Nineteen Months Old

He's made it past the hump and is now closer to age two than age one!

I'm finally finding myself starting to replace the word "baby" with "boy" or "son" or "child" when referring to him. And I haven't even had to force myself. Wow, it's like the realization that he's growing up is sinking in and isn't being completely rejected by my mind. Maybe there is hope for me after all? Maybe Asher won't have to battle his mother to allow him to take someone other than her as his prom date! Well, now I'm getting a little ahead of myself, aren't I? I really don't want to make any promises I can't keep.

This has been a really super fast month; I don't know where the summer has gone. One day it was July 4th, the next day, it's August 5th. I don't know what we've done over the month - it's really stupid, I honestly can't recall! I feel like I'm in a daze lately, just going through the motions like a robot. I'm sure a lot of it has to do with the fact that I'm so tired lately; I'm not sure if it's a slight case of insomnia, or stress, or just the fact that I've been staying up way too late. All I know is, I'M TIRED. Of course, it could have absolutely NOTHING to do with the fact that I live with a little guy who makes monkeys look lazy and sluggish.

Asher's eating is the same - particular and finicky - but I've just about given up on caring. You only want to eat three kernels of corn and a lick of your chicken for dinner? Fine by me! I've realized that if I think of him as having five small feedings instead of three meals and a couple of snacks, I feel better and more relaxed about his eating habits.

He is talking more and more. The vast majority of it you cannot understand, but he is a nonstop chatterbox. He points at just about everything and always has something to say about it. I'm enjoying this because this is the brief stage when everyone thinks he's so cute when he's "talking" and that overweight man sitting next to us cannot understand that Asher is calling him fat. He's imitating what we say so much now that I'm trying my hardest to break my fond addiction of swearing. It's a sacrifice I'm willing to make after hearing Mom's story about me, as a toddler, calling a woman a bitch at the grocery store.

What I'm really loving, though, is watching Asher's interests blossom. Of course he's into everything right now - a shredded piece of tissue on the floor is pretty fascinating to him. But there are definitely certain things that peak his interests more than others. He LOVES to color and draw. He LOVES to play ball. He LOVES to play with his Megabloks. He LOVES reading - and lately he seems to enjoy reading to himself more than us reading to him. His biggest obsession of all, though, is MATCHBOX CARS. He carries these cars around with him everywhere. Every night I find them all (or most of them) and put them in their bin. Every night I have to do this, because he spends every day meticulously scattering them through the house. One on my bed. One on the nightstand. Six lined up in a row in the bathroom. Two on the windowsill on the landing. Four down the staircase. One on the sofa. Three on the kitchen floor. And when he sees the full bin of cars that I've gathered, he shrieks and runs over to it on his tippy toes with the biggest, most excited grin I've ever seen and starts taking them out, one by one, and showing them to me, one by one, all the while giving me a lengthy description of each of them. Geesh, this kid has it B-A-D for cars and trucks. I think he'd be in seventh heaven if he could sit at a construction site all day and watch the equipment move things around and the dump trucks haul stuff away.

OH...THAT explains why I've been referring to him as a BOY lately instead of as a BABY!

Here are the pictures from July.