Asher is a funny little man. With your first-born, you don't always know what is normal or not, so I think most moms feel a little bit bad about the motherhood learning curve. I also had no idea that most babies laugh a lot earlier than Asher did. Even at three months old it was work to get him to smile, and SO hard to get him to laugh.
Don't get me wrong though, he was such a sweet baby. He was so easy! He loved to sleep, he loved looking around while we drove in the car, and he was usually pretty easy to entertain. He also ate solids really early. At only 4 months he would get insanely fussy when we would sit to eat dinner, so we just started giving him stuff and he did really well. He's still our best eater today :)
For a long time, Asher did not seem like your typical oldest child. He's not extremely tidy, though he has become a lot more particular about things this last year. He's always been a little moody about his clothing and appearance I guess, but now it's spreading to more areas of his life. Thankfully, he's finally becoming particular about the state of his room too!
As far as behavior goes, Asher has always been pretty straightforward too. Once I started thinking more deeply about his reactions to certain circumstances, I started to see better where some of his "issues" were stemming from. Both of my boys have gone through several phases where they were super resistant to anything I told them to do. I think this is where a lot of homeschool moms want to give up and send their boys to school - it's incredibly frustrating! But when I saw that they simply did not want mom to be in charge, I was able to have conversations with them about it, find some areas of life where they can be 100% in charge and we have always been able to happily move forward with our same chain of command and much happier hearts.
Asher is very gifted in his ability to think things through. He's like an old man in some ways, thinking about what things mean or how things came to be, pretty much all the time. He's definitely able to make connections easily regarding cause and effect, and having good conversations about anything relatively important is the best!
Even with being a little ahead in regards to reasoning, he has an amazing memory. Jovi also has a good memory, but Asher has been able to memorize nearly all his memory work from CC within a day or two for YEARS. He still will say things out of the blue from books we read many years ago that he remembers, leaving me constantly impressed with his ability to retain information.
This does NOT mean he is always nice, or always good. He definitely has that oldest-child stubborn streak with wanting things his way. And he copes far better with daily occurrences if he knows the general plan for the day. He is the kindest little man out in public though, always receiving comments about his sweet demeanor and polite manners. He's also very helpful around the house and has been ever since he could help with pretty much anything... retrieving diapers for his siblings, emptying the dishwasher at an early age, throwing away garbage for me, or just doing nearly anything I ask with little or no reward.
We all have faults, but I'm not going to air any more of his here. I see him wanting to understand God and the world around him, and I see his internal struggle when he doesn't want to be good but knows it's not right, or when things just feel off and he can't really articulate why. I'm really thankful for his presence in my life and glad that I get to spend so much time with him every day.
As he is getting older, I treasure more and more the time we have. I can't believe he'll be flying the coop in just 8-ish years! I still get lots of hugs, kisses, and snuggles, and he still will reveal his true desires and loves when he is comfortable enough. I can't wait to see what the next few years hold for him and am thankful that God gave us such a lovely little person to parent.
Oldest children are such a joy! ;)
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