeding Asher in a quiet room someplace, I think about how I meant to say this or that.

I do love breastfeeding Asher, in fact I think I would miss it if he stopped tomorrow, however because he seems to hate being covered by any kind of blanket, I tend to just go into a bedroom away from everyone to feed him, as it's much less stressful for all concerned. But in doing this I miss out on whatever else is going on beyond the walls of the room we are in. Granted sometimes it's a lovely break and a nice time to bond with him away from the crowd :O)

Joy

I don't think I have ever experienced so much joy in my entire life as I do/am right now. Watching Gord play, sing and talk to Asher makes my heart sing. Experiencing all of Asher's firsts with him and getting to see him smile and laugh each day has been truly amazing.

I think in life, some things are just meant to be. My dad was diagnosed with cancer in 2009 which has been difficult on everyone in our family. But I believe that Asher came into our lives to give us all something to smile about. And to give my dad something to keep going for (he wants to be at Asher's wedding).

Parenting

Knowing that we have just scratched the surface of this thing we call parenting I am excited to continue this challenge with Gord.

What we have learned so far is that nothing is what it seems. Before you are a parent you make all these assumptions as to how you will parent your child, and when you become a parent, all those assumptions go out the window. It has nothing to do with ideals and everything to do with temperament. Every child is different and not every method works for every child.

So far our two rules are:

• Pick your battles; and
• Find what works for your child and do that, then stop listening or reading everyone elses ideas/opinions.

All in all it's been a great 6 months since Asher entered our lives. We have learned so much and seemingly discovered a whole new world, and entered a new club (mommy and daddy club) in the process. Were lovin every minute and wouldn't trade it for the world!

Holidays

Well we had a wonderful first Christmas and New year as a family!

Gord has been off for the last 11 days, so Asher and I have been enjoying having him around and we have been able to get so much done around here too!

Since Asher has been quite a gassy baby since day one; about a week before Christmas we decided to try something. Because Gord is lactose intolerant himself, we decided that it might be a good idea for me to try going off dairy for a week to see if it made any difference for Asher.

Well the results are in, and as far as we can tell it seems to be helping. This last few weeks have been great! Other then the teething pains here and there Asher has been a very Happy baby making Christmas Eve, Christmas day and New years a breeze.

As previously noted, Asher is teething.... dun dun dun... the drool is phemonimal... not only does he drool but he has learned to spit, well kind of. I think he likes the noise he makes with his mouth!

We also started solid foods while Gord was off, which has been great also! We decided to start with pear since it is not a binding food and very easy on the tummy too! He loved it. Then we gave him some "sweet potato" which is actually yams... because yams are the orange ones and sweet potatoes are the yellow ones... but lets not get into it! He loves his yams even more!

We have been using this great book for making baby food (which I believe was given to Asher at his baby shower by Aunty Dara), and it has been a huge help in getting us started. We even boiled up some turnip last night, pureed it, and froze it in ice cube trays for future dinners! Yum!

Tonight I wrote down all of the fruits and veggies he will be trying and in what order so I can check them off once he has tried each one. It's kinda fun!

Here is a video of his eating some pears...





Here are just a few photos from the last few weeks:

Asher staring up at Daddy who is trying to put him to sleep...

Asher and Daddy opening an ornament on Christmas eve, Asher liked the paper best:

Gord learning to drive the bobcat:

More to come...

Roll Over Roll Over

OK I know it has been ages since I posted... so maybe I need to make a new years resolution to update the blog more regularly!!

We have been busy getting ready for Christmas; shopping, baking, wrapping etc. But were almost there!

Asher got his picture taken with Santa (as seen above) and actually quite liked sitting on Santa's knee! In fact Santa was excellent, very nice and since we were the last ones for the day we got a few extra pictures and chatted with Santa a bit!

We got some good news about my Dad's cancer this week! He went to his oncologist, she felt around his tummy and she said that it feels like the tumor may have shrunk a bit which means this new chemo might just be working!!! It's so nice to finally get a piece of good news on that side of things!

Since I don't have much time I'm going to have to cut this short but here is a video of Asher rolling over... for the second time! I took this video a few weeks ago, and I just love the look on his face when he is going over!!

The Forgotten Blog

We have been so busy with life and I just haven't had time to update the blog recently!


So, I'm quickly trying to think back over the last few weeks for an update before Asher needs to eat again so here it goes...

Last weekend we had Grandpa P's Surprise 60th Birthday Party. Well it was sort of a surprise - an hour before everyone arrived, he came home and we told him to hop in the shower before his guest arrived.

Of course he says he suspected something was going on... O sure he did... sure he did....



Here are a few pictures:

The Birthday Boy

The Cake

It`s a slot machine (if you couldn't`t tell...)

Asher is doing well, he will be 20 weeks tomorrow... hard to believe he is already 4 months old! Time goes so quickly when you are having fun.... well fun is a relative term for gas, mixed with teething, late nights and poopy diapers, all of which is shadowed by the smiles, chatter, milestones, giggles, cuddles, and love.... opps... I got all cheesy on ya, sorry about that! :O)

Actually I had a whole day off diaper duty on Wednesday, so in a way it was a holiday for me too!
FYI: The picture of him above was taken last week while he was happy and laughing in his swing.

We ran into 4 little scavengers on the way home one night last week:

These raccoons were eating berries by our mailbox at the top of the driveway. We stopped to watch them for quite a while and by the time I realized that we did in fact have the camera in the diaper bag, two of them had already gone into hiding and as you can see one of the others ran away shortly after - so we didn't get much on film.

Well that's all I can think of at the moment to post about and I probably don't have much time left so I better get back downstairs to my hubby and kidlet!

Trick or Treat

We had a fun Halloween this year! Asher dressed up as a little bat and we went to a few houses in Grandma and Grandpa P's neighbourhood with his cousins before heading up to Grandma and Grandpa M's house for the Halloween party!

Asher's little hat didn't want to stay on and when it was on it seemed to slip over his eyes... which really pissed him off!! :O)

At Grandma and Grandpa's house he decided to just wear his skelly PJ's which glowed in the dark!! Below are just a few pictures of the days events!

Mommy and her little baby bat!

The Trick or Treaters

The Party goers!

Gord's costume!

Pumpkin Carving

Here is a video clip of Asher before we carved the pumpkin. I sound like a total dork in this clip, but my kid loves it ;O)

Unfortunately he fell asleep before we finished carving his pumpkin for him!

More pics to come of his costume!!!

Kick Kick Kick