October 2013

Two Years!

The park with cousins  :)

apple picking!

Our house faces the culdesac so we have a fantastic vantage point for "action"... Asher LOVES it!

GO PACK GO!

My Fall decor for the new house  ;)

Smooches for Big Bird

He's pretty freaking hilarious!

Asher vs kitchen table leg  ;(

Asher's "creative movement" class... he LOVED it!  Ross came to the first session.

He was so psyched for the animals at this farm!

Watching a baby bunny drink... pretty much the cutest thing on the planet.

We learned on this day that Asher is allergic to hay (facial hives) 

He's crazy for binoculars!

Halloween 2013

Trick or Treating with the cousins

He loves his wagon from Nana and Papa!

Our backyard!

Having fun with Daddy  :)

Cutest little Packer fan!

He loves watching for the mail!  Just like his Great Paps

first day of Creative Movement class!

Showing off his mad skills from class

Fall 2013

Recently we were all almost swept away by some nasty storms that produced devastating tornadoes.  We had an underground storm shelter installed beneath our garage this past summer...  A tornado touched down 1 mile from our house.  Thankfully that one hit a field, but a half mile in any direction and it would have hit a subdivision of homes.  It was pretty frightening... we were diligently watching the weather online and also listening to a weather radio.  We had my sister and her kids over because my brother-in-law was on shift at the firehouse.  They called for Westfield to seek immediate shelter and our sirens were going off for at least an hour.  AFTER they lifted the watch for our area, we all got out, looked at the sky, and saw a wall of twirly VERY LOW black clouds quickly headed right for us.  We RAN back to the garage and filed down again... that's when it hit hard, and that's when the tornado hit down the road from us.  We had 3 adults and 4 children down there, and it was cozy, but there was enough room for more. We had the weather radio right outside the door to the shelter so we could follow it, and also ran an extension cord down to the shelter so we could bring down a portable DVD player (THANK YOU UNCLE DUSTY AND AUNTIE CHRYSTAL!!!).  The kids were remarkably well-behaved almost the entire time.  We let them watch Charlotte's Web (which Asher now LOVES), and we showed them pictures from our phones and they sat well for a long time.  Crazy weather in the midwest!  We now reside in "tornado alley" so I keep telling Ross the storms we get here are NOT like what we experienced in Chicagoland, and not like what he experienced in WI growing up.

We are gearing up for the holidays and it's so fun this year, because although Asher doesn't quite get what holidays are yet, he gets excited for them and loves saying "HAPPY THANKSGIVING" or "MERRY CHRISTMAS"... He LOVED Halloween and was excited to dress up, and also loved saying "trick or treat".  He can't eat any candy, but since he's never had it, he has no idea yet what he's missing and didn't care a bit that we gave all of it to his cousins.  He just liked walking around in his costume and talking to the people that answered the doors  ;)  He's not shy AT ALL!

Ross is doing well and keeping very busy with work, and I'm of course keeping very busy chasing a two year-old and teaching him everything he needs to know to survive and thrive in the world  ;)  No big deal.  We recently decided to do a grass-fed dairy trial because one of my friends that has a corn intolerance told me that she can have grass-fed dairy and not be affected at all, saying that the corn-fed dairy is what makes her sick.  The yogurt she suggested is from an organic, grass-fed farm/creamery that is in Zionsville, IN, which is like one town over from us!  How cool is that?!  It doesn't get any more local than that.  I was excited to try, hoping desperately that maybe the grass-fed option might make a difference.  In the beginning, it seemed to.  We started with yogurt and for the first day or two we saw no change in him in any way.  He did 7 days total on the yogurt and 1 day with some whole milk (organic grass-fed) mixed in his soy milk, but by then it was obvious it was causing him distress... Although, it was nothing near the level of insane hell that we went through with him during infancy.  After about 48 hours or less, he became very very fussy, having tantrums and fits for EVERY SINGLE THING, allllllllllllllllllllllllllll day long.  He also started waking VERY early, and not napping well at all.  Then he started having a very hard time falling asleep at night, staying up way later than normal in the crib trying to go to sleep... then still waking incredibly early... then still not napping well... which then also compounded his insane tantrums and constant SCREAMING.  The ridiculous fussiness got worse and worse, and it was apparent to me that it was the dairy.  He reacts this way with corn products or derivatives of any kind.  I told Ross I wanted to stop the yogurt and he didn't, so we decided we'd get some of the grass-fed whole milk and start mixing it in with his milk.  That took only one sippy cup of 1/4 cow's milk to determine it was really bothering him.  He became very pale (even more so than usual), had terribly dark circles under his eyes, and became horribly bloated, on top of the not sleeping and insane fussiness.  All glaring signs of food intolerance.  We stopped.  Poor buddy.  We were hoping to be able to incorporate some grass-fed dairy just to get more fat into his diet, but he's not ready.  With a food intolerance, kids can grow out of it at any time, and the real difference is how it affects their body.  A true allergy triggers an allergic response and possible anaphylaxis.  A food intolerance is very hard to pinpoint, and almost impossible to test for aside from a food trial.  Blood tests and allergy tests will not register intolerances.  It is said that an intolerance won't "kill" you (an allergy can), but an intolerance can make you very dangerously sick if it's ongoing.  People that have food intolerances aren't able to properly digest that food, and also often cannot retain any of the nutrients that they are ingesting due to the body rejecting the food in question.  This often causes people with food intolerances to become malnourished or deficient in specific nutrients, become sick easily, etc.  All that to say, Asher is obviously still intolerant of dairy and corn.  For now, we keep on keeping on... We will do a dairy trial again down the road, maybe in 6 months or a year.  He may have outgrown it by then, or he may have this his entire childhood.  Only time will tell.  If you want to get a tiny tiny glimpse of what we are dealing with in this, for one week (or even just one day), look at EVERYTHING that you eat.  See if there is dairy (in any form) in it, or if there is corn (of any kind) in it.  It's not just straight corn, or corn flour or corn meal or corn oil that bother him.  The derivatives like corn syrup or maltodextrin or dextrose or any imitation sweetener, those bother him just as much, if not more.  It's HARD, but we're used to it, and it's our life!

p.s. I'm going to post pictures and videos in separate posts to follow by month... there are MANY MANY photos to catch up on, so here's a disclaimer to skip those posts if you aren't a fan.  We have some friends and family reading this blog who aren't on Facebook and whom we haven't seen in a very very long time.  This is the only way they see anything about him, so the overflow of documenting his life is for them (shout out to my great Aunt Marge!) :)  Thanks for reading!  Thanks for caring  ;)

Months into Years

Asher is TWO!!!  It's hard to believe in some ways, but in others he seems much older.  Now is the age where we begin referring to our son in "years" as opposed to months.  It's kind of freeing in one sense, but in another, there is a HUGE difference between a 24 month-old and a child that is 35 month-old.  He looks like quite the little boy now.  It's rare that he even ever looks like a toddler anymore!  He gets more handsome with each passing day it seems, we always find ourselves telling him and each other that he is just SO cute! 

We tried putting Asher in Sunday school a few times (with Ross in there), and the 3rd time, there were kids in there that were very sick, and of course Asher caught it... and then I did too.  We were both sick for about 3 weeks and took antibiotics that did nothing.  It was miserable.  During cold and flu season which has already hit hard here, we have to be diligent about keeping him healthy and safe, even if that means giving up on some things for the time being.  It's not fair that he should then spend his whole winter sick and out of commission for life.  He gets sick very very easily, which means we have to be OCD about trying our best to make good choices to keep him as healthy as possibly.  All kids get sick.  Obviously.  Sure it helps to build their immune system... but with Asher's history of chronic ear infections, him getting sick constantly means surgery, and that's not something I'm willing to risk.  The pediatrician told us most toddlers get sick 6-8 times a year, and the bulk of that is during the fall/winter months.  The difference is, Asher doesn't get colds.  Colds last 4-7 days per the pediatrician.  Anything over 9 has turned into something else (sinus infection, ear infection, bronchitis, etc).  100% of the time, that's what happens to Asher.  If he just got the sniffles for less than a week, never got a fever, and never needed to see the doctor because he just got better quickly, that would be amazing.  That's not our reality.  The difference is, in those 6-8 illnesses that he will get annually, each one lasts 2 weeks at minimum.  I hate cold and flu season!  We wash our hands like crazy, use hand gel, try to avoid knowingly germ-infested things, etc, but you can only do so much.  If we don't see you because you are sick, it is NOT personal.  It's what we HAVE to do, and that's that.  Thanks in advance for not knowingly subjecting Asher to illnesses if it can be helped.  We know none of you would do that and know that you all have his best interest at heart.

In other news, Asher continues to amaze us with his intelligence in many ways.  Also, he's ridiculously funny.  He LOVES to dance and sing... it's what he spends most of the day doing.  He's really into pretend play these days and some of the stuff he comes up with is pretty entertaining.  He also is crazy about reading still, and reads dozens of library books over and over and over again each week.  He LOVES the library.  We recently went to a nearby park and he enjoyed running and playing with his cousins.  There will eventually be a pool and a park right here in our subdivision that will be just for the residents, but they aren't building the pool/park until a certain percentage of lots are sold.  That will be very convenient!  The way lots are selling and houses are going up around here, it probably won't take long.  Asher is still obsesses with all things Sesame Street!  We recently decided to get Amazon Prime since we don't have cable, and it's been fantastic for shows for Asher.  It has 42 seasons of Sesame Street, with many episodes in each season, so Asher gets to watch a new episode daily now instead of the same Elmo dvds over and over and over.  That benefits all of us  :) 

I'm going to break a monster post into a few segments due to the fact that I'm trying to cover a 3.5 month span here...  We had a small family party for Asher's 2nd birthday, and on his actual birthday, we took him to the zoo, which he LOVES.  It was a good time!

This is what happens when all of your cousins are GIRLS!

Grandpa and Gigi visiting from WI for Asher's birthday party

Mimi and Uncle playing at Asher's party

hanging with Grampy ;)

My nieces just adore Ross' parents!

Nana and Papa at the party

Indy Zoo on Asher's b-day  :)

Poor Buddy  :(  passed out during his 3 week illness this last time around!