Happy Helper

Audrey was trying to help sweep today.

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.

Light Switch Moments

Audrey loves to play with the one light switch she can reach - the one at the bottom of the stairs. She stands on the second step on her tip-toes and stretches and then she can reach the switch. While it is scary to watch, she is actually quite good at it these days.

In these pictures she is wearing her holiday pajamas - they have gingerbread men all over them - along with a warm vest.

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.

Socks and Shoes

Audrey loves to try to do things herself (over and over and over). Here she is seen trying to put on her own socks and shoes. She hasn't been too successful at this yet - she will get a toe in her or there, but never her whole foot. This morning she put her shoe on my big toe and then laughed about how clever she was. And she is quite a wiz at taking them off.

Audrey does the sign for shoe and can almost say the word as well. Yesterday at the mall, she did the sign for shoes as we were walking past various shoe stores. It is cute how she identifies things in sign language as she recognizes them (she also did fish, hat and book).

Doll clothes

The other day I was washing Audrey's little baby (the soft one that she sleeps with and drags all over kingdom come) so I put her down for her nap with her Bitty Baby doll. I am not sure Audrey got any sleep at all, because I heard quite a bit of chatting going on and when I peeked in, this is what I saw. Audrey had completely undressed the doll and was playing with her clothes and diaper. She actually had the outfit on top of her head - but wouldn't repeat that for the camera. It is funny how much Audrey loves her dolls, she plays with them (or at least drags them to the same vicinity) while doing whatever else she is doing. It is also interesting to watch how she almost treats her Bitty Baby, which has a more life-like appearance, as a little sibling. She will lay her down to sleep and put her on the couch or on her rocking chair, etc. The other day she found an old pacifier in her toy box. She put her doll into a laundry basket and kept trying (to no avail) to get the doll to take the pacifier.

Nutcracker

This year as part of my Christmas decorations, I put one large and one miniature nutcracker on the fireplace mantel. Audrey loves them.

When she first saw them she pulled me over to the fireplace and pointed until I understood that she wanted to know what they were. So we sat down together on the chaise and I let her play with one of them at a time. Then when she was done looking at the nutcracker I put it back.

Sitting on the chaise together and playing (gently) with the nutcrackers has become something we do several times a day together. She enjoys this so much that she started actually saying the word cracker (instead of just using her sign for cracker) when she wants to play with them. Grandma got a book to go along with the nutcrackers so now when she is done playing with the actual nutcrackers, she will do the sign for book and read through that for a while.

Music

Audrey loves music. She dances to any and every beat - and she has since she was about 5 weeks old. She dances to classical, pop, holiday and children's. She also loves to sit at the piano at Grandma and Grandpa's house and play. Surprisingly, she doesn't bang away. In fact, until recently she only played one note at a time. Lately she has been pressing a few notes at the same time, but again, no banging - just gently pressing.

Bedtime routine

Our bedtime routine consists of: Eating a good meal, bath time (not part of it every night), changing into pajamas, brushing teeth, reading books (usually 3 - favorite of the day, Good Night Moon and Mommy Hugs), giving her the pacifier and baby doll and singing Edelweiss while rocking her on the way to her bed.

Recently, Audrey is insisting on doing more and more of it on her own. I have already mentioned how she likes to do the cleaning in the bath, she now tries to help with putting on pjs, insists on reading her own book - though she likes me to do the words while she holds the books and flips through the pages willy-nilly (luckily we have read them all often enough that I have them memorized), and the trickiest part - she loves to brush her own teeth. We always take turns but she is getting more difficult during her parent's turn.

Here she is multi-tasking - brushing her teeth and reading her book.

Legos

Grandma has a big bag of legos for visiting grandkids to play with (which currently consists of just Audrey in the local area). Audrey absolutely loves the legos and of course, her favorite part is the lego people. She actually has really great finger dexterity and loves to put the legos together just as much as she enjoys pulling them apart.

Animals

This week our play group was at a little girl's house in the country - gravel road and all (frankly, I didn't even realize there were unpaved roads in Fairfax county). This little girl has lots of animals - a dog (which was very kid friendly), a horse (which was showing off to try to get treats) and a pony (which mostly stayed in the barn). Audrey was fascinated and scared by the animals. She did the sign for horse and dog, but really didn't want either of them very close to her.

There are several dogs in the neighborhood and she loves to watch them out the window or chase after them, but again, if they come to close she starts to cry.

She also loves birds. Our neighbors have several bird feeders in their tree in the backyard. So from our deck, you can usually see a great variety - Orioles, canaries, and a pretty red bird are among my favorites. The only problem we have with seeing the birds is that she squeals with delight every time - which of course, scares the birds away. She also does the sign for bird. (Strangely, none of the birds have been at all interested in the bird feeder that Audrey and I made at playgroup with a pine cone rolled in pb and birdseed.)

Yesterday when we were shopping we past some Nemo towels. Audrey saw Nemo and stared pointing and doing the sign for fish. So her daddy took her over to the fish tanks (we were in Walmart) where she squealed with delight at all the fish. Later in the day after her nap, she looked up at me and did the sign for fish again - apparently she thinks we can produce animals on demand. So I went to the Discovery HD theater channel and sure enough, they had a show on coral with lots of beautiful fish.

Books with Grandpa

Audrey loves to read books - both on her own and with others. Here she is reading with her Grandpa (paternal side).

Rudolph

In the car today, Audrey and I heard "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" on the radio. So I asked Audrey, "where's your nose?" In response she stuck her finger up her nose (as far as she could) and left it there for the whole song. The funniest part was she still danced to the music - bopping her head back and forth - even with her finger shoved up her nose.

Thanksgiving

Aunt Genny came and stayed with us for Thanksgiving. Here is a good picture of her and another bad picture of Audrey (poor kid).

We had a lot of fun making holiday food and hitting the sales.