The Bi-Polar Express

We are so in love with Asher. This stage has to be the cutest yet! He points out everything he sees ("Chool bus!" "Moon!", "Daddy's Shoes!" "Church!"), gives us hugs and kisses at random, asks to go "night night," loves to read books, says please and thank you...the boy is a dream.

This, of course, is all rosy retrospection. I wrote that paragraph last night, while Asher was sleeping; everything seemed right with the world. Yesterday he took a three and a half hour nap. Yesterday he played sweetly with other children. Yesterday he went potty on the potty chair twice.

Then there was today. This morning I took Asher to Chic-Fil-A to eat breakfast and play in the "pay pace." Everything was going well, until another mother informed me that Asher was hitting. Sure enough, there was the little culprit in my blind corner, pushing another kid who was playing in the spot he thought was his. After a good talk and a long timeout, he was back out on parole.

That lasted 5 minutes before the next incident.

I wish he had shoved someone.

Instead, to my horror, he'd vomited all over the slide. Not sick, just too many chic'n minis before going down head first. After cleaning it up as best I could and getting an employee to disinfect, I started packing him up only to discover he had one last trick. Hoping for the trifecta, he decided to have a blowout. Bravo, Asher. Well done.

We came home and he took a nap 2 hours shorter than yesterday's. While I begrudgingly made lunch, he scattered all the clean laundry from the basket onto the floor, and rearranged the DVDs. Also on the floor. He begged to play in the backyard, and anxious to buy myself time to reassemble the house, I obliged. I regretted it when he reappeared minutes later covered in mud, with tracks following him across the carpet.

Being a stay-at-home mom to a single child sounded a lot easier before I was one. My days are filled with highs and lows...one minute I feel we are the luckiest parents in the world, and the next I wonder what on earth we're doing wrong. One second he's singing a sweet little song to himself, the next, he's blowing his nose in my hair. 

Yes, it can feel like a non-stop ride on the Bi-Polar Express, but at the end of the day, you wouldn't want to trade places with anyone. Being a mom is the best job in the world.

We love that boy. Sure, he's sleeping again now, so it's easy to say, but we really do. We thank our Heavenly Father for him every day, and feel profound gratitude for all the ways sweet Asher has blessed our lives.

Last Saturday I snapped these pictures of him playing in his room. None are framers, but we take what we can get!

I may have captured two good pictures of Asher his entire life. It's a combination of an old camera with a delay, and a disinterested subject. We'll have to rely on mental pictures.

Later that same day, an overzealous Asher jumped into the tub prematurely. Here he is performing his nightly "knock everything off the bathtub shelf" ritual.

Did I mention we love that boy?