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.

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.

All Done!

One of Audrey's favorite (or at least most used) phrases is "all done!" (said with the exclamation point). Lately when she says "all done!" while eating, what she really means is "I am about to dump the contents of my meal out and spread it around." Case in point - is the cereal seen in these pictures.

Bath Time - part 2

Last night Audrey said "bath."

And now she likes to try to wash herself in the bathtub. She reaches for the soap (which I squirt into her hands) and then rubs her hands together to get them foamy (but most of the soap falls through her wide open fingers) and then rubs her little belly (with great enthusiasm). Last, but not least, she looks up with a big I-did-it-myself-smile.

Bath Time

Audrey really likes to take a bath, but she isn't so fond of the bubbles.

Her favorite bath time toys are her bucket, rake, boat and watering can. She especially likes it when we pour the water from the watering can in front of her so she can play with the stream of water.

The only thing she really doesn't like is getting her head wet, so you can imagine the struggles to wash her hair. She usually tolerates it as long as her face stays dry. Once her face gets wet, she panics and stands up and reaches to come out and - worst of all - she sucks in - which makes her panic more when water goes into her nose and 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.

Milk?

Audrey has the sign for "milk" (squeezing your fist like you are milking a cow) down pat. However, she has definitely taken a very broad interpretation of the word. She basically does the sign for "milk" whenever she wants something in the fridge because she knows that I will open the fridge for her and then she can run over and try to point to/grab whatever she thinks she wants while it is open. (It really is a race to get things into and out of the fridge before she can grab unsuspecting dressings, sauces and leftovers.) I, for one, am very impressed with her ability to use the words/signs she knows to communicate much more than her limited vocabulary permits.

Spicy Lady

The other day Audrey and I stopped into Popeye's for a quick lunch. I was thinking she would enjoy eating some of my chicken strips and biscuit. She was thinking she would help herself to some Cajun spicy fries. In fact, she had no interest in either the chicken or the biscuit. When she saw me dipping my chicken in the honey mustard sauce she wouldn't settle down until she had tried it too. I thought I would just dip her spicy fry in and let her taste - and then she would realize that she didn't want it after all. Boy was I wrong. While she didn't seem to like the honey mustard, she wouldn't eat another bite of her fries without it. And of course, she insisted on doing the dipping on her own too.

Redskins Fan

We got a Redskins warm-up suit from Freecycle (a fabulous thing) about a year ago. It fits Audrey perfectly. Here she is snuggled up to her daddy to watch the game (and play with her cell phone). She is a lot of fun to watch the games with - she loves to clap whenever she hears clapping and she puts her arms up for touch-downs.

Good Girl

Apparently I say "good girl!" to Audrey quite often. The other day when I was giving her some food and she ate it, I responded with "good girl!" and she turned to me and repeated "Goo! Gar!" very enthusiastically. "Good girl" is now one of her favorite things to say.

Pig Tails

I have been trying to come up with hair styles other than the "top knot" look. Here I tried top pig tails. In real life they were really cute, but the pictures turned out terribly. I figured that bad pictures are better than no pictures.

The pictures look like Audrey was too busy reading to be bothered for pictures, but she actually did stop and smile.

For those of you who haven't been to our house in a while, you can see the new arrangement of our living room looking out from the play area.

Mini milestones

Today we had book babies, which is a program at the local library for 6-24 month old kids where the parents read and sing to the kids in unison. Audrey really likes the program, especially getting to play with all the other little kids afterwards.

Earlier in the morning, she bumped her mouth and cut her lip, so while she was playing she was holding her mouth in the same way she does when she finds something on the ground and eats it. When I noticed this I said, "Audrey open your mouth so that mama can see what you are chewing on." And she did!! She opened it as wide as she could so that I could see her empty mouth. Then she closed it again with a little smirk almost like she was pleased that she had tricked me and that she had obeyed my instructions.

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.