Going Bananas

Recently Audrey has taken to eating bananas all by herself. I start the peel just at the top and she takes it from there. After very carefully peeling the banana, she tosses aside the peels (often to the floor) and starts the difficult work of consistently biting off more than she can chew.

As you can see Audrey also likes to dress herself and shoes are by far her favorite to change. Here she is wearing her moon boots about the house.

Tantrum Time

For about a month now Audrey will throw mini tantrums - kick her legs, sit down forcefully, fuss and wave her arms - when she really wants something. Unfortunately for her, I generally find her tantrums (at least at this stage) kind of cute and I often laugh when she starts to do one. If Audrey catches me laughing at her, she starts to cry for real. Apparently she is quite serious and if I am not taking her seriously enough, it hurts her feelings.

Baby Yoga

Audrey and I have tried to do yoga together a couple of times recently. Here is how it goes.

I put out a yoga mat for me and a towel for her and I put on a yoga dvd. Audrey and I both stand on our mats and she smiles and lifts her hands to the sky. As soon as the dvd has us bend over in any way, Audrey gets onto the floor and puts her head right under mine and looks up at my face so that when I look up we are inches apart. And as soon as I look up she bursts into giggles - as if this is the point. Of course, I can't help but laugh along with her and we end up laying on the mats watching the dvd together. Not much exercise, but it is still fun.

Rockin' Out

Recently Audrey has taken to dressing and undressing herself as much as possible. It all starts with shoes and socks then moves on to hats and jackets/sweaters.

We still have our box of winter accessories in our entry downstairs. Several times a day she will go downstairs (on her own and on the sly) and get into the box and pull out a hat or two.

This time she pulled out a baseball hat and her jean jacket and was in the process of putting them on when she got distracted by her rocking chair.

She loves to rock out on her rocking chair and yell "Eeeeee!" - her version of weee - over and over. It is really adorable.

Lady Bugs and Pig Tails

Audrey's hair is finally long enough for pig tails - so cute. She didn't like having them put in, but she sure liked having her hair out of her eyes all day long.

And today she rediscovered a musical ladybug that was hiding at the bottom of her toy chest. Normally she does laps around the kitchen island by herself - today she pulled that ladybug around and around and around until the music would stop and she would stop bend down, press the buttons again and as soon as the music started she would start doing laps again. In fact, when she first started the laps today, she was just happy to have something to pull along - about 15 minutes into it, she discovered the music - lucky me.

I have been working on getting Audrey to smile at the camera and this is the first pic that really paid off.

Gookie

Audrey has come up with a name for her binky - gookie. It is funny that she calls it "gookie" because she can say the b sound very well in other words (like Bo for Nemo). And she still doesn't say "mama" for me - though she has said it for daddy practicing a few times.

Coloring

Lately Audrey loves to color and paint. When she colors she loves to play with the crayons as much as she likes to color with them. She has broken, tasted and peeled the paper off of almost each of the crayons.

When she paints (watercolors), she loves to make the water get as dark as possible. In fact, I don't think she has quite caught on to the "proper" order to water painting. I show her several times a session - water, paint, paper. What she hears is - paint, water, mouth - she usually skips the paper altogether. Oh well!

I only let her do those things in her high chair, so her art has become our favorite activity while I am making dinner.