Toddlerdom

Anytime anyone refers to Audia as a baby (as in "she's such a beautiful baby" or "I can watch the baby"), I get kind of annoyed. Of course she'll always be "my baby", but she is so not a baby. She is a toddler, through and through. It is impossible to spend more than 2 seconds with her and not see that she is an actively curious, asserting-independence, testing-everything-to-the-limit, walking, talking toddler.


She definitely is to the stage where she knows exactly what she wants. She will frequently ask for "Emmo"(Elmo) if he's not in the room. She will ask for a hot dog at 9 am and refuse to eat anything else. And she is ridiculously insistent that her daddy follow her around the house whenever he's around, which she communicates by pulling him, by his pointer finger, everywhere she goes.

The weather's warmed up a bit here in Minnie (and by "warmed up" I mean "in the upper 20's"), so we took her out in the back yard yesterday to test out her new sled. I was figuring that she'd be entertained for a couple of minutes, and then be done, as she usually is with the snow outside. But, as she loves to do, she proved me wrong by loving it, and getting upset when, after a half hour of making her daddy drag her around the back yard, I decided it was time to go in and warm up. She really is an outdoor girl!

In other news, she has finally figured out how to climb up on the furniture. Which is both awesome and scary.

She's also recently started asking me to sing by pointing at my mouth and saying "Sih!" She then puts her head on my shoulder usually for the entire duration of the song. When I finish, she usually asks me to sing again. It's ridiculously, heart-meltingly sweet. (Although I am a bit worried that maybe she is tone deaf. My singing is not something anyone ever wants to hear.....)

It is so amazing to look back on photos and videos of our little munchkin and see how FAR she's come!! A year ago, everything still was so new. Every little change in her behavior seemed life-altering: "is this normal?" "is she sick?" "is she developing ok?". Now, I look back on that new mother I was and giggle. I know it was totally normal for me to be that way about every little thing, but I also know there is no way I will be like that with our next child. I guess it's probably time I change my blog title to "A mother's bleary-eyed ramblings".

16 months old!

Happy New Years! We had a very nice week last week. We started it off with our Annual Snow Bocce Ball Tournament. Except it wasn't really a tournament this year so much as a round, because a few people couldn't make it.

Brrrr!

We're hoping to have another tournament in February. It was a lot of fun, though! Seeing Audia and A all bundled up was a lot of fun.

Cuties all bundled up!

My MN friends are the best :-) Auntie Anita (of Anita Lynn) and Uncle Joe Joe

With my BFF, J

The next two days I got to get out and have some adult girl time with my oldest friend, E, (we've known eachother for 24 years this year!!) who was in town from Chicago, and also with my BFF, N (who I've been friends with for 10 years now, but have known for a while longer.) It was much needed, and so much fun. Wednesday, Chris and I saw our first movie in theaters since before Audia was born! My parents watched Audia while we went with N and D to see Avatar in 3D. It was fantastic! Much more an experience than a movie, in my opinion. I highly recommend that everyone see it in 3D. It was crazy. Our New Years eve was nice and quiet, which I loved. After Audia was in bed, we watched TV and hung out with N and D. Can you tell we like spending time with them? LOL. I can't wait for the day that they move to the cities and N and A and Audia and I can have play dates every week. :-)

So, Audia will be 16 months old this Friday! Due to some confusion/mis-communication at her 12 month doctor's appointment, we didn't schedule a 15 month visit, which we should have. So, we went in yesterday to catch up. Audia is doing very well, as usual. The doc was very impressed with her expansive vocabulary, her ability to stack blocks, and her ability to walk backwards (which I didn't realize was a milestone.....). She's still in the 97th percentile for height, but has dropped below the 50th percentile for weight. The doc said it's nothing to worry about yet, especially because of how healthy she is and how much she eats. I think she's just bound to be a tall, lanky girl like her daddy! (except he's not a girl...haha!)

Here's a video of Audia playing with one of her new favorite toys (her other favorite is Elmo Live):