Giant Dumpster Bathtub.

Ugh, I have to write, but I really don’t want to. I want to lay on the bed with my family and rest my aching, tired body. But I know I would hate myself (or at least be pissed at myself) if I don’t keep a record of Ash’s early life. Hopefully, not just her early life, but you know, gotta keep the goals small so they seem achievable.

I uploaded almost 70 photos from the last 8 days. I just love taking pictures of Ashley, she’s so funny and adorable. There are now 1336 pictures of her online, at least in my photobucket. There may be others elsewhere that I haven’t added there yet. Yikes.

Some things Ashley does now that I may or may not have mentioned:

• She reaches for me. All the time. Just about falls out of her Daddy’s arms trying to get to me. When we are alone and I’m not with her she’ll say "Mum!" until I look at her.
• She understands "wants ups?" and reaches her arms up so she can be pulled into a standing position.
• Her favourite game is ‘standing toys’ where she stands against the couch arm and pulls a pile of toys onto the couch or ground. Sometimes she just grabs her favourite thing of that moment and stands and plays with it. She’s getting good at leaning against the couch cushion and lowering herself down when she wants to sit and play.
• She also adores sitting up on the change table, grabbing the container that holds the diapers and tipping it upside down. She’s getting good at not trying to eat the diapers often too.
• She can squirm and wiggle and kinda crawl backwards. Yesterday she was sitting in my lap while I laid down and she fell forward, rotated and then sat up so she was resting near my armpit. It was pretty impressive.
• In the evening, about 20 minutes before pjs and bed, quite often needs to be naked (well, in a diaper) time. Even when she feels pretty cool. I think she just enjoys the freedom.
• She’s teething, again. No teeth yet, just the random fuss that not even boobs fix.
• She’s starting to get pretty clingy, she hates when I shower or do something that means I’m not with her.

This past week has been pretty awesome. I decided, again, that I’m going to start a workout routine and hopefully I’ll stick with it this time. I rented ’30 day shred’ through netflix to see if it was worth buying, man that woman is tough. I do notice a difference after 2 days (well, 4 days, but I’ve done it twice…) so I think it is worth my money. Ashley is such an awesome bub, she’ll play on the couch but mostly watch me or the tv. She prefers when I do things on the wii fit (cartoons always win) but she’ll still watch either way.

Ooh, Ashley got her passport! Now we’re all set to travel, you know, once we have tickets.

Another thing we have been working on this past week is getting her to nap alone. Prior to Monday the…27th, she would only nap on me, either while feeding or sitting on me resting her head on my legs. Now, she naps on the bed. We’ll work towards me moving her into the crib, but for now, this is awesome progress. The first couple of days I barely escaped (our bed is RIDICULOUSLY loud and squeaky, stupid metal frame thing) and got maybe 5 minutes of time to myself. Today, in the afternoon, we got 45 minutes. Woo! That is also progress, she used to only nap 30 minutes on the rare occasion I could get her to sleep somewhere that wasn’t on me. The first couple of times she would cry the instant she woke up (I think she’d be confused by the lack of mummy), but now she’s pretty good. I can see her waking if I’m at the computer (and I pretty much always am, because I can) and she’ll stir, either grab her pacifier and go back to sleep, or wake up and grab the toy I left just out of her reach and play, or just lay there making noises and entertaining herself for a while before she calls for me or decides to cry.

Friday lunchtime, little miss smoosh scratched my right eye on the way to nap time. Usually when she hits me in the eye it takes a few minutes to heal up but this was BAD. It cleared up for a while but around dinner time it got bad again, to the point I was crying. I could hold my eyes open for a second or two at a time (with lots of blinking) by bedtime, but it was still realy painful. Didn’t truly fix up until after lunch on Saturday. Bright lights still hurt me, and the last 2 days I’ve had to wear sunnies in the car so I could drive and not have my eyes squeeze shut as though I’d just chopped a fresh onion. So glad I have random sunnies in the car. I NEVER wear sunnies (they hurt my face and feel weird, stupid crooked nose) so the fact that I have been shows how much they are needed.

Now I’m a little terrified every time Ashley waves her arms around.

Jake and Ashley have started a nice little tradition while I shower now. Well, they did it once but Jake says they both loved it so much they will do it more often. They went outside for fresh air, and because Ashley loves to watch traffic. They both came inside so happy, it made me happy. Plus it meant I could shower in peace, not having to either listen to a baby cry or have visitors in the bathroom.

That reminds me, on… possibly Wednesday, I did the dishes and cleaned the bathroom before I showered, so I was ‘gone’ for more than an hour, and Ash knew I was in the bathroom but she couldn’t come in because it smelled chemically. Poor thing had a breakdown, hysterically sobbing. I felt so bad. I rushed through the shower, didn’t even dry myself just wrapped my towel around me and swooped her up in some mummy cuddles. Had to sing to her to get her to calm down enough to eat, and then she fell asleep for 40 minutes. I was so glad it was easily fixed but man, I felt like such an ass.

This afternoon, Jake took Ashley for a stroll while I cleaned the apartment (it’s always nice to have a fresh clean apartment when you have just done laundry, then everything is fresh!). Again, everyone had fun, they got to see things outside and I got to listen to music loudly and clean without having anyone in my way. Another thing they are going to be doing every weekend from now on. So silly we have only just worked these things out. Parenthood takes thought, and thinking is tough when you are a new parent.

Hope the pictures work, photobucket is being a bit of a poohead today.

Title: How I imagine dumpsters get cleaned.