Memory lane

Look at us. So young, in love and oblivious. This was the day we got married and both our lives changed forever. Candice acquired Collin’s fierce love of ice cream and Collin took on quite a lot of Candice’s sense of hospitality.

As for the other things we brought into marriage, there aren’t that many. Of course, we had our childhoods, life experiences with our families and all and we don’t want to discount that. We just skipped out on the part where you grow up, move out and make a life on your own. Instead, we did it together. We certainly felt as though we were grown ups when we got married… but we’ve grown so much from what we’ve learned and experienced since then (college, jobs, grad school, parenthood) that those days seem like long ago.

On the other hand, the whole thing feels like it’s gone by in a flash. Probably because we’ve had so much fun together. There’s no way we could count the number of late night trips for ice cream, the hours of singing hymns late into the night, or the number of miles we’ve walked around lakes, college campuses, and neighbourhoods,  discussing everything from spaghetti recipes to our next major move. We did college together as roommates, we did grad school as colleagues, and now we’re doing parenthood as teammates. Everything we’ve done, we’ve done together. That’s the way we like it.

Since our wedding day, we’ve lived in 5 cities: Ada, Waco, Arlington, Ardmore and Cambridge. We’ve earned 4 degrees (come on, number 5!): Fight on East Central Tigers; Hey Bison, Go with Ka Rip; and Sic ‘em, Bears! We’ve lived in 11 homes. We’ve been to 18 weddings and reminisce about our own at each one. There have been 7 funerals, all for loved ones dear to us. We’ve moved across the ocean.  4 nieces and nephews have been born. Between the two of us, we’ve been on 74 plane rides. Want to know the very best thing we’ve done? We had a (sweet, precious, funny) baby boy together. We’ve been married 9 years. We pray that God would be so generous to give us many more years and many more memories together.

Updates

The weather this week in Cambridge has been amazing! It’s a completely different world here when the clouds are gone and the river, meadows, and colleges shine in the sun. We had about a solid month and a half of rain, rain, and more rain. So when the sun came out this week, everything looked so incredibly green that you would think someone had photoshop’d our city!

Since we know the weather will never last, we try to take advantage of every sunny day by hanging out in the garden as much as possible. Asher is becoming quite the outdoor explorer. He’s chewing on sticks, playing in the dirt, throwing rocks, and doing all the fun things that make mommy nervous. It’s crazy to see him like this and remember him being so tiny. He had a bit of a rough night last night. First, another boy kicked a ball and it hit Asher square in the face. The ball bounced straight back away from his head and Asher, almost in slow motion, went from being a sitting position to being flat on his back with his legs up in the air. The ball wasn’t very heavy or hard, so it didn’t do much damage, but I think it scared Asher pretty good. Later on in the evening, we were getting some of our laundry off the line and we put Asher in the laundry basket, as we have a habit of doing from time to time. One of the people in the garden said something about watching him to make sure he didn’t jump out, but Asher really likes to be in the basket, so I didn’t think he would jump out, and he didn’t. Nonetheless, our neighbor must have foreseen something bad happening… and, sure enough, the handle of the laundry basket broke a few seconds later. One side of the laundry basket, and Asher along with it, went tumbling to the ground. We felt horrible! The little guy was okay, but he had a bit of a fat lip, which looked so pitiful on his tear-soaked face :(. In any case, he’s getting bigger and bumps and bruises are all part of it I suppose.

Our good friends, the Appels, introduced the world to their new baby Paxton a couple of days ago, and a flood of memories from Asher’s early days came back to us. This created a lot of nervous feelings in my gut and made me glad that Asher is now sleeping 11 1/2 hours per night, but it also made me miss having the little guy snuggled up on my chest sleeping soundly.

One fascinating thing that Asher has started doing is dancing. Apparently it is an innate human tendency to dance. There was absolutely no prompting from us, but a couple of times when we were playing music or singing something, we noticed that Asher would start to rock back and forth. The strange thing was that he did it almost without noticing what he was doing! We would laugh hysterically at him dancing, but he wouldn’t pay any attention to us… he wasn’t doing it to put on a show, he was just moving to the beat with a totally serious look on his face :)!

Asher dancing!

We tried to capture the magic on video several times. This one’s great because he really starts to get into it and after a few moves he seems to go into what looks like some break dancing!

Separation anxiety

I'm pretty sure we are heading into full on separation anxiety. Asher is playful and happy...  until I make the tiniest move towards the other room. Sometimes all it takes is a move off the floor and onto the couch. Immediately, he produces big crocodile tears, a red, pitifully sad face and loud cries.

This past week Asher and I went to a friends house to hang out with some girlfriends of mine and a little buddy of his. We went in, pulled off all our winter garb (yes, sadly we are still in jackets and gloves over here) and plopped ourselves in the living room floor. Asher happily emptied out his diaper bag, carefully examining and banging each item on the coffee table before discarding it for the next treasure. I chatted with my two girlfriends over chocolate and rarely messed with Asher at all, except for a brief moment when we giggled at him playing peek-a-boo with his burp rag. Eventually his dinner time rolled around and the girls and I got up from our spots. I headed toward the kitchen and Asher's lower lip started quivering. Each time I went around the corner from him, he would start to cry.

This doesn't happen just when we're out and about. He does this at home, too. Until a few days ago, if Collin and I walked from one room to the other, Asher would continue playing and then soon follow, speed-crawling across the floor. Now he just bursts into tears. This goes for Dad, too. Sometimes he picks Collin as his favourite person ever and won't let him out of his sight without a fuss.

Several times this past week we’ve had him in the bathtub, which he usually LOVES, and he’s just burst into tears out of nowhere. He will typically sit in the tub and splash and play with the biggest grin on his face while one of us stays with him and the other runs around the house getting pajamas, a bottle, diaper, etc. ready for the night. We are pretty sure that these random outbursts of tears are due to the fact that he looked up and realized that one of us was gone.

We’re trying to find a balance in how we react to this. We don’t want to reinforce the crying by swooping down and picking him up immediately every time he melts down because we’ve moved away from him. But we also want him to know we are there, mostly because we know that he is legitimately afraid! He really is scared, and he contorts his face and shakes accordingly. It’s like he learned the cues that lead to us going somewhere else, but he hasn’t quite put together that, when we do leave for a bit, we always come back.

On another note, Asher is ten months old today! Cannot believe we are quickly approaching the one year mark.