Asher's steps

So, I don't have an actual picture or video because Asher has never actually taken steps when the camera is ready.  However, Asher started taking one or two steps on his own on Sunday.  Today during playgroup, he took four or five steps in pursuit of a cabbage patch doll.  With the right motivation, right?  He took a few other steps besides.  He's growing up fast!

Plus, this picture is two months old.  I can't find the camera (and newer pics) right now because Ivy said, "I put it somewhere."  Great.

Because there are none

So, I was checking the blog the other day--feeling pretty good because it had been less than 6 months since the last time I posted--when I realized that I don't have any pictures of Asher up here.  Oops.  Sorry.  He's one amazingly cute baby so you've all been missing out.  Here are some pics to prove it:

Sweet newborn pic (courtesy of Christina)

Baaa

Hat and booties made by Great Grandma Janis (quilt by grandma-lene)

That cat!

Curious & Cute

He's always smiling!  This is more like what I see every day.

"Help!"  They all love him.  But, no, Ivy is not supposed to pick him up.

Laughing Asher

I'm sorry.  I have no pictures to document the event.  Tonight I was helping the kids get ready for bed.  Asher was chilling on Katie's bed.  Nathan was talking to me but facing Asher.  I threw a stuffed animal over Asher's head to put it away on the shelf.  I don't know if it was the stuffed animal sailing or Nathan talking but Asher started giggling.  That made both Nathan and I start giggling.  So, Asher laughed some more.  Katie and Ivy came back in the room from brushing their teeth to see what was up.  They started laughing with the rest of us.  All of us kept laughing to try to keep Asher laughing.  He kept laughing--maybe because we all sounded so silly.  It was precious and fun.

Nathanism

The kids were dragging their feet in getting ready for school this morning--as usual.  They were all ready except for putting on their snow clothes ten minutes before it was time to leave.  They left the house five minutes late.
When Tyce looked up at the clock and noticed the time, he said, "We'll have to run to get to school."  Or something to that effect.
Nathan replied, "Pretty lively for a man your age.  30 years old.  Pretty lively."
Luckily for him, Dad was preoccupied and didn't hear.

My own Rapunzel chops her hair

Have I ever mentioned that Ivy loves scissors?  Well, she does.  Give her some scrap paper and a pair of scissors and it'll look like a paper blizzard swept through the apartment.  However, aside from a few cut-up papers that shouldn't have been cut up and the inevitable mess of the blizzard, there hasn't really been a downside to her fascination.  It keeps her happy.  Improves her manual dexterity.  And, unlike Katie who did this to her own Cinderella doll's dress*:

 

*Sorry, this is completely beside the point, but it's been almost a year and the senselessness of it still bothers me.

she doesn't cut anything except paper.  Until now that is:

So.  This is Ivy's first hair cut!  Not the first time she has cut her own hair (though it is that, too), but the first time she has had her hair cut at all.  (Aside from some tiny snips when she begged to have her hair cut after I cut Nathan's & Katie's hairs.)  Of course, the idea of this as the first cut is not counting the mitigating circumstance of the day before:  I was working at the computer when I heard Katie crying out from the hallway.  I look up to see Nathan with a pair of scissors heading toward his sister's head.  Then, I cry out, find out he's already been snipping (luckily at the nape of her neck where I can't even tell where the hair is missing) and he goes to time-out.  It's not until his time-out is over that I found out he snipped somewhere at Ivy's head, too.  I can't tell where that chunk of hair came from either.
Thus, the idea of cutting hair by oneself with kid scissors was introduced by her elder brother.  I'm hoping she'll go back and stick with paper in the future.  Though, perhaps all that practice paid off:  for a self-inflicted first haircut, it doesn't look too bad.  I kind of like it.