Moving Right Along

Ashton is 16 months 19 days old and has been in our arms 3 months 21 days. He spent the first 13 months of his life in Ethiopia where he learned to sit up, eat crackers, crawl, pull himself up on objects and even take a step or two. It was in Ethiopia where he mastered the art of projectile vomiting, but also the art of charming everyone within eye shot. He learned a lot during his first 13 months, here are some details on the 3 1/2 that have followed:

*Forget walking, he's running. Up hills, down hills, over and under fences, and through pumpkin patches (my favorite).
*He'll eat anything. He may spit it out or shoot a "why did you feed THAT to me?" look in your direction, but he'll at least try it. He's down to one bottle a day, just before bedtime.
*Ma ma ma, buh buh buh, da da da, and Ay-EEE-aaai-mmm-boooooi (said repeatedly and with varying tones) are so yesterday. Today he's more nuh or ehh (when pointing to a horse), uff (dog), and mow (cat). He also says a lot of Uh-ohhh...
*Meltdowns have severely decreased in frequency, though he still requires a fairly regular reminder of what will happen if he throws himself on the floor and screams loud enough so that even those folks living in Alaska on that island with a road that's not connected to a bridge can hear him.
*I need more refrigerator space. He comes home from school with beautiful artwork at least 3 times a week so I quickly ran out of space on the fridge and started taping them to the walls. He likes finger painting best. We do a lot of laundry.
*Surprise surprise, the boy likes to rock out. He'd rather sit on our laps and read a story with music blaring in the background than pretty much anything else - it's the cure all. Needless to say we end our evenings with a combo rock/read jam session every night.

And last but certainly not least, DRUM ROLL PLEASE...

7:30PM - 7:00AM - HIS SLEEPING HOURS FOR 3 NIGHTS IN A ROW!!! I'm one proud (and well rested) momma. And I totally just jinxed myself didn't I...

On one last note, we contacted, interviewed, and hired for one night only... a babysitter! Tomorrow night we will put Ashton to bed and then leave him in the hands of another person long enough to go to dinner and maybe even a movie but most definitely a late night cocktail at a bar...without a baby. I'm only slightly concerned because we haven't done this since, well the night be fore we left for Ethiopia in May, and I'm afraid our date night planning skills have suffered a bit. My guess is that they'll come back pretty quickly the moment we realize that we can enjoy our glass of wine in a restaurant without having to employ our super power reflexes in the event that a certain someone decides to throw a certain something (body parts included) in the glasses general direction. It's been a while since I've enjoyed a glass of wine over dinner with only one hand.

But what you really came for...