Happy Birthday Asher!

I can't believe I have been a mom for 4 years! I am so happy to have Asher in my life. I want to share a few of my favorite things about him

*He is my right hand man. He is very good at remembering where I put my keys and cell phone, and where Maddie discarded her shoes. I have a touch of ADD and it is wonderful to have my junior Paul around to help me keep it together.

*He is really into wanting to be funny right now so laugh at him at your own risk. The other day he came out of his room in his underwear with one sock on, I made the mistake of laughing at him and now I am surprised several times a day with half naked Asher. In public I have negotiated that he can only manifest his favorite outfit by being fully clothed, but secretly he only ever wears one sock now, and I can't help but laugh so this habit is probably with me for a while.

*He has been conning Madeleine into letting him have his own way for two weeks by saying he is almost the birthday boy. She says "Oooohhh", obviously impressed, and lets him have his way.

*He thrives on a schedule, while I do not, so he put me on one. He asked every day for weeks what time it was when we did certain things and memorized what I said. Now he looks at the clock on our oven and all day long I hear things like "Momma, it is 10 o'clock, time for snack" "Momma, it is 7:00, time to help me get my jammies on." Heaven help me if I try to do things against his idea of the correct order.

*He always wants to know if I think things are cool, like his latest sandcastle or his toys. He is the first person who has ever trusted that I have a clue if something is cool. My own mom doesn't think I'm cool.

*He is so sweet to his sisters most of the time. He always wants matching sets of everything from lollipops to toys because he isn't satisfied unless Madeleine has her fair share. He would bring her everywhere with him if he could. I love that they are so close.

*He loves to learn and is very self-driven. He discovers something he wants to learn about and then talks about it constantly until he has mastered any given subject. He has done this with learning his left from his right, days of the week, and more recently visually recognizing numbers over 10. Now every time I take him to the supermarket he concentrates on numbers and practices recognizing the numbers.

He has been begging for a birthday party and I gave in because I felt like he was old enough to appreciate it this year. We did it for him a week early because Paul had that Friday off.


Paul spent nearly two weeks working on this pinata, designed to Asher's specifications. For those of you who don't happen to be Thomas the Train buffs, this is James. James is a red engine with a five on his side. Having an engineer design a pinata has it's downsides. It was so structurally sound, despite his best efforts to create a perforated break line, that all of the boys got 4 turns each and then Paul had to take 4 or 5 good whacks at it to get it to brake.


Asher's favorite color for two years was blue. Everything had to be blue until about a month ago when blue and green were his favorite colors. Since Paul made the pinata, Asher's new favorite color is red, and he was a bit disappointed when I told him that his balloons were blue and green because I had pre-ordered them. As soon as he saw them, however, he was so delighted. Balloons are so magical to Asher and they really made his day.