Monday, September 17, 2012

Ooooh mobility!!

Lock the baby gates and take away the breakables!! Aspen Ensley Vance is mobile!!!

She's not exactly "crawling" by being up on hands and knees...but she scoots and wiggles both forward and backward. My original prediction of September is definitely correct! She will probably be up on all 4s by the end of next week....she can roll all over the floor and use her feet to push herself around wherever she wants to go! 

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Go vote!!

I entered Aspen's picture in one of Parent Magazine's photo contests. You can vote once a day.

So go vote!!!



Thursday, September 6, 2012

Prediction!

I just want to make it public that I am predicting that Aspen will crawl VERY soon! In fact, I think she'll be crawling before October gets here! She's already rolling from here to there and can get up on all 4s. She kinda falls back down but she works her hands and feet enough that she can get herself turned around and try to get her toys. So there. I said it. I'll try to make Anthony make a prediction tonight!

Anyone else wanna guess?! Just post a comment down below by clicking where it says "No comments" or "1 Comment" or whatever it may be. 

Fun!

Monday, September 3, 2012

Crazy Summer

I am absolutely disappointed in myself for not posting more this summer. But I guess that's how it goes when you have two small children at home, one of whom is turning out to be a drama queen!! :) Not to mention we've been gone on vacation for a while in August, and I had to finish cleaning out my classroom. What a monumental task.

So I am completely finished cleaning out my classroom. Our storage building is totally full of randomness...I need to take a picture. It's ridiculous! I'm not sure how long I'm going to hang onto it. If (when) I go back to work I don't really want to go back into the classroom. Since I have a masters in technology I'd be able to do other things. I could teach computer classes. I could be a TA in a computer room. But what I think I'd really like to do is work as a data manager for one of the schools. I would manage NC Wise and attendance and such. Surely my master's degree would get me far enough! But for now I'm having a fabulous time staying home with my babies!

Lincoln is a joy. Every day he makes me laugh.

 He is so smart and can help me do so many things. He is just beginning to be interested in going potty. For FIVE mornings now, he's been dry in the morning and has pee pee potty'd!! We're rewarding with lots and lots of silly dancing and singing (how embarrassing for us) and M&M's. He can't yet tell us he needs to go, but he's beginning to realize the signals and I ask him to go all the time. We try to sit and go every diaper change. I'm not willing or able to go "cold turkey" and just put him in underwear or naked. I have a house full of carpet that would require tremendous cleaning if that were ever to happen. So none of that for us. Just a little at a time, please! I think he's doing great for just getting started. Yesterday he peed 3 times in the potty! That's the first time he's done it more than just in the morning or after nap. He is amazing and LOVES to sing. He knows his entire kids CD from listening in the car. He knows the entire alphabet song, even the "won't you sing with me" part. It's precious. He sings Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star more than anything else. He also still loves "Uffin Dan" and is now singing a lot of Baa Baa Black Sheep. He knows tons of colors, letters, shapes. We've been trying some preschool type activities off of Pinterest and that's been tons of fun. We just did one matching stickers to colors. He had to name the shape of the sticker and the color, then group them together. It's exciting to watch him think it out. He can now count to 14, even though there's an eleventeen in there somewhere! Most times he gets it right. He is incredibly compassionate. He's very aware of other people's feelings and asks what's wrong. Then he wants to hug you and love on you to make you feel better. He's just so sweet. He love love loves his little sister. It's just precious to see the two of them together. He wants to hug her, kiss her, hold her. Just yesterday he rode her around on his scooter..it was the cutest thing! We got it on video! He still needs to be watched with her, but he's a lot better about being careful. Or maybe she's just getting bigger and it's not so scary. Aspen is starting to reach out to him, pull his hair when he comes close, and she laughs and giggles at him. Oh they're going to be fun.

Aspen is actually 5 months old now!!

 It's incredible how time flies. She can sit up on her own. We didn't know how good she was until we went on vacation and she started sitting up on the bed and playing with her toys. Totally unprepared for that. It seems too early. She's getting up on all 4's already...I'm afraid she'll be crawling in a few weeks. I'm not ready for her to be mobile yet!! I feel like I'm going to have to baby proof all over again! Lincoln's so good about not playing with stuff he's not supposed to, we'll have to do all that again. The gate at the top of the steps has to be closed at all times now because she can roll herself all the way over there! Since she figured out how to go from back to front she's been rolling all over. Today she rolled into the wall and couldn't go any further...so she started licking it! Oh my. She's holding toys and playing with things so well now. She still drops things, and she still falls over but it just seems like her "baby-ness' is going away so fast. We're beginning sign language with her, also. It really, reallllly helped with communicating with Lincoln. We are hopeful that it will go as well with her. We're trying to help Lincoln remember them, so he can help us with them too. We truly feel that's why Lincoln is so verbal today, he had a jump start on communication. We started signing at 4 months with him and by 9 months he was beginning to sign back. Hopefully it will work for Aspen, too. She may be a bit of a drama queen. There have been several nights where Mom and Dad, or Anthony's parents will have the kids and she'll scream the whole time. They'll call us to come get her because she's so unhappy! That NEVER happened with Lincoln. When we get there and I pick her up she stops, then starts laughing at Nana. Ridiculous! Now she also gets mad if she's playing in the floor and I walk by. It's like she was fine until she saw me, then suddenly realized she wasn't with me...so she starts fussing. I've begun walking out of the way just to avoid the drama! It's sweet to be loved that much, but really...get a grip girl!

She has tried baby cereal for the first time. It was quite funny. She tried to spit it all back out at me and blow raspberries. Of course she wore more than she ate! The second time she tried it she actually managed to open her mouth for the spoon and eat some. A work in progress...

For vacation this summer we waited until all Anthony's coworkers had their time off. They have school schedules to plan around and we don't! Imagine that!! We went to Atlanta and Tybee Island, Georgia. Atlanta was so we could go to the Georgia Aquarium and "see the dolphins!" Lincoln has been seeing the commercial for the dolphin show and has begged to go ever since. It was so much fun! It's big and beautiful and has just about everything you can imagine or want to see at the aquarium. 
Jellyfish

This was huge and amazing!! The whale sharks are unbelievable. 





The dolphin show was fabulous! The singing was a little corny, but the dolphins were beautiful. I'm always amazed they can do those things...and that they follow commands so well. Amazing! Lincoln just kept saying that he wanted to swim with them. He also wanted to swim with the otters and the penguins!


We also visited Zoo Atlanta while we were there. It was a Monday and the first day of school for Atlanta kids, so it was perfectly empty! We saw elephants, lions, bears...and the highlight of the day: pandas. They actually have a panda named Po, just like Kung Fu Panda! It's all Lincoln could talk about!




Aspen spent most of the day sleeping on Daddy.

After Atlanta we traveled several more grueling hours in the car to Tybee Island. Aspen woefully chose this trip to make her loathing of the car seat known. She screamed for hours. We finally had to make some changes and ride between the car seats in the back so she would stop. It was pretty miserable. Next time we travel we're renting a mini van and taking Erin!!! :)

Tybee was beautiful! It's a small island off the coast of Savannah, GA and it's a little like Hawaii in its way of life. They call it "Tybee Time" and everyone is laid back and easy going. It's non-commercial and very private. Most of the accommodations are rental houses and condos. There's only 2 hotels on the island and they're quite small. There's no mini golf or huge restaurants. It was practically empty on the beach. I thought it was perfect! I was surprised that there are no shells at all. Just lots of broken, tiny pieces. 
Aspen's first dip in the ocean.

If you look closely you can see all of our footprints in the sand.



Lincoln absolutely loved the ocean this year. He just ran right into it and never looked back. He loved stomping on the waves as they came in, and he loved walking in the surf. He almost always had a stick in his hand to smack the water or draw in the sand. Aspen seemed to like the water when we stuck her toes in. She did not, however, enjoy the heat and fussed quite a bit about it. It was miserably hot while we were out on the beach. The wind and water were nice, but she wasn't getting a lot of either one of those. We spent a lot of time on vacation in our hotel rooms or in the car. This was the first time we've traveled since Anthony started dialysis and because of how he does it it takes up lots of time. So between nursing Aspen and doing Anthony's exchanges we spent plenty of time just hanging out. Thankfully Lincoln is such a fabulous boy and just goes with the flow pretty well.

This is only just a sampling of what's been happening this month. I will add pictures tomorrow! This thing takes For.Ever. to load! :)

Transplant here we come!

Just wanted to say that as of August 10 Anthony is on the transplant list!! Baptist's waiting list is 2-5 years. Our best bet, of course, is a living donor. We are in the process of having the living donors information turned in and then waiting for them to be tested. YAY!! Hopefully we'll be ready for a transplant before we thought! :)