Ah Hee Wa Who Ha Ho Ho Ho

Audrey loves to try and chant the above phrase from Finding Nemo. It is adorable.

But she loves Nemo and fish in general more than most little kids I think. In fact, today grandma and I were in the mall and we stopped into the Disney store and Audrey would not let go of the stuffed Nemos. So grandma got her two Nemos and a Nemo t-shirt - all of which she cuddled with throughout the rest of the mall visit. When we got home I let her wear the Nemo t-shirt and laughed as periodically looked down and squeezed her own belly while saying "Boe"(her word for Nemo) in her cute high pitched voice, then turned to the stuffed Nemo and gave it a kiss.

Favorite Foods

Since Audrey's favorite foods seem to be regularly evolving, I thought I would post what her current favorites are.

-tortellini - she loves the frozen tortellini from Costco and she even tries to say it to ask for them (which she does at every meal)

-bananas - she still signs for bananas, but eats a whole banana in one sitting

-Irish oats - my favorite breakfast food so we both eat it almost daily

-yogurt - i made up a sign for yogurt because she loves it so much.

-pistachios - she loves the shelled, unsalted pistachios

-olives - she will eat as many as we let her

Kisses

Audrey, like most little kids, loves it when we kiss her. Whenever she sees us (her parents) hugging, she pulls on our legs until we pick her up and do a group hug. A group hug with little Audrey includes a couple of bounces and ends with us both kissing her cheeks as she giggles.

She also loves Nemo kisses - where we attack her with her little Nemo.

As far as giving kisses, she regularly smothers her little baby dolls with kisses. She loves to kiss her Little People characters and her Nemo characters, but she isn't so fond of giving kisses to actual people. Most the time if you ask her to give you a kiss, she will either turn away (sometimes violently) or shake her head no.

Lately however, she has been giving her parents occasional kisses - and we love it. Today she just ran up to me for a hug and leaned forward and kissed my face, so I gave her lots of hugs in return. And she has been giving her daddy a kiss on the cheek when he leaves for work - which is really cute.

Ready, Set, Cookie

Lately Audrey has been experiencing the vocabulary explosion. So as I am carrying her down the stairs, I stop and say, "Ready, Set, ..." and then I wait and sometimes prompt the word "Go!" - after which we run down the stairs and finish with lots of kisses.

This morning, I did my usual, "ready, set, ..." and Audrey answered me with "cookie!"

18 Months Old Vital Stats

Height: 31 3/4 inches
Weight: 20 pounds 12 ounces

The visit to the doctor today was actually quite pleasant. Audrey has moved up the charts in weight and is now in the 10th percentile!!

Art class

There is so much that has happened since my last blog entry that I keep putting off a new entry wanting to include everything. Instead I will just tell what happened most recently and hopefully backdate some good Christmas stuff.

This week we got to use Audrey's Christmas present from Ryan's parents - Gymboree classes. Yesterday we went to a music class - but it wasn't all that we were hoping it would be, so today we went to an art class - which was fabulous! So now Audrey will be taking an art class every week for a couple of months.

It started with a song and some clapping - which Audrey loved, then playdough - which she was not so sure about, then we played with "snowballs" (cottonballs) on a parachute to music - at first this scared Audrey, but by the end she was signing for more. Then we colored and painted, then played with beans in a sandbox (I think this was the highlight for her), then we played with bubbles, made a cotton ball polar bear and finally ended with another song. It was a lot of fun packed into one hour, but she really enjoyed it.

I will definitely bring my camera next time :).

National Christmas Tree

We all went to the National Christmas Tree/ Yule Log/ Menorrah display this year. We were out running errands when we realized that we wouldn't have time to make it home and back to DC because of traffic, so we were caught without a stroller or jackets for the evening.

We remedied the no stroller problem by letting Audrey walk everywhere. She loved this and whenever she was holding both of our hands, she would just periodically drop her feet and become dead weight, so that we would swing her. She was worn out by the end of the evening.

We remedied the no jacket problem at a local tourist stand. Though we felt like dorks with matching USA/DC jackets on, we were toasty warm. Audrey is seen here wearing her "Future President" sweatshirt in front of the Tree and the White House.

After viewing the DC sites we went back to Grandma and Grandpa's car for a mini picnic of hot cocoa, cookies, fruit and vegetables.