Audrey is 23 Months Old!

Our wild and crazy baby is growing like a little weed!  Here's what life is like this month:

- She is talking ALL THE TIME.  Her speech is very clear and easy to understand...I would guess we can understand 95% of it, and the other 5% is very frustrating for her and leads to tantrums, lol!

- She can take her own clothes off, especially at naptime.

- She RUNS everywhere.  There is no "walking" anymore.

- She loves to play with Emily and the neighbor's girls.  She is always looking for them and wanting to visit friends. It's so cute!  She plays with them like she's 4 years old, too!

- She yells "ouch" the whole time I comb her hair and fix it because Emily yells when I do hers.  Thanks, Em. ;)

- She has gotten to be a little more difficult with eating these days- very picky and she will just shove it away and say, "No, I don't want it!" if it's not what she wants.  One night she ate a single bean for dinner. :/  She does, however, LOVE a 9am ice cream cone at her Granny's house:

 

- She now cries when I leave her with my in laws and cries when I come back and it's time to go.  There's just no pleasing her, haha!

- She like to "help" me put things away:



- She has been riding in her little pink car and in the Barbie jeep a lot and loves to do so.

- She can climb up the ladder to the swingset now.  TERRIFYING!

-  She loves to cuddle with Emily in my bed in the mornings and watch a show together.

Sometimes I even join in!

 

- She has really enjoyed all the smoothies we've been drinking, thanks to my Ninja blender they gave me for Mother's day. 

 

 - She likes to hide among the pillows:

 

 That's life right now! I can't believe she'll be TWO years old in a month!  Stay tuned- The Very Hungry Caterpillar birthday party is right around the corner!!

Emliy is 4 Years 9 Months Old!

Hi everyone! It's that time again- the monthly update on our big girl!  Shockingly, this month I have very few photos to share (read-- I hardly used my camera at home this month!)  It's been pretty busy around here and very, very, very, very rainy (did you get that part?? It's like the rainiest July on record, I swear!)  We've been cooped up inside or playing at friend's houses for the whole month and I simply haven't been taking as many photos as normal.  Hopefully some good weather is on the way- we need to PLAY! Here's what's been happening this month:

- We bought Emily a kindergarten readiness workbook from Sam's and she absolutely loves doing her "work".  She will happily sit and work on pages with you and loves to follow the directions in the book and learn new things.  So far, so good...and we are totally amazed at how she is able to defend her answers when we ask-- she has very advanced reasoning abilities, for sure!

- She stayed the night with Granny and Grandaddy a few times this month which was great- Audrey tends to sleep later so if Emily is not home, Paul and I get to sleep a little extra too!!

- She attended VBS at an area church in our town.  We have lots of friends who attend there and she went with our neighbors-- she had a great time!  She would come home each night and tell me all about how much she liked the games and stories and crafts.  Our church's VBS is next week so hopefully she'll love it just as much!

- She put my self- tanning lotion all over Audrey one day....that insured that Audrey got an IMMEDIATE bath, lol!

- She has all but stopped eating any cooked vegetables.

- She is in love with fresh peaches from the market down the road.

- She got to hang out with friends and stay up VERY late for fireworks on the 4th of July- and loved every minute! It was a great party and she had a fun time.

- She is love with poems from Shel Silverstein's books A Light in the Attic and Where the Sidewalk Ends. Which is perfect, to me, because I love them too! It's funny- most of these poems were written a long time ago and some of them are incredibly politically INcorrect...sometimes we have to adjust the language or the message but she enjoys the majority of them.

- She is more helpful around the house.

- She has decided (of her own volition here- we did not tell or ask her) to bring her own money to church now for her offering.  Absolutely melts my heart that she is willing to give to help others.  It's especially sweet when she talks about why we give an offering to our church-- her answer is precious!

- Our neighbors (2 of which are some of Emily's closest friends) have been on vacation for 2 weeks this summer and Emily is really missing them a lot!

- She has started to draw amazingly realistic pictures of people and things- she remember things like fingers, eyelashes, etc... It's amazing!  She loves to sit and draw with markers, cut paper, string beads, etc.

Thanks for checking in on our girl! More photos to come this month, promise!  There are some in the album that I had already posted so I'm not including them in this post. :)

Audrey is 22 Months Old!

We're just ticking along here-- Audrey is 22 months old this month and we just can't believe it!  Here's what she's like right now:

- she LOVES the word NO.  LOVES it.  Also nooooooo, NOOOO, nnnnnope, and NONONONONONONONONONO!!!!!!  She is happy to demonstrate if you need an example. ;)

- she has been staying in more this month than last month- it's been SO incredibly hot outside and we've had a huge crop of clover pop up in our yard, which has brought around a ton of bees.  I've been afraid to let her play much outside.  We've also been having some work done to our backyard so we've not been able to let her swim much either.  

- while we've been inside playing she has learned to drive herself on her little car (backwards, but she can do it herself!), and she has been playing with babies a lot.  It's so sweet to see her taking care of them, giving them their pacis, changing their diapers, etc.  She loves her little babies!

- she learned to sing Happy Birthday this month, and sings it just about every day.

- she learned to go down the steps backward.

- she fell asleep in my arms once this month, and it totally melted my heart! It's probably the last time she'll fall asleep in my arms so I just sat and kept rocking her and savoring the minutes!

- she likes to play with Play-Doh now.

- she says "Yes ma'am" when you tell her something- it's hilarious!

- she went down the GIANT slides at our local bounce house place- crazy baby!

- she had her nails painted for the first time, and I thought for sure she would be too wiggly but oh no-- she didn't move a muscle!

 -she loves to play with the girls' dollhouse, and especially to wear a ponytail while she does it, just so she can look like she's about TWELVE and break my heart!

- we had a stray dog live with us for a few days and she ADORED him!  Too bad we couldn't keep that sweet old guy!

That's all the news to report for this month.  Thanks for checking on our sweet little lamb!!! :)