Feelin' the Burn

Following the typical new year's resolution, Audrey has witnessed a little more exercise around the house recently. And she is quick to mimick us these days. And she really likes counting, but without a doubt "two" is pretty much the only number she's mastered at this point. One and three aren't far behind, though. Here she is doing some curls (if she was tall enough to curl or strong enough to lift the rubber band).

Air & Space

We had big plans to get Audrey out of the house to a nearby farm last Sunday based on a great forecast...warm with only a chance of showers in the afternoon. But then we woke up to a dreary, rainy day and decided to go with Plan B, which was a trip out to the new Air & Space museum out in Dulles (Udvar Hazy). Audrey has been semi-obsessed with airplanes recently anyway, so we figured it was a pretty good alternative. And it turns out that 15 minutes after opening on a Sunday morning is the absolute best time to visit - we practically had the whole place to ourselves. Overall, we'd say Audrey was pretty impressed with the place, although her fun was less about the planes and more about just running around.

NYE

We spent New Year's eve with friends at a rental house in Graves Mill, VA (about 25 mins. or so northeast of Charlottesville). Aside from the absence of any local channels on the DirectTV package, which means we missed out on practically every bowl game played over the weekend, Audrey got to spend some quality time with her friends Addison and Maya. It was pretty cold and terribly windy most of the weekend, so we didn't get much outdoor time, but Audrey and Addison did get a chance to get outside, eat some snow, and hang by the fire for a little while.

Snow!

We were up in York at Grandpa & Gmas for the big snow the weekend before Xmas, but we went up prepared for some wintery weather. Until this, Audrey had only spent a total of about 5 minutes out in the snow, and she wasn't particularly happy about it at all. Turns out a lot can change in a year...even though her over-sized mittens made it impossible for her to grasp just about anything, she had a great time just walking around, trying to pick up the snow, and even doing a little sledding. She was not at all interested in laying in the snow or making snow angels...hopefully that comes later.

Christmas

Audrey's first Christmas of merit involved quite a bit of traveling...up to York for Xmas the weekend before Xmas, then Xmas eve and Xmas morning in NoVa, followed by Xmas afternoon back in York, and the day after Xmas in MD. All that followed with a trip to Shenandoah for NYE, and hopefully we have a legitimate excuse for the delay in posts. Long story short, Audrey loved opening all of her presents, as well as everyone elses. She actually seemed to get more entertainment out of the process of unwrapping than finding out what was inside. Here are some pics of the festivities...

Audrey making green bean casserole

















Audrey Xmas eve














Audrey Xmas morning















Xmas morning at Nonna and Poppa's















Xmas afternoon at Grammy & Grampy's

Santa Haters

Told you so. Here's Audrey and Parker sitting on Santa's lap. He must have told them Elmo isn't real, or that Pablo (Backyardigans) is CG animation.

18 Months

Audrey had her 18 month appointment with doctor Myers last week and received a clean bill of health. She's an ounce over 23 lbs (still ~25th), and is 34 inches long (~75th +). Dr. Myers even made a point of mentioning her height to Theresa, and that she keeps expecting to see it slow down, given both of our relatively short statures. I imagine that will happen at some point, but for now, we're stuck with the possibility that she'll be over 7 feet tall. Theresa said Audrey couldn't have been more well behaved, and was completely intrigued with whatever Dr. Myers was trying to check out at any given time. Poor thing wouldn't even look away when it came time for her shots...she's just that interested in what's going on.

Dr. Myers was glad to hear some of Audrey's words (she's not a big on-camera talker), and made mention of her attempt to string words together (repeating 'right back' when Dr. Myers had to duck out of the room for a minute). Dr. Myers also seemed surprised that Audrey is able to jump clear off of the ground at her age (which she's been doing for months...current vertical measured at 2-3 inches), and basically informed us that we can expect a number of accidents, similar to the shiner, because she's way more physically ahead of the game for her age than she is mentally. Basically, she's great at sprinting, jumping, climbing, but not so aware of when it might be a terrible idea to do those things. So we'll see how it goes.

I've been a little remiss about posting things related to our every day lives rather than events and occurrences. But it's sometimes hard to step back and figure out what's 'news' when you're living it every day. But, in an effort to make up for that a little bit, here are some other points of interest: We just took her pacifier away last week (which she only used to sleep with anyway). She put up a little bit of a fight, especially at naptime, but now she seems to be back to her old sleeping habits. Of course we replaced it with a taggie towel/blanket thing that Grammy gave her, so we'll have to start the whole process over in however many years when it's time to take that away. She loves Elmo ("Melmo"), and would wear her Elmo shirt every day if we would let her, and proudly points to him on her chest every time she has it on. She still loves her vegetables, but also has a weakness for pizza ("pu-pa"). She refused ice cream the other night, so she might have avoided inheriting her father's sweet tooth. She loves trucks and buses (any large automotive, really) and stands at the front door to say hi to the garbage men every Friday, who wave back to her. She loves to be outside, and doesn't seem to care when it's only 30 degrees. And she always makes sure she and everyone else has on their hat ('at') beforehand. She loves books, but can't wait to skip to the end (which frustrates her parents). She also likes to draw, but almost refuses to do so on paper, which is the only place she's supposed to do it. And she knows that, but just smiles and blatantly disregards us while we try to act stern (which I secretly think is cute. For now.) She always has to be a part of whatever is going on in the kitchen, especially on the counters, so each of us is getting pretty good at making dinner one armed. She loves to throw things in the trash, sweep the floor, and put away the dishes. She has shown almost no interest in using the potty since we bought her one. The first thing she does after she wakes up in the morning is to turn on the Xmas tree lights. She really seems to like Santa, but is scared to death of him when it comes time to sit on his lap (we tried 3 times).

Anyway, that's all I can come up with off of the top of my head. We'll do our best to keep up with the little things in the future...