laundry helper

Today, Asher's helping me get rid of the explosion of laundry we have here.




...and we're washing all of his 6-9 month stuff because he's about to grow entirely out of 3-6...did you hear that?! 6-9 month...crazy.

More to come soon, promise...

dear ipad...

Dear iPad,

Can you ever forgive me? I've been so wrong. I've called you names. Worthless. Pointless. Just a really big iPhone.

Or worse, iTouch.

But that was before. I was so naive. Ignorant. I chose not to see everything you could offer.

That was before I knew about Moodboards, about all the drawing and sketching apps, all the web design apps. And before I knew I could make my own fonts.

I know others had tried to tell me. Convince me. But I didn't listen, and now I regret it.

Now I want you. I think I need you. I can't live without you. Oh, the horror!

Can't we just forget it all and move on? Make amends and live happily with one another?

Or will you really make me pay, make me suffer...

make me wait 2-3 weeks until shipment???

Yours,
Kirsten

p.s. Reed, you're entirely to blame.

indulge me.

while taking the chair picture, i was able to steal some time to take some real pictures of the baby. to play with aperture and manual focus. and now i've come to waste your time with a million pictures. of the most beautiful baby ever...

















if you just didn't get enough, there's even more on our flickr account

two months

today i am sick. which stinks. so asher and i have spent most of the day in bed. so maybe it's not that bad...he's very snugly, this two-month old of mine.

that's right, on friday asher turned two. months.

at his two-month appointment (which was awful. i hate shots) he weighed in at a whopping 13.5lbs, and both his weight at length are in like the 120th percentile or something. okay, maybe not, but sometimes it feels that way carrying him around.

so two months...back in the chair. you can see one month and one week here and here.

...okay, seriously. i wrote that and then went to look for the week and month posts. and we've never posted about the chair. hmmmm...i'm losing my mind...

so, then, we'll start from the beginning. we decided that we would take a picture of asher every month in the same chair...you know, to show how much he grows. so we started at one week, because at one day we were still in the hospital. here's that one.



woah. he looks like such a newborn.

okay, month one.



and month two!



yeah, remember what i said about the 120th percentile?

he's so big. so old. two months. he's smiling a ton these days, his neck is so strong (the things you start saying when you become parents...) and he's getting to know his hands, i think starting to realize how to use them. basically. he's awesome. and a genius. and the cutest baby ever. ever. :)

through the generations

this weekend we had a very special visit from the greats...





daniel's parents and two grandmothers came out to see asher. we sat, and then ate. and then sat some more. and i'm pretty sure the grandmothers are convinced all we do is watch and talk about basketball...





but did you hear that georgia made the tournament?!?!?!?! so it was worth watching and talking about...





asher's extremely alert and attentive these days, and according to our visitors i'm sure, still sleeps a lot!

and, of course, he loved meeting his great-grandmothers and seeing granna and grandad again!

month one

well, we're a bit past asher's first month, but nevertheless. we're always behind, aren't we?

i made the above mosaic today...i'm pretty proud of it. (if you click on it it get's bigger...) it's in calendar form and is a picture for every day of asher's first month. there's only a couple of pictures that are fudged—that weren't taken on the day...

so anyway, i'll just fill you in on several things...

i'm feeling better and better every day (it's kirsten, by the way...) — tuesday marks six weeks and we were told at the hospital that it would be a full six week recovery. let me tell you. it's taken every day of that six weeks. and i'm thinking i might have some "discomfort" every once in a while after those six weeks. but the difference between today and five and a half weeks ago is unreal. and i never thought i'd feel better, so i'm pretty excited about it...

as of asher's one month birthday (feb. 25) he weighed in at 11.5 lbs! huge!

there's two pictures above—one at one week and the last one at one month—of asher in one of our chairs. we're going to take a picture of him in that chair every month! look at how different he looks from the one week! (like i said -- he's huge!)

we're all doing well here—we're having a blast being parents. we're getting, honestly, a great amount of sleep. asher only wakes up to feed, like every four hours or so? and then he goes right back to sleep...on the other hand, his naps aren't really that frequent or predictable right now, and he really, really loves being held...like, won't let us not hold him. so it's hard to get much done.

asher's in full baby mode, cute baby acne and losing some hair. and he's getting really precious rolls and a double chin (again, he's huge!) he's definitely grown out of most of his newborn clothes, but is still good in his 0-3 months. his neck is getting really strong, he's able to hold it up a ton. and he's definitely staring better and you can tell he's thinking hard. he smiles a bit here and there, but still at random—in response to daniel or i doing something, but it's just not like we can make him smile yet. and he's cooing and sighing and making sweet noises, too...

it's amazing :)

3 weeks old!

There are lots more pictures on our Flickr account if you are interested... Here are some of my favorites! Sorry for the long delay between uploads to Flickr. There is no excuse for it. Our life hasn't been busy or stressful at all... pretty much just same old same old around here...











Again, WAY more pictures on the Flickr if you are into sifting through hundreds of other peoples pictures.

Things are still good here! We had a great Valentines day in last night (still haven't forced ourselves out of the house without him yet, but that's coming soon hopefully). Asher has been more mobile this past week, making trips to the grocery story, Target (thanks for all your gift cards!!), several work meetings, a few youth group events, and his first church service on Sunday! He was a huge hit everywhere he went, as you might imagine.

We have been living the good life these past few weeks with people from church bringing us food left and right. Seriously, I don't know how people could possibly go through life without a church family to be there for them. Even if you could, who would want to? Columbia Ridge has been great (as expected) and we feel extremely blessed to have them around.

More we like...

Maybe we will able to say something at some point, but for now we are still pretty much speechless. Asher is so completely wonderful sometimes we wonder if this is even real (the poop on my hands reminds me that it is).

Here are some more pictures we like...

All the rest are on flickr (being added to regularly, so keep checking). Also you should know that we don't delete the fuzzy or bad ones (aka the ones where kirsten let me use the camera). So just keep sifting through those until you get to some good ones.

Pictures...

More words later, but for now enjoy some pictures! You can see more on our flickr account. I think there is a link on this page somewhere...


7 lb 13.6 oz























perfect.

the post that begs to be made / a very pregnant holidays / weeks 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38 and 39 / still haven't had the baby yet

yes, so i've had a lot of time to think about what to title this post and it's changed several times...sorry about that.

so here we are, two days before the due date, and other things have changed as well...



(sorry for the photo quality, taken with the phone in a hurry...)

first and foremost, i've started looking scary-crazy-big. like my stomach has a life of its own, which, well, it does. sometimes i feel completely normal and like i did nine months ago and then i'll pass by a mirror and think "what the heck?!" it's crazy. i never imagined i could get this big.

(this one was taken on the 5th)



as for the baby, he's huge, too. i don't know exactly how big, but he feels big. he stretches inside me and it feels like his foot is going to shoot though my side. we keep telling him that there's more room out here, but he's not listening. he's doing great, though, everything progressing completely as normal. he has (if it's not obvious) dropped, he is super low, and i'm pretty sure he's getting more and more ready every day.

and speaking of getting more and more ready, we're losing our minds. as much as people try and tell you the final days are hard, the anticipation is excruciating. i've been having irregular/occasional contractions for about a week and a half now, and i keep waiting for them to get down to real business, but no luck.

as for the past couple of months, new years was great and quiet—we drank sparkling apple cider and watched one more year of dick clark...christmas was wonderful and crazy-busy and our first (and only?) here in portland...





we had our two/kind of three/four if you count the dog family christmas morning before anyone got here for christmas and once again loved every minute of the day (and made homemade hot chocolate and marshmallows—awesome)...










we spent the first couple of weeks of december in atlanta (before i couldn't travel anymore), and we loved, loved, loved seeing some family, and we were able to spend thanksgiving in texas, which we're so thankful for, to have too few days with that family every year.





(my cousin's wife and i—she's due in april...)

our pictures have been slim, but there they are nonetheless...

okay, more soon, promise...and be praying that we have this baby soon soon soon!!! we're super excited and can't wait any longer!!!