No concert

Audrey was scheduled to participate in a concert at her school where she was going to be singing a song in English, Spanish and Chinese. However, the night before the concert she was up all night coughing and the day of the concert she couldn't even speak a full sentence without coughing her little head off. So of course, singing was out of the question. The poor little girl is still sick, but last night she had a couple of good 4 hour long rest periods, which she desperately needed. Hopefully she is well in time for Christmas.

Kids say the darndest things

Rhyming is Audrey's new favorite word game. Taka has become "Taka Waca" - which is just so silly.

The other night I asked Audrey to please put her clothes in the laundry basket. She replied, "Yes ma'am" then since rhyming is her new thing lately, she said, "Yes ma'am, damn" and then laughed at how clever she was over and over.

Also, Audrey thinks that I have the prettiest color of eyes - green (mostly) ish hazel. So when we are out and about she will make comments like, "Mommy, that light is green, just like your eyes, it's beautiful". :)

Thanksgiving Day

For Thanksgiving Day we went to Ryan's parents house and had a delicious meal courtesy of Margaret's hard work (she brined the turkey for a day or two ahead of cooking it and it turned out amazing).Audrey loves to help whenever she can. She was put in charge of filling the vegetable appetizer tray with precut veggies. She was also in charge of making sure all the veggies were still good by taste testing them for us :).I think Audrey's favorite part was decorating sugar cookies. She helped me make them the day before and was extremely excited to decorate and eat them. Audrey wanted "traditional" blue frosting for the cookies. She also wanted to help mix it.
She concentrated very hard while she was decorating. She decorated a penguin and a present (my way of using the rest of the cookie dough without having to reroll is to cut squares/rectangles and call them presents).

After she finished decorating her two cookies, she was ready to eat them. We told her she could only eat one, so she picked the penguin which was much larger. She took one lick of the frosting and dropped the cookie frosting side down on the floor. So she ended up eating the present cookie very carefully.Genny, put her artistic talents to good use and basically frosted the rest of the sugar cookies, which were mostly ginger bread men.Ryan and Grandma Margaret being very cooperative for a Thanksgiving picture. :)

We also had a good game of ping-pong and watched "Get Smart" while Audrey took a much needed nap. A great Thanksgiving for all!

Flyaway Audrey

We recently (October) borrowed a book from the library called "Flyaway Katie".

Audrey loved that book. She was absolutely captured by the little girl who decides to paint herself all kinds of bright colors and spend the gray day in her picture.

Shortly after we read it several days in a row, guess who decided to paint herself on a gray day.

I had my suspicions when she looked out the window in the morning and said that it was a gray day and not long after that asked to do a painting "project". Sure enough, flyaway Audrey was even proud enough of her paint job to pose for the camera (which is a feat these days).

I also loved all of her hand prints all over the paper. :)

Decorating the Xmas tree

Audrey woke up so excited to decorate for Christmas. I have been telling her since Halloween that we can't decorate for Christmas (like the stores do) until the day after Thanksgiving.

This morning we put away what was left of our fall decorations, and started to pull out our Christmas decorations only to discover that we no longer have a tree. I forgot that the base of our broke last year when we were dismantling it.

I had big plans to avoid black Friday shopping by decorating my house and instead, realized that I would be thrown right into the thick of it. I looked online to find out where the Christmas tree door busters were, dressed Audrey in record time and took off to fight the crowds at Walmart. I love Walmart because of the cacophony of humanity that assembles there regularly. Today that cacophony wasn't as bad as black fridays of past years, and I was able to score the $25 6.5 foot tree of my dreams. :)

We decided earlier this year that we were going to do a "fun" tree instead of our usual matchy-matchy fancy tree. With that in mind, I bought the multi colored lights (to Ryan's horror) and we were off. Neither Audrey nor Ryan were very cooperative with getting their pics taken mid-decorating, so the only picture worth posting is Audrey smiling proudly in front of the tree at the very end (holding her curios George snow globe).As for the actual decorating, Audrey got very excited about it. We put on the Nat King Cole Christmas album - a classic if ever there was. Ryan held Audrey up for the high parts and she had a great time doing all the ornaments. She wasn't thrilled about doing the ball ornaments until she got to put the hooks in them and then it was very exciting too.

Happy Thanksgiving message

Audrey told me she wanted to do a message and so I recorded her on my camera.

You can hear in her sweet little voice how she is still pretty stuffed up. Poor girl is recovering from double ear infections.

Halloween trick or treating

Audrey has a little friend named Alexa who lives two doors down and the two of them went trick or treating together on Halloween for much longer than either of them would have alone. It was so adorable to see the cute little kitty cat princess and the monkey holding hands from house to house. The moms ended up holding the pumpkins as they ran from house to house for miles and hours.Also, in case people could not tell what Audrey was, all of her accessories were black cats too - the flash light and the whistle/blinky light necklace.

Audrey loves books

And I finally got around to organizing her "book shelf" (those lovely plastic shelves leftover from my college days). My favorite part of this pic is her crossed legs - so funny and so cute.

Summer Pics

Playing in the sprinklers at Grandma's house.

At one of Audrey's first "Grandma/Audrey days" (where Grandma watches Audrey basically all day every other week - thank you Grandma!!), Grandma took Audrey to the toy store and let her pick out a prize. Audrey picked the squirty animals set seen in the pics and they are still a favorite for all water activities (the bathtub).

Officially a "preschooler"

Audrey and I went and toured Prince William Academy, and she loved it so much that she immediately joined several classes and cried when I told her we had to go home because she wanted to stay.

So after a little more research (especially into our budget), we let the school know that Audrey will be enrolling and she starts on Monday.

We are super excited for her. The maximum class size for her age is 8 students per teacher, and the kids all get to pick 2 languages to learn (Audrey will be learning Mandarin and Spanish). They have bathroom in each of the preschool classrooms (with cubbies for each child with an extra pair of clothes if there should be any accidents). They have a huge gym for winter playtime and a large playground for nice weather playtime and it just seems like a good fit for her.

Audrey has been asking to go to preschool for months now and we told her it wasn't an option until she was potty trained. Well, she is basically potty trained, so she has become more and more insistent that potty training equals preschool. The truth is, the timing is great because Ryan could really use some guaranteed and dedicated study time other than the weekends and Audrey loves to be with other kids.

We are starting her off with 3 days a week 8:30 to noon. One thing she seems very excited about is having her own lunchbox. At 10:00 a.m. all of the preschoolers have snacks that they bring from home.

Higglytown Heros

Today I was vacuuming (using my fancy new vacuum) and Audrey was hiding away from the vacuum. So I could not help but laugh when she emerged from her play area sporting the outfit pictured below. I asked her what she was. She said, I'm a Higglytown hero!

So here is the video of her singing the Higglytown Hero song.

Messages

Audrey attended the neighbors Birthday party yesterday, where all of the other little girl's family was there. I think she is missing all of her family, because today out of the blue she said she wanted to send an email or a message to: Tori, Olivia, Grandpa Kansas, Grandma Seattle, Aunt Dan and Uncle Danielle (she still gets people a little confused), and William.

However, she got camera shy, so her message is just quiet. The test run however, where I showed her how the camera worked and she sang a song is cute. I think this is the first of many more to come. Enjoy.

Cute moments, etc.

Audrey says so many funny things these days, that it is sad I am not capturing more of them. However, I will highlight a couple of things that I am thinking of off the top of my head.

She loves doing "projects" which consists of her sitting in her high chair with crayons, construction paper, a glue stick and kid scissors. She makes a lot of cards these days. And each time she is making a card, she says things like, "Grandpa Kansas loves cards, he is going to love this nice card." "there we go" "now mommy, here is the trick we can do to make the card really nice" etc.

Her favorite foods these days are: tuna casserole, spinach, most veggies, pasta with butter on it and nuts - almonds, pecans, you name it.

She recently did some pooping in the big girl potty - yay! so she got the promised bribe of the babydoll set from costco. She loves playing with all the babies and putting them to bed. Her first name for the new baby was Agnezza, the second and the one that she now goes by is Nina.

Since she is now (mostly) potty trained, she has started asking when she gets to go to preschool, so I started looking for some preschools that still have openings. Luckily there are a few to be found, unluckily, they come at a price. We are still looking.

She is very into making Halloween decorations and has been very excited to dress up and decorate our house. Last week we went to a gymboree Halloween party where she got to do a parade, paint a pumpkin, etc. So now, she talks about painting pumpkins a lot. She is extremely excited to go trick or treating.

Halloween

New Do

Audrey has bangs and medium length hair. However, she cries when I brush, wash, do or talk about doing any of the afore mentioned things. So she ends up looking like a rag-a-muffin far too often.

The other day we were talking about hair, because her bangs were getting long and I asked her if she liked her hair long or short. She enthusiastically said, SHORT! However, I didn't think much of it, until a couple of nights ago, after washing her hair, I was brushing it out (mind you I use, my leave in conditioner *and* the no-tears tangle free spray before I even attempt to delicately brush her hair). She started crying and pleading, Mommy please cut my hair short, please mommy, cut my hair short.

So yesterday, I mentioned that we needed to cut her bangs, did she want to pick out a show to watch while I cut them. And she said, Sleeping Beauty is my favorite movie, can we watch Sleeping Beauty, while we cut my hair, can we cut my hair short, short hair is my favorite. So I did it, I cut off probably 6 inches of length. It is a cute little bob length that frames her sweet face. And her bangs, well, they turned out a little shorter than intended, but again, that sweet little face pulls them off beautifully.

After that we went outside to do sidewalk chalk and take a walk/run (I walk, Audrey runs). We put a barrette in her hair (thanks Emily for the adorable birdie barrette that you made), and seriously, this hair style fits Audrey's bubbly personality so perfectly. I only wish I had better hair cutting skills and Audrey had less wiggles, so it would look a little more polished.

Don't worry Mom, pictures will be posted shortly. ;)

Almost Potty trained - almost preschool

Audrey and I went out bed shopping the other day and she went potty in a potty that was not in her home for the first time and she did it twice. She wore only big girl panties the whole day, no accidents at all, no incidents, smooth as can be. However, she also did not even attempt to do any #2 - the whole day. ...

So now that she is almost potty trained, I can let her play in the kids area at Ikea where you drop your kids off. She has been begging to do that for a while now. So on Sunday I let her do that for the first time. She LOVED it. In fact, when the timer went off to tell me to come back and get my child, Audrey started crying because she did not want to go with me. She wanted to stay and play.

Also, because she is almost potty trained, we can put her in the almost preschool at Gymboree. So Ryan took her there today for her first "preschool class". She put on her backpack (with a handmade washcloth that is Taka's blanket in it) and brought Taka along with her. She seemed to really enjoy it.

She is getting so big so fast, I just can not believe it. I tend to cry easily, but I must admit I got misty-eyed in Ikea when I walked away from the kid area without her.

An Interview

I decided to interview Audrey this morning, so I sat her down on the couch and I sat a couple of feet away in the chair with a notepad and pen.

Mama: What did you do yesterday?
Audrey: play

M: What are you going to do today?
A: I'm having a mommy-Audrey day. I'm going to get down and you're going to rescue me. I need you to do that game, ok? (as she is already climbing over the back of the couch)

M: What is your favorite color?
A: Pink.
M: why?
A: cuz i like pink, cuz it's my favorite paint. lets tell my other favorite colors of paint. hmm, i like purple, i like red, i like blue, i like orange and red and yellow and i like green.

M: Are there any colors you don't like?
A: No.

M: What is your favorite toy?
A: Hmm, lets see - my microphone. Let me tell some other toys. I love a scarf (one from Gigi that is pink eyelash yarn - she wears it all the time around the house as do all her dolls and toys); let me play on the piano and make music and tell things I love. Ok?

M: What is your favorite thing to do?
A: Hmm, to do playing.
M: what kind of playing?
A: hmm, toys.

First skinned knees

On Monday 8 September 2008, poor Audrey got her first skinned knees. And boy was she miserable. She wanted to walk with me to the mailbox, which is about 4 houses up the sidewalk, but she didn't have any shoes on. Our sidewalks are really quite clean, so I said that was fine as long as she was careful. And she was. Then on our way back to the house, she wanted to run down the hill, so I told her that running down the hill was not a good idea with bare feet because she could really stub her toes if she wasn't careful. She said she would be careful and off she went. Again, she was really careful, until she was at our house, when she turned around and was saying, See Mommy, I was careful, and wham down she went. Two skinned knees, a stubbed toe and a skinned top of foot later...

Poor Audrey was beside herself. She cried for probably an hour (I wish I was exaggerating) and the rest of the evening she was close to tears. She wouldn't walk on her legs because she didn't want to straighten her knees and I had a hard time evening washing them off because she wouldn't take her hands off of them.

Several days and a few nice scabs later, things were going well at Gymboree yesterday. She was trying to actually go across the monkey bars, but then thought better of it and dropped back onto the ladder. She landed on bottom rung of the ladder. Right, on the bottom of her foot and has been limping ever since. After her fall, I offered to take her home and she would hear none of it, she wanted to play. She tried crawling, but that hurt her skinned knees, so she is doing this funny little limp to get around and also asking us to carry her a lot.

No binky for me.

Last night for the first time, Audrey slept without her binky!! It all started because she has a little rash on the lower side of her mouth going onto her chin. Well, she has had it for a week or so, and I think the binky is partially to blame. So I showed it to Audrey in the mirror after her bath and told her that we needed her to sleep without her binky so that it could heal. She agreed to that and went right to bed without it. Of course, we still gave her the "flipping nose binky", but at least she wasn't sucking on a binky. She slept all night without incident.

I am so glad she is such a reasonable kid. I mean, she just agreed to sleep sans binky, because she could see that there was a good reason for me asking. And that was that, no fuss, no fight, no crying, just talking and hugging.

"Oh for Pete's sake"

This morning Audrey was walking down down the stairs and paused to say, "Oh for Pete's sake!" then turned and looked back to Ryan and I and smiled. We both burst out laughing. She says the funniest things these days.

Also, she calls us Mom and Dad more and more, rather than a more 3 year old appropriate name like mommy and daddy.

In potty news, if we let her go "barebuns" she will tinkle on her own, no prompting needed. However, she will not even think about doing anything beyond that in the potty. It is a start. And what is her potty treat, you ask? 2 m&ms (dark of course, b/c those are the best). If she goes #2, she gets either 5 m&ms or a chocolate covered pretzel. Here's hoping. :)

Audrey's Birthday Party... and Momma's too.

Audrey Unplugged

This is Audrey singing her new favorite song, "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas", while playing piano.

4th of July fun

On the 4th of July we went over to grandma and grandpa's house for a potluck barbecue where Audrey got to play the role of neighborhood grandchild. The other two neighbor families who came over both came bearing gifts for her - a little pool and a bag full of 4th of July related treats - including a couple of cute bears. Then grandpa lit some fountain fireworks in the circle and that was it. It was pretty low key, mainly because Audrey had a bit of a cold. Despite the cold she did go and play outside in the sprinklers and loved that.

Tulip Festival with Cousins

While we were in Seattle visiting Grandma, we got to join Uncle Ben and Aunt Tara and Tara's mom and Cousins Benny and Alexandria going to the Tulip Festival a little north of the city. Aren't these photos amazing! The yellow in the background is daffodils and the other colors are all tulips. Unfortunately, it was raining, snowing, hailing and windy, so the elements were conspiring against our enjoyment of the day.

Cousin Alexandria was very helpful, making sure Audrey didn't slip while getting in and out of the tulips for the photo. Cousin Benny has this winking thing going on that is just endearing.

Audrey's ready for Springtime

The weather has been gorgeous this week, mid seventies. So, here are some pictures of Audrey playng on the back deck enjoying the spring weather. Like her new dress? Man, that Aunt Genny has good taste...

Easter

Audrey is one lucky kid. Her great-grandma F bought a pretty Easter dress for her with cute shoes (we went with practical mary jane tennis shoes). Here she is at G&G F's house showing off her pretty dress and opening her Easter basket.

I don't know if these pics will show it or not, but blue looks amazing on Audrey because it really shows her beautiful eyes.

Nail Polish

Every time Audrey sees me paint my finger nails she wants polish too. So, yesterday I painted her nails red.

Cousin Time

Another first

Audrey put herself down for a nap - without being prompted or asked. She went up stairs to grab a couple of blankets, and when she didn't return, Ryan went to find her. She had closed her own bedroom door, found her binkies and tucked herself under her blankets.

BTW, she is still sleeping on the floor, but we have moved her mattress onto the floor now too, so at least she is now sleeping on a mattress again.

Little Bob

The other day Audrey woke up from her nap a little surly. So in an effort to cheer her up, her daddy was talking to her and touched her nose and said, "Is this Audrey's nose?" Audrey came back with, "NO!" Daddy persisted, "Is this Audrey's forehead?" This time Audrey came back with a drawn out, but happier "noooo." So Daddy asks, "It's not? Who's forehead is it?" Audrey answers, "It's Bob's!" Daddy laughs out loud and says questioningly, "Bob's forehead?"

Audrey answers (as if this were her real name), "My name is Bob!"