Going Bananas

Recently Audrey has taken to eating bananas all by herself. I start the peel just at the top and she takes it from there. After very carefully peeling the banana, she tosses aside the peels (often to the floor) and starts the difficult work of consistently biting off more than she can chew.

As you can see Audrey also likes to dress herself and shoes are by far her favorite to change. Here she is wearing her moon boots about the house.

Tantrum Time

For about a month now Audrey will throw mini tantrums - kick her legs, sit down forcefully, fuss and wave her arms - when she really wants something. Unfortunately for her, I generally find her tantrums (at least at this stage) kind of cute and I often laugh when she starts to do one. If Audrey catches me laughing at her, she starts to cry for real. Apparently she is quite serious and if I am not taking her seriously enough, it hurts her feelings.

Baby Yoga

Audrey and I have tried to do yoga together a couple of times recently. Here is how it goes.

I put out a yoga mat for me and a towel for her and I put on a yoga dvd. Audrey and I both stand on our mats and she smiles and lifts her hands to the sky. As soon as the dvd has us bend over in any way, Audrey gets onto the floor and puts her head right under mine and looks up at my face so that when I look up we are inches apart. And as soon as I look up she bursts into giggles - as if this is the point. Of course, I can't help but laugh along with her and we end up laying on the mats watching the dvd together. Not much exercise, but it is still fun.

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.

Lady Bugs and Pig Tails

Audrey's hair is finally long enough for pig tails - so cute. She didn't like having them put in, but she sure liked having her hair out of her eyes all day long.

And today she rediscovered a musical ladybug that was hiding at the bottom of her toy chest. Normally she does laps around the kitchen island by herself - today she pulled that ladybug around and around and around until the music would stop and she would stop bend down, press the buttons again and as soon as the music started she would start doing laps again. In fact, when she first started the laps today, she was just happy to have something to pull along - about 15 minutes into it, she discovered the music - lucky me.

I have been working on getting Audrey to smile at the camera and this is the first pic that really paid off.

Gookie

Audrey has come up with a name for her binky - gookie. It is funny that she calls it "gookie" because she can say the b sound very well in other words (like Bo for Nemo). And she still doesn't say "mama" for me - though she has said it for daddy practicing a few times.

Coloring

Lately Audrey loves to color and paint. When she colors she loves to play with the crayons as much as she likes to color with them. She has broken, tasted and peeled the paper off of almost each of the crayons.

When she paints (watercolors), she loves to make the water get as dark as possible. In fact, I don't think she has quite caught on to the "proper" order to water painting. I show her several times a session - water, paint, paper. What she hears is - paint, water, mouth - she usually skips the paper altogether. Oh well!

I only let her do those things in her high chair, so her art has become our favorite activity while I am making dinner.

Ring around

Audrey loves to play ring around the rosies - she will do it alone or with others, she doesn't care as long as we sing the song. She doesn't quite do the falling down part very consistently, but she does laugh like crazy when her parents do the falling down part.

She also loves to do ring around the kitchen island. She literally runs circles around the island and giggles and laughs as she goes around and around.

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.

Olives

I mentioned in an earlier entry that Audrey loves olives - and I think these pictures say it all.

First she is digging around for olives for the fingers.

Once found she waves them around a bit and then eats them off her fingers with great enthusiasm.

New Year's Snow

Audrey and I spent New Year's in Minnesota. On New Year's Eve Audrey got to experience snow - at least the kind that you get to play in - for the first time. As long as it wasn't blowing in her face, she loved walking around in it.

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.