Asher is 11 months old! I know! It's just as amazing to me as it is to you!

He is into everything now, just as expected. He especially loves the wires under my desk, the Christmas tree ornaments and lights, and his brother's teensy-tiny stuff. The Holy Grail of household items is the cordless phone, which lights up with blue light when you press any button to activate it. This is the Be All and End All of Things Asher Shouldn't Play With. I worry that he'll call 911 or China or something. If you take the phone away from him, he screams at you. If he knows it's nearby, he's unstoppable like a Sherman tank: He slowly bowls over anything in the way to get at the coveted phone.

We are very happy to see that Asher is indeed signing now. It was kind of hard to tell at first whether his gestures were intentional or random, but we are now certain that he is signing “more,” “milk,” which for Asher doubles for “mama,” and “eat.” (These are typically the first signs to appear.) We think that he is also signing “all done” and maybe “water,” too. It's exciting to see this communication happening! There's so much we have to talk about. I've expanded my signing in our daily interactions to include many other signs, including (and here I'll dispense with those pesky quotation marks), play, help, please, boy, girl, baby, sleep, diaper change, mama, daddy, grandma, grandpa, apple, lion, bird, dog, and others that I'm forgetting to mention here. Asher's signing will come gradually for a few more months, then at around 14 months or so, it should ramp up to dozens and dozens of signs. Then we'll really be able to discuss the meaning of life!

Christmas was exciting and a little challenging for Asher, as his normal routine was knocked out of whack. However, having Ian home for a week and a half was wonderful. Asher really enjoys daddy's being around.  We have lots of new and groovy toys for him. Unfortunately, a number of them make music/noise. Those toys may find their way over to the grandmas' houses. I'm not cruel for taking toys away from my baby: I'm actually saving him from the part of my personality that goes batshit crazy listening to the same badly executed toy jingle. That mommy isn't the nice mommy. Better to keep her appeased.

Last week I worked three and a half days at the magazine. Due to Asher's proclivity to investigate his environment so thoroughly as to taste everything he comes across, I thought it best to leave him with babysitters instead of taking him with me. Sadly, those days halcyon take-baby-to-work days are done. Ian stayed home with him and Lucas one day (Ian's last vacation day), Grandma VoVo had the boys the next day, and the Bs watched them for a while on Friday. Then, on Monday, Grandma had them again for a half day. All reports indicate that Asher really doesn't give a damn about the breast milk that I conscientiously pump for him. All he does is chew on the bottle's nipple, grasping it in his incisors and pulling it out until it goes snap! (Fortunately, this is not something he does to my nipples.) Basically, the bottle is a novelty, a game—not an acceptable conveyance for yummy and nutritious mama milk. Nor is the cup any better. He just doesn't want it. He's eating plenty of other foods to make it through the day without the milk, but if I don't continue to pump when we're apart, then my milk supply will reduce, which isn't what I want yet because Asher still nurses before each nap and once or twice throughout the day and at least twice in the night. Anyway, the good news is that he reportedly does fine without me when I've gone to work, which is a relief to hear. He doesn't sleep too well, though.

Asher really likes music. He rocks back and forth any time he hears music of any type, for any duration. Today we had lunch at a Mexican restaurant. The music was peppy and fast, and Asher doubled-timed his rocking. We all laughed and he laughed too and kept right on boogying. 

He's up to five teeth now. A few days after Christmas he got his second top middle incisor, making four teeth. Last Saturday we noticed that the one beside it had popped through too. Yay, Baby! Only 15 more to go! He only rarely bites me while nursing now; he seems to have gotten the idea that doing so is verboten. The only time I have ever yelled at him was for biting my nipple. It seems to have done the trick. However, Asher will happily gnaw on another body part if I (or anyone else) sit still long enough. For a while, we heard him grinding the top and bottom teeth together, which was a creepy sound to say the least. He would grind and grind, and then look up at you and grin. 

Thanks in part to the teeth (even though they are all in the front), he is able to eat more foods. He occasionally eats small clumps of scrambled eggs. Last night he ate a whole green bean. Sometimes I get a bit of tofu down his throat. I've made him nutritious and yummy baby food that he absolutely cannot abide. The beautiful beet puree didn't go over well. Nor did the parsnip, tilapia, and chedder concoction. (That kinda bummed me out. I really thought it was tasty!) He resists many other foods still, and yet, I catch him crawling around on the floor picking up nuggets of who-knows-what and eating them. Babies are gross, did I mention that before? I just sigh, try to ensure that it's not glass or metal or choky beads or something equally dangerous, and then pray that it was some foodlike substance. 

People sometimes tease me, saying “Ah! It's the second kid. Anything goes now! You're not running around sanitizing everything!” Which is not exactly fair because I didn't sanitize much when Lucas was small either—not because I wasn't a nervous mommy. I certainly was a WRECK of a nervous mommy. But I am still and was then generally opposed to cleaning on principle. I used to clean off Lucas's dropped pacifiers by popping them in my own mouth. I don't do that for Asher. I know better now. Now I just dust it off on my jeans and pop it back in his mouth. (I can justify my behavior: My Uncle Dentist says that if you can keep your child's mouth from being inoculated with the germs that cause caries that are present in adult mouths, you might prevent tooth decay.)

I probably have more to say, but I can't think of it right now. I'm pooped and ready for bed—at 8:30 p.m.