August?!

Tomorrow is the first day of August. I can't believe it. We'll be enjoying fall colors and sweater weather before you can say "boo!" More importantly, we'll be enjoying cheese curds and alligator on a stick in just a few short weeks! Hooray Minnesota State Fair!!!

We spent last weekend (friday 'til tuesday) at the cottage. Hadre, Brad, and Courtney were up there, as well as MIL and DIL. Chris and I went to the Lumberjack Championships in Hayward on Saturday. They weren't as exciting as I had imagined they would be (partly due to rain), but it was fun to do something different. It was so nice to see Heather and the kids, and so much fun to watch Audia and her cousins interact. She certainly had a fun time playing with them! I wish I had a few photos of Courtney and Audia playing (you would think that I would have at least ONE in the 700+ photos I took...), but alas I have none. Hopefully Hadre or MIL have a couple they can send my way.....

While we were up there, little miss mobile (aka Audia) figured out how to climb on top of her toy box when it was flipped over, as well as how to climb up the stairs from the beach to the cottage. She's also learned to point to her nose when you say "nose" and to her ear when you say "ear" (most of the time.....she still sometimes points to her nose when you say "ear"). She is giving her animals, and me, hugs when I say "Can you give *object name* a hug?", which is a total thrill....of course I am always asking for hugs now. Her hugs are the BEST!

On the way home, we couldn't resist stopping on the side of the road to get some photos of our little "child of the corn"....hehehehe

I've been trying to figure out for some time now if I should start a seperate blog to talk about non-Audia related things, but have decided to keep just the one. Bleary-eyed ramblings don't always have to be child-rearing-related bleary-eyed ramblings, do they?

Anyhoo, my good friend N and her hubby, D, who have a daughter, A, who is just a week older than Audia, are moving to MN at the end of August!!! I am sooooo excited. It is so funny how things work out; we had our daughters in the same month and now we're both moving back to MN in the same year! I so look forward to play dates galore with her, and watching our little ones grow up together :-) I love all my friends dearly, but there is something just so nice about having good friends who are at the same place in life as you.

As a mini side-note, I've been reading a very interesting book this past week called 'Godless: How an evangelical preacher became one of America's leading atheists'. It's written by Dan Barker who is, as the title suggests, an evangelical preacher-turned-atheist. I would highly reccommend it to anyone who is interested in why someone would chose to be an atheist, as well as to any atheists and/or agnostics who are interested in getting to know the bible a little better from a rationalistic (as opposed to theism-imposing) standpoint. Next, I'd like to read a book written by an atheist-turned-believer.

Baby Talk and More Teeth

This video is from the other night. Notice how she says "Mama" towards the end, and then waves when I say "Wave" to her. Since the day I wrote the '10 Months' entry, Audia has become so much more verbal and shown so much more obvious understanding of words, it's almost ridiculous. Like she read my blog entry and said "Hey! I absolutely am saying those words knowingly!"

She calls Chris 'Dada' and me 'Mama', and this morning, when Chris got out of bed and left the room, she said 'Bye' and waved. In the past couple of days, she has started making a snaping motion with her fingers when she sees the dogs. (We frequently snap before we say a command to get them to listen). She also will give a high five if you say "Can I have a high five?" She definitely knows what we're saying when we say 'Puffs', 'Eat', 'Yay', 'Good Job', 'Grandma', 'Grandpa', 'Dog', 'That's Nice', 'Down', 'Up', 'No', 'Be Gentle'....this list goes on and on, and has grown (or, I feel like it's grown) about 50 times in two weeks. Maybe this is totally normal for 10 month olds, but it still blows my mind. I feel like I give her so much less credit than I should by being amazed, but I can't help it!

In other news, our poor sweetie pie is getting yet ANOTHER set of teeth in, and these ones are by far the worst of all the teeth she's gotten in thus far. According to my research, the molars are next and based on how much more uncomfortable she seems, these upper molars are doozies. I just hope she gets through it soon. We've been going on 5 days of fragmented sleep now. I feel like I'm the living dead for the first time since she was a month or two old!

Sewing 101

I made Audia another dress. This one, thankfully, fits her a bit better than the first one I made. I decided to make it a couple sizes larger than what she was wearing when I started, which turned out to be a very wise choice. I started it when we were still living in AZ, and she will be fitting into it 'perfectly' in the next month or so.

I'd love to make her a couple more, but she really doesn't wear dresses very often so I guess I'll have to find something else I can make with the yards of fabric I purchased. Or maybe make dresses for other babies I know. Though I wouldn't necessarily say that I'm a good enough seamstress to be making gifts just yet. Maybe that's just the perfectionist in me talking, though.

As a side note/wondering....who the hell writes the verbiage for sewing patterns, and have they graduated High School? Or even the 9th grade? I had to re-read multiple steps in the damn pattern, looking at the step before and after, as well as the illustrations, multiple times before I understood what the heck they were trying to say. I can only hope that it was a bad translation from another language...although something tells me that's not the case.

10 Months!

In 2 months, Audia is going to be a year old. A YEAR! My, how time flies.

Audia turned 10 months old on Wednesday! She is now 21 lbs (give or take a few oz; our scale doesn't show ounces, unfortunately) and 30 inches long. Now we know why she was exceptionally fussy earlier in the month; not only was she teething, but she had one heck of a growth spurt!

She's been standing on her own more and more frequently, and for longer and longer periods of time. She loves taking sips of water from our adult cups or bottles, and finally seems to grasp the concept behind her sippy cups (other than just chewing on them).

While it is still difficult to say for certain (how does anyone really determine what a child's first word is??), I'm pretty sure she knows what she's saying when she says "Hi", "Dada" and "Mama". She claps every time someone says "Yay!" and waves every time she hears someone say "Hi" or "Bye". She comes to us when we say "Audia, come here, please." and usually stops what she's doing if we say "No." Since we've been back from the cottage, she now likes to stand at the screen door and yell and wave at passersby. She's certainly not shy!

She's been sleeping through the night for a while now, but more recently she's been getting consistant about how long she's sleeping; 12 hours a night and two hour to hour-and-a-half naps a day.

My parents bought her a toy cell phone because she is so obsessed with ours and she LOVES the thing! It's a flip phone and it rings after it's been closed for a little while; every time it rings, she claps and bounces up and down. I'll try to get it on video one of these days. It is the cutest!

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Post bathtime shinanigans

Cottage Part Deux

Day 6 at the cottage and we could not have asked for better weather! It was overcast the day we got here, but from Thursday on, it's been partly cloudy to mostly sunny and in the upper 70's the entire time we've been here. It's definitely the most busy I've ever seen Horseshoe lake....to be expected over the weekend of the Fourth.....but we have been enjoying ourselves nonetheless. We've also been lucky in that both Chris and I have only been bitten once each by mosquitoes; other people I know who were at their cabins this weekend were eaten alive. We are having such a good time, and the weather outlook is so good, that we've decided to stay an extra day, and will be returning Wednesday rather than tomorrow.

Audia seems to feel right at home here, and is proving herself to be one fearless little girl! Playing on the beach, she crawls right into the water, no hesitation whatsoever, and splashes and plays there. She loves crawling up to the big bay window in the living room, standing at it and yelling and waving at the speed boats and pontoons as they pass. I like to pretend she's yelling "go home!" but I am sure she's just saying "hi" ;-)
We kept her up on Saturday night to see the fireworks that were set off by a group across the lake; definitely no fear there! She loved watching them with daddy, and I find it pretty amusing that she couldn't care less about the loud booms they made but is afraid of the vacuum cleaner.

Watching fireworks with Daddy

She's really started to get into music while we've been up there; she bounces up and down anytime any music (with or without a decent beat) starts to play.
Her fifth and sixth teeth have both cut the gum since we've been here as well. Both are on the bottom, next to the middle teeth, and thankfully she only had one day where they seemed to be bothering her. Since then, she's been a peach.
She's had her first "real" (aka not minced to a paste) hamburger and corn while we've been up here....both of which she's loved. Of course, now that we've allowed her to feed herself these things, she's being a lot more finicky about us feeding her baby food, refusing the spoon unless we place it in her hand and guide it to her mouth. There's no doubt that she's a "do-it-yourself" kinda kid. Both a blessing and a curse ;-)

Corn on the Cob!

We've caught quite a few fish up here; I had a killer start, but the fishing's slowed down a bit for me, and Chris started off slow, but has killed 'em the past couple days. Ahhh the ebbs and flows of life. LOL. We've caught enough bass to have two meals so far and I'm hoping we'll catch enough to bring some home. There's nothing better than fresh bass for dinner (that is, aside from fresh panfish ;-)) Audia still hates her life jacket so we've been taking turns fishing. It's forcing me to learn both how to drive the boat and how to unhook my own fish, which is a good thing.

"What's that?"

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Feeding herself spring veggies...

The Cottage!

Well, we arrived at the cottage yesterday afternoon. A week up at the lake, just the three of us (with the potential for a day visit from my BFF and her BF) is just what the doctor ordered, for sure. It's overcast today but the forecast for the rest of our visit is sunny and warm. Swimming, fishing, BBQing, fishing, relaxing, fishing, napping, photographing, fishing...... Give me a lake, a boat, and a roof over my head and I'm happy as a clam.

Audia woke up with the sun this morning at 4:45 but thankfully she went back to bed around 6:15 and slept with me until 9:30. I think she's a born fisherwoman; up when the fish are :-) Lea would be proud. I've been researching various rigs for bass fishing and am hoping to test them all out. Bought a heavier action rod and some large offset hooks. I wish I could tell my auntie Lea how happy I am that she introduced me to fishing. I wish I could fish with her now.

We bought Audia an infant life jacket in hopes that we can all go out in the boat and Chris and I can take turns fishing....trial run this morning didn't go so well; after about three minutes, Audia was already fed up with the jacket and squirming and crying, trying to wiggle her way out of it. I am hopeful that catching her on a sunnier day, right after a nice long nap we will have better results.....