My little Ashlyn

Lots of you have asked for some pictures and update of Ashlyn, so here it is!

These past two months have been especially fun watching her grow and learn.
She has started crawling, a stage I was really looking forward to. It is so fun watching her crawl around after her toys, the dogs and I. I just love having her crawl after me when I go into the kitchen. I hear her chubby little hands smacking the tile floor, and then chairs start to move under the table (she just loves playing with chairs, and usually gets rather distracted from her goal of finding me at this point). Finally I see my little cutie appear around the corner with a big smile on her face.

Ashlyn is now talking a little bit. Her first word was “hi” and now she has added “bye” and “uh-ohh” to her vocabulary. She is working on perfecting "da-da,” "ma-ma" and “book”. Everything else she calls "abee" for some reason.
We are starting to teach her "Baby Signs". So far she knows how to sign Dog and ask how to ask for More.
She is also waving to people now. Adam and I never taught her to wave, she picked it up all on her own. I was at the checkout line of the grocery store and she was sitting in the cart. I was busy paying, when I noticed that some Nicaraguan women where waving at Ashlyn and she was happily waving back. For about a week after that when we went out she would wave and said "hi" to everyone.

One thing she has learned is what the word "no" means. It has been fascinating to watch the internal struggle she has. To obey or not to obey? She only has three main rules so far; no playing with shoes, the dog dishes, and no flipping her plate of food upside down. She usually is really good at obeying, but the one rule she has the hardest time with is not touching our shoes. For some reason she has just got to touch mommy’s sandals.

My favorite time with her is in the morning. She never cries in the morning to get up, she just waits for me to come get her. When I come in she sits up as fast as she can, gives me the biggest smile and says "hi!” Her smile is what captures me; it is of pure love, like she hasn’t seen me in days.
Then its breakfast time, her usual is banana and egg. She is crazy about bananas, every morning it’s squeals of delight as I cut up the banana.
After breakfast we read books together on the couch, she loves reading books. She turns the pages as I read a long. She’s a really fast page turner though, so I have to speed read through.

Ashlyn adjusted to life in Nicaragua faster than we did. She loves going into town and seeing all the people, especially the horse and buggies go by.
People come up to me all the time because of Ashlyn. They love holding her and interacting with her. It is fun to see her engage them with smiles and waves.

If you would like to see more pictures of Ashlyn, you can visit our photo ablum of her at this link: http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/thetoddz/Ashlyn