Latest Edition of Ashley-isms

Our precious little girl is not so little anymore.  Boy is she growing like a weed!  Her baby face has become a little girl face and her once rounder baby fat frame is now lean and long.  I swear she has grown a couple of inches in just the last couple of months.  She now weighs 33 pounds and is around 3 1/2 feet tall!

In addition to her growth physically, she also has grown so much in her vocabulary and is smart as a whip!  Some of things she comes out with still amaze Paul and I, and we have to keep reminding ourselves that she is only 3 (almost 4!!!) years old .  She loves to write her name and figure out how to spell other words.  On May 2nd, the first word other than her name that she wrote was "poop" (are you surprised?? - she's Paul's daughter after all).  She also is making relationships between words and what they belong to, like for example the word "stop" on a stop sign.  She reads S-T-O-P, and says Stop.  She also likes to play games on her iTouch.  These games are mostly educational games that are teaching her how to spell, write, learn the states, numbers, matching, rhymes, etc.  It's awesome.  Just the other day, we hadn't realized how much she was picking up on the "learning the states" game.  She knew just by the shape what state it was and was getting most of them right!  We started introducing the states to her when Paul traveled to Dallas.  We showed her a map and traced the route that Paul was going to take to drive from San Antonio to Dallas.  That brought on lots of  questions about where we lived, etc.  So we showed her where Nanny and Pop-Pop live in New Jersey and that we lived in Texas (she says we live in San Natonio, Texas) and that Daddy grew up in Colorado. Currently, our desktop background on our home computer is a map of the United States.  She loves to pick out states.

Ashley and one of her Carousels from Judi

Some of the things she's really into lately is carousels (it all started by the Mary Poppins scene in the chalk picture), the Barbie in a Mermaid Tale movie, horses, mermaids, dancing and singing, airplanes and trains.  Judi, our daycare provider, was so sweet and got her two music box carousels as an early birthday present.  She was in love with them and plays with them almost everyday! ( I will write a separate post about her reaction to the carousels soon)  She said she wants a carousel cake for her birthday!  She still sleeps with "Baby" every night in addition to a slew of other stuffed animals that she takes inventory on each night before bed.  She knows when one is missing and will make sure you find it so she can have it with her!!

Ashley and "Baby"

Ashley and her stuffed animals beside her. Check out how LONG she is!!

Below are some of her latest and greatest expressions over the last several months.  We are so in love with her and can't believe our first baby is going to be four years old in just 5 weeks!  It felt like yesterday when she was born!

• She likes to say "C'mon dude!" or "C'mon man!" I think she gets it from me when I get frustrated at drivers in the car.
• She calls the beach "summertime" To her they are one in the same (I can't say I disagree!) :)

• She loves the Believe show at SeaWorld with Shamu, and because of that she tells us whenever she wants to get her way with something "It's okay, just believe!"
• She says, "Are you kidding me?" and "Are you serious?" (that's from me too - those are my frustrated phrases)
• She has a toy "Mr. Bump" stuffed animal that makes funny noises and one of the phrases is "Oh, Poopety-Poop" She skips through all the phrases just get to that one because he says the word "poop"
• She says the word "symphony" like "sniffony"
• Since we tell her to be careful when she picks up something breakable, instead of calling it breakable she says "it's glassable"
• She is so into mermaids that she shreds little pieces of toilet paper like a fin of a mermaid.  Paul and I were finding these little pieces of toilet paper all around the house and we asked her why she was putting them around and she said "those are my mermaids." at first glance it looked like a shred of paper, but after a closer look, you could tell it was the little slit in a mermaid tale to show the two fins.  so funny!  She has quite an imagination!! (we have a hard time throwing them away)

I am sure there's more, but that's all for now - or what my brain can remember at this point! :)

Crazy Kid.