update

my usb cord is giving me trouble, so here's a quick post sans pictures. asher's 4 month appointment was on tuesday. he weighed in at 17 lbs. and 24 3/4 inches long. his newest tricks include sticking out his tongue and grabbing his toes...sooooooo cute!!! not to be outdone, caleb is officially potty-trained...as long as you don't ask him to poop in the potty (typical boy, huh?). he wakes up dry from his nap and has even started waking up dry and/or barely wet in the morning. hope my usb cord decides to cooperate soon. it's just no fun without pictures.

improv

who needs drums when you have... a diaper genie. it did provide a nice beat for classics like the B-I-B-L-E (emphasis on the EEEEEE!!!) and happy birthday to you. who needs a tree house when you have... the kitchen table. the past several evenings after dinner, caleb has been pulling asher under the table with him to play. it's so cute. caleb talks asher's ear off and asher just kicks and coos away.

just for fun

such a sweetheart (notice the huge curl of hair behind his ear!) caleb in the same green chair at 3ish months old. asher can't even wear that outfit anymore, and it was roomy on caleb. brotherly love not sure which looks crazier...caleb's smile, or his hair after nap one day...

only a 2 year old...

only a 2 year old would think that this outfit looked good. it may look like he's color blind, but there is a logical (to a 2 year old) explanation for the stripe/plaid combo. for about a month, caleb has been living in his "golf" shirts, otherwise known as the various striped t-shirts that my mom got dirt cheap at kohl's for him to play in. i'm not sure why he thinks they are golf shirts because you can't get into most golf courses without a collar on your shirt, but he loves them. regarding the plaid shorts, he wore them on vacation, a.k.a. riding in the silver truck (also an obsession), and daddy has a pair very similar, so that's a no-brainer about why he has asked to wear them every day for the past week. put that reasoning together and you get this outfit when mommy asks, "what do you want to wear today?" these sunglasses he received as a party favor are looking like they may turn into his newest obsession...but i'm kinda diggin' the yellow frames.

asher at 3 months

hard to believe, but asher is already 3 months old. my, how time really does fly. i don't have any stats on him because we go to the doctor next month for a well-check. however, he is wearing 6 month clothes so it's safe to say that he is growing at a healthy rate. asher continues to be a happy baby. he is quite content to sit up and coo, babble, and chew on his fingers during his awake time, but that's not all he does. during our daily "exercise" time we roll over, sit up, and stand. he looks so proud of himself every time i pull him up into a standing position. asher still wakes up around 4/4:30 a.m. to eat, but i believe that he will stop that once he begins eating solids in a month or so. i would love to say that he takes long naps, but that would be a lie. most days, he has a solid morning nap and sleeps at some point in the afternoon, but the time and length varies. and then again, he has his days where he catnaps all day long. at least he's a pleasant little booger while he's awake! working hard during tummy time a little brotherly bonding sitting on the back porch watching big brother ride his tricycle. asher doesn't like to sit back and relax in his seats. he prefers to really be sitting up on his own. he even tries in his car seat...crazy kid. no babies were harmed during this photo shoot. it's just what happens when asher does tummy time with the boppy pillow and decides to try to crawl over it!!! he actually works the lower half of his body like he's crawling and sometimes, like this day, he moves a little bit. love that face!

our 4th anniversary

while in hilton head, tom and i celebrated our fourth anniversary by going out to dinner alone thanks to some free babysitting by nana! we went to red fish and it was most excellent. this restaurant would typically be waaaaaaaaay out of our budget, but a while back, several families in our church decided to bless each of the pastors and their wives with some date money and tom and i managed to hold on to ours until now. tom enjoyed a huge 16 oz. sirloin while i gorged myself on an equally huge pork chop with brandywine apple chutney, fresh asparagus, and mashed potatoes...yum, yum! after that, we took a short moonlight stroll on the beach (awwwwwww) before heading back to reality and a midnight feeding for asher : no lovey-dovey sentiments for this past year, just a whole bunch of thankfulness that we survived it. it was a very rough year considering we've moved twice (in the same metro area) and tom has served at two different churches (yea PBF!). however, the birth of our second happy, healthy son has been the biggest reason for thanks thus far. we're looking forward to what year #5 has in store!

hilton head 2009

since saturday, we've been in hilton head, sc with tom's mom and her girls. this makes the second year that we've had a big family vacation, and it's a tradition that tom and i hope to continue for many more years. the great weather has allowed us to enjoy the ocean and pool at our leisure--a great blessing considering how many feeding/naptimes we have to juggle these days! our attempt at a sand castle. pretty impressive considering caleb was knocking down towers as fast as tom could build them up. caleb playing in the sand. he looooooooooved the beach again this year, including the sand...a major improvement over last year when he screamed whenever the dry sand stuck to his feet, or his crocs. caleb has decided to call the ocean, "yucky water" due to the fact that it tastes yucky whenever he gets it in his mouth. despite the yuck factor, he still loved getting in the ocean. asher enjoying himself at the beach. i would have taken more than one picture, but it was the same story, different verse each day we went. guess the sound of the ocean was relaxing. check out the huge crab we found when we were setting up our canopy the first day! he was a quick little sucker, but we managed to trap him in a bucket for a few pics. and yes, we let him go. daddy and caleb mommy and caleb look, asher was awake for part of vacation! hands down, the best part of vacation for caleb was the silver truck we rented. he loved being able to drive it, hold the keys in his pocket, and just ride around the sea pines plantation in it. caleb really enjoyed the playground at harbour town. it was a nice change of pace from the ocean and the pool in the morning. caleb in the pool. daddy managed to rig him up a personal floatation device consisting of his life jacket, inner tube, and a snorkel. the snorkel was the glue that held the whole thing together. remove it, and caleb would slip down through the inner tube...crazy, but it worked.

look what i can do!!!

it's hard to tell from this picture, but asher loves to chew on his fist. frequently, he will find his thumb and is quite happy to trade it for the paci. asher is such a happy little guy. we love to make him smile.

asher at 2 months

asher is growing like a weed! at birth, his weight was 7 lbs. 14 oz. 2 weeks later, he not only had regained his birth weight, he surpassed it at 8 lbs. 4 oz. at that time he was in the 50th percentile for both weight and height. well, he's still growing and at 2 months old he weighs 13 lbs. 10 oz. and is 23 1/2 inches long!!! he's in the 90th percentile for weight and 80th for his height. definitely a change from caleb who has always hung out around the 5th percentile for weight and 50th percentile for height. asher is eating every 2 1/2-3 1/2 hours during the day. he'll also take a really good morning nap, the afternoon one we're still working on, although he's not crabby if he's awake. at night, he sleeps from approximately 8:30-12:00 a.m., eats, and then sleeps again until 4:00/4:30 a.m. eats and will have very light/active sleep until we all are up around 6:30 a.m. i have been thrilled with that schedule! asher is such a happy little boy. he has started cooing and making all sorts of other baby noises. this morning, he was smiling at me and caleb and it absolutely melted my heart. he also lets us know when he's excited by kicking his legs and waving his arms. he loves to lay on his back and have you pull him up to the sitting position. he'll just look around (he has really good head control) with an excited expression on his face. he's doing pretty well with the dreaded tummy time, too. he fusses a little bit, but caleb and i encourage him to lift his head. it's too cute to hear caleb say, "come on asher," and "yea asher." i can't say it enough, tom and i are doubly blessed to have such happy and healthy boys!

caleb at 2 1/2 years old

the first half of this year has been a big one for caleb. he's already mastered sleeping in a "big boy" (toddler) bed, only using his pacifier at nap/bedtime & in the car (this was a big one for us), speaking in sentences, running/jumping/kicking/climbing stairs faster and higher than i ever thought possible, and he became a big brother. quite a lot of work in only 6 months! there's only 1 MAJOR task left to complete...potty training. we've began the process, but that topic is worthy of it's own post. caleb has picked up a few really cute expressions such as, "watch out, buddy!" (he likes to say this when he drives his choo-choo train past the station), "asher love me?," "hey, dude!" (an homage to his uncle patrick), "you kidding me?!" (you can hear this when in the car and the cars in front of us don't go fast enough), and the infamous, "bad gas [insert name here]!!!" who has bad gas differs from time-to-time. often times it is me (his father puts him up to it), occasionally it's daddy, and one time it was even our sweet friend kelley...good thing she has two boys of her own and understands that for a little boy to say you have bad gas is really a compliment! also, caleb has finally started singing his abc's. up until a few months ago, every time i started to sing it, he would say, "no." i thought he'd go to kindergarten saying "no" to his abc's. apparently he just didn't want to sing them until he knew them all. he also likes to sing, "twinkle, twinkle little star," "baa, baa black sheep," "ring around the rosies," "the wheels on the bus," "holy, holy, holy," and one of his catechism songs, "who made God?" he has also gotten pretty good at counting 1-10; only he prefers for the order to go "1, 3, 2" as opposed to "1, 2, 3." crazy kid. his imagination has also started to grow by leaps and bounds. he is very good at playing by himself while i'm feeding asher. he loves to take the trains and part of the tracks off of the table, much to his father's dismay, and place them on the couch in his own order. he also uses them as different "houses" for his trains and cars. he also likes to make up destinations for his cars to drive to. most often it is gran/nanny's house, or ms. sara's...he has a thing for those stegall women :) but most importantly, last week he was crawling on the ground saying, "i lion roooooar." i love how his little brain works! only at 2 years old can you go from this to this and still pull both looks off!

sleeping beauties

when i saw asher sleeping a few days ago, i had a feeling of deja vu. i finally found both pics on the computer. caleb and asher are about the same age in the respective pics. if you forget hair color and weight, they really do resemble each other.

beating the heat

a few students came over this morning to swim in our community pool. it felt great! the t.v. show/movie initial game...tom was horrible at it. snack time for forrest the only part of me that you will see at the pool! kacey, a.k.a. k k a little football action snack time asher enjoying himself poolside

a picture is worth a thousand words...

john piper and starbuck's...enough said.

brotherly love

i have to admit that i was a teeny bit worried about how caleb would react to having a new sibling around the house. while he is a very loving little boy most of the time, there are limits to what a 2 year old can take...and i wasn't sure if asher was going to be that limit. i am so very thankful that God granted my request to make caleb's heart tender towards his brother. from the first time caleb saw asher in the hospital, he has wanted to hold him, kiss him, and tell him, "it all right asher," or "asher need his my," when he's crying. i hope that God continues to be gracious to me and allow caleb and asher to grow in love one for another each and every day.

asher trent agnew

so i've finally gotten around to uploading pictures on the computer and figured it would be a good time to post about asher's birth...especially since he will be 2 months old this upcoming wednesday! mother of the year i am not. on friday, may 1st, tom and i arrived at williamson county medical center at 5:00 A.M. (i still can't believe that i had to be there that early) to begin my induction. after the check-in, hooking up iv process, talk with the doctor, etc., the pitocin wasn't started until approximately 6:30 and i felt my first contraction around 6:45. they continued to up my pitocin intake by 2 units every 30 minutes until my contractions were 7-8 minutes apart. after that, i labored at the same pitocin level until fully dilated. i also had to have a large dose of penicillin through the iv because i was group b strep positive. to be honest, i don't know exactly when they stopped increasing the pitocin level because i was w-o-r-k-i-n-g. the only similarity to caleb's birth was the fact that i was laboring without an epidural, or other pain-blocking drugs. i had no idea how differently labor felt when artificially induced. don't get me wrong, labor is painful no matter how it starts, but the pitocin amplified the intensity of the contractions to a level much higher than i remember with caleb. at 12:45 p.m. i was ready to push. up to this point, i had been mentally complaining about the external monitors on my belly. i wanted this birth to be minimally invasive, and those two monitors (which were irritating my skin) were invasive. however, i should have kept my (mental) mouth shut because those monitors proved invaluable during the next 30 minutes. asher was progressing out the birth canal slowly, but steadily with every contraction/push and receding back into the birth canal (a little less than before) when i was not contracting/pushing. the old saying "two steps forward, one step back" really is true when it comes to birthing a baby. dr. scott and the nurses wanted me to turn on my side to see if that would help speed the process along. however, the longer i pushed, the lower asher's heart rate dropped. it fell to 68 at one point and prompted dr. scott to order a room ready for an emergency c-section. since i had had no drugs, i would have had to been completely knocked out for that procedure. thankfully, that didn't happen because i just kept pushing. every time i felt a contraction, i pushed. at one point nurses were rushing around getting ready to move rooms and didn't notice that i was pushing until tom said, "uh...she's still pushing!!!" my stubborness really paid off because with a few final pushes the amazing dr. scott was able to help me birth a healthy 7 pound 14 ounce baby asher at 1:18 p.m. asher was a full 1 pound 3 ounces bigger than caleb at birth. after delivery, dr. scott told me that his umbilical cord had been wrapped around his neck causing his heart rate to drop when i pushed...poor thing! thankfully, he had absolutely no ill-effects from the dramatic labor and delivery. later that evening, big brother caleb came to visit with gran and grandad. caleb was soooooo excited to see baby asher. he asked to hold him as soon as he got there. in fact, he held him almost the entire time he visited. tom and i were, and continue to be, extremely humble and thankful to be the parents of two sweet boys.