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. :)

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.

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.

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.

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!"

Barking sneeze

Yesterday we went to Chipotle for dinner. Audrey had the chips and guacamole - which occasionally made her open her mouth, scrunch her face in horror and do a head shiver/shake - a reaction to the onions (I think). Following which she immediately reached for more guacamole, so apparently she liked it despite the occasional spicey onion.

Then a man at a table next to us sneezed. It was a loud barking sneeze that sounded like a dog. So Audrey immediately yells with excitement, "Doggy!" over and over. Genny, Ryan and I were tearing up we were laughing so hard and Audrey was just confused and looking all over the restaurant for the dog.