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.

Halloween

Cute Dress sitting with Gymbo

Halloween costumes

Every year - at least the three so far, I have made Audrey try on at least 2 costumes in the comfort of our own home. And I have kept the back-up costume just in case. This year was no exception. First she was a turtle. And while the turtle costume was cute, it just wasn't knock your socks off cute. So we (and by we I mean grandma) kept looking for the perfect witch costume. Finally I found it.
The hunt paid off. The witch costume brings out Audrey's personality. She loves to spin in it and tap (read hit hard, while saying soft) things with the wand. I can hardly wait to take her trick or treating.

Daddy's Sock

Audrey loves to help me do laundry and by help I mean scatter clean clothes in every direction while I race to fold and put them away before she can grab them. So it was no surprise to find a random daddy sock in her play area when we were done with the laundry. As you can see, it made a great toy and in the end she had all three socks (her pair and daddy's one) on one foot.

Feeding the Turtles

Audrey and I went in search of ducks the other day to feed with the end of a loaf of bread. We never found ducks, but we did find some turtles and I threw a couple of pieces of bread to them to show Audrey how it is done. She thought better of my idea and just ate the bread herself.

Notice the cute Fridley, MN shirt from Aunt William!

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.

Gymboree

Audrey has really been enjoying open gym time at Gymboree. Recently she has figured out how to climb up the slide on her own. Notice the Nemo shirt that she insisted on wearing.

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.

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.

Dress-Up Blues

I dressed Audrey up in a lovely holiday outfit from her great-grandparents (maternal side) just to take a cute picture. Apparently, this was not as much fun for Audrey as I was hoping.

Reach out and touch

This is a picture from Bud's VA reception. I forgot to post it earlier, but it is too precious to leave unposted. Tori is reaching out to touch Audrey's mouth.

Current Sizes

This post is not meant to be a hint, just a help...

Audrey wears size 12-18 month clothes right now. So any new clothes should be sizes 18-24 or 2T. She wears size 5 shoes right now.

Halloween

We have certainly posted plenty of adorable duck pictures, so I am just going to tell about Audrey's first trick or treating experience.

We decided to just hit a couple of neighbors houses. Since we live in a townhouse community, Audrey really didn't have very far to walk at all. Even so, she was not sure what to make of all the festivities. She liked walking around in her duck costume and holding her pumpkin bag, but she really did not get why people kept putting things into the bag for her. All of our neighbors gushed over her.

The neighbors two houses up, just had a baby (on Sunday) and Tabitha brought the newborn out for all to see. Audrey loved looking at the baby and she kept pointing to her. I can't wait until the baby is a little bigger and we can let Audrey actually hold her.

She started to rub her eyes, so we decided to head home just as a whole stream of kids showed up. She followed them to our house then she followed them back out again too. In fact, Audrey's favorite part of Halloween was people watching. She would try to talk to the other little kids and touch their costumes and they all tried to touch hers.

It was a lovely night (upper 60s) and I must say Halloween was fun for me too. All of the neighbors just hung out in front of our front doors to give kids candy and talk in between. It was almost an impromptu block party.

Practice makes perfect

We thought it would be fun to give Audrey a chance to practice trick-or-treating at Grandma and Grandpa's house so that she would know what to do when the big day arrives.Here she is - somewhat perplexed at having to stand outside in the cold dressed as a duck instead of just going inside.
Then she was even more surprised that Grandma greeted her with a bag of candy instead of a big hug as per the usual. In the end, the practice was probably not as helpful as I thought it would be, but we all had a good time.

I'm talking to the duck in the mirror

This is Audrey seeing herself as the duck for the first time. As you can see, she was a little trepidatious about the big puff ball staring back at her.

Duck, Duck, Audrey

After much deliberation, the duck narrowly beat Nemo for this year's Halloween costume. This sneak preview at Grandma's house let us get a few early pictures. The funny thing about Audrey is that she seems to really like dressing up in these crazy getups. I think she just loves all the postive attention and gushing that she gets from being such a cute duck.
Now if we can only get her to say "quack quack"...

Watch Out, Nemo

Watch out Nemo - here comes Audrey!

Audrey's mom has a strange affinity for the costumes that are puffy and soft - especially when the costume has a tail. Luckily, Audrey is a good sport about trying them on - and she is the cutest little clown fish ever!!

In the top picture, Audrey headed for the stairs as soon as the costume was on.

In the bottom picture you can see her top tooth as she struggles to free herself. She would not hold still for a picture because she liked walking in the fish suit so much.

Bud's Wedding

Audrey's Aunt Bud just got married and this was the dress Bud picked out for Audrey and Tori. It was almost as if Audrey knew she looked fancy. She kept showing off for everyone. If no one was around to show off for, she walked around until she found someone.

In this picture she is on her way out of the reception in search of new people to make friends with.