Catching Up

It seems like life has been so busy lately, there has been so much Audrey news to report on, but so little time to do it!

Patrick is mowing/landscaping again, so after a long day of teaching and mowing for him, he's not home until well after dinner most nights; which leaves me with teaching all day, picking up Audrey, dog duty, making dinner, cleaning up dinner and the house from the morning rush and all the while corralling and entertaining an active toddler. I am loving the one on one time I am getting with her and we are falling into our slightly different routine.....but it leaves little time for blogging, or reading, or catching up with friends on the phone, or much of anything that doesn't involve my little side kick. Love that girl!

Except of course the occasional day Patrick gets to come home after school and the days Mom is here keeping Audrey....the days she's here, my house is spotless when I come home! Amazing, I know! She's awesome!

Audrey...who is approaching 17 months...what?, is now sitting and eating most meals in a booster seat at the table. She LOVES this! She feels like a big girl and to my surprise doesn't make any more of a mess than she already did in her highchair. She even asks to sit up there to play sometimes, and it's providing a safer place for her to color and play playdough. For a little while she insisted on standing on a dining room chair at the table to play with her dough and color. The booster is a much better solution! It's nice and soft, it's a COOSHIE booster seat and she seriously thinks she's hot stuff. :)

She has been coloring a lot lately, and as she does she has been telling Patrick and I what it is that she is drawing! Seriously! She's narrating her drawings, which, as an art teacher, for a 16 month old to be doing this....is pretty amazing! Many of her drawing are bird related.... which leads me to my next topic.....Audrey LOVES birds!

She has become an avid bird watcher and loves to talk about what they might be doing.

"Birdies fly outside" "Birdie eat" "Birdie sleeping" "See birdie ball outside" (we made a bird ball out of some small scrap fabric and felt I had. we hung it outside for the birds to get little colorful scrapes and soft pieces to add to their nests.:) ) "Audy (audrey) see birdie outside"

She loves to count and can count to 6! She does often skip four, and especially loves counting to 3. We also hear this a lot:

Me: "What comes after 3?"

Audrey: "GO!" :)

Too funny!

She's not thrilled with the sudden cold snap we are having and is begging to go outside and play. That taste of sunshine and nice weather grabbed ahold of her and she is ready for it to come back....Mommy too!

She is learning her ABC's a little at a time and loves to start the song "ABC..." then throw in a letter here and there as we sing, then she finishes up with "WXYZ".

She still loves Sesame street and has come to really like the Cat in the Hat cartoon that comes on PBS. She also loves all the Dr. Seuss and P.D. Eastman books. Especially Green Eggs and Ham and Are you my Mother?. We read those two over and over. Goodnight Moon holds steady as her night time favorite and she loves the page, "goodnight nobody, goodnight mush". She anticipates it coming and says..."nobody...noooooooobody! Mush!"

She is so funny and sweet and joyful. She is at times wishy washy and stubborn, but will then lay her head on my shoulder and rub her sweet little hand on my back and dissolve all frustration with one precious look.