Florida

We took a trip to South Walton County, Florida and enjoyed some great beach time.  Audrey was pretty scared of the ocean at first so she soothed herself by eating sand. On the last afternoon we were there we went down to the beach for one last look and suddenly A couldn't get enough of being in the water. We rented bikes instead of a car and took some nice trips to nearby towns and state parks and grocery stores.

Heading down the board walk steps to the beach

Audrey munching on sand, note she didn't get it all in her mouth

Out for a hike in the woods

She was perfectly content to be carried this way

Swimming in the nice safe dune lake just off the ocean

"mama is swimming, maybe I should too..."

Walking along the dunes at Grayton Beach State Park

Sleep-eating after a long day at the beach

Yoga

Downward Dog

Wild Shavasana



Taking a break. Oh, here's a convenient seat!

Time to put my shoes on.  This seat is lumpy.

Stuffed animals and silliness

A new game: sit in the laundry hamper with your toys.








This pink bunny is Audrey's recent favorite.




 

Its easy to get in the basket and much, much harder to get out...

 

...so might as well get comfortable.

Easter

Our neighbors organized a hunt for all the kids on the court, color coded eggs for each of the eight kids, hidden for varying hunt competency levels. Audrey had mild to no interest in finding the eggs, was more interested in sticking her hands in the spring dirt that is showing here and there. She did enjoy using the eggs as shakers after they'd been collected.







It was a beautiful day, so we spent après ski time on friends' deck, where Audrey showed a lot of interest in the watering can and cooler drain, leaving her quite wet.

Skiing

Yep, that's Audrey on skis. We toured on some nice flat terrain and she enjoyed scooting along. The conditions were great this day, the snow was nice and grippy. I took her out again a few days later and
the snow was hard and slick, so it was a bit scary for the new skier. Here's some video on YouTube



Some family outings; view of Mt Werner from the quarry on Emerald Mountain


View of Hahn's Peak from Steamboat Lake

Big Girl

Audrey has turned into a willful and accomplished toddler. She does amazing things like stack all her rings,

initiate singing "Row Your Boat",
Watch here
ask for a banana every morning,





help out in the kitchen,

She also does mischievous, dangerous, and, dare I say it, annoying things. For example she took a dive off the kitchen chair that was very scary, now we have that set up adjusted so she is cornered in

She discovered the thrill of toilet paper


And she has taken to throwing fits when she isn't getting what she wants, which mysteriously includes that banana: every morning when she gets her banana peeled for her she starts freaking out, in a frustrated way, not a "oh my god there's my banana I'm going to inhale it" way (even though that is what she does with it as soon as she is done whining and protesting). What's up with that, feel free to speculate in the comments section.
Some big girl stats, from her 15 month check up:
Weight: 19lbs 7 oz
Height: 29"
Words over 8: yes--mama and dada (still somewhat interchangeable), up, water, more, banana, dog, book, ball, shoe, thank you, nose, hi, bye bye, no, yes, baby, uh oh.
I'm ready to start calling her "one and a half" for simplicity, Chris, being more math savvy wants to stick with naming her age by months until she is at least forty eight (months that is, not years, come on he's not that weird!)
At school she moved up from the infant room to the toddler room. The difference I was a little worried about is that in the toddler room they do naps on little cots on the floor. The teacher said on the first day Audrey took a forty five minute nap, woke up and must have remembered how much there is to play with, so got up and played for thirty minutes or so then started yawning and decided to go back to her cot for the second half of her nap and proceeded to sleep for another fortyfive minutes.
In other big girl news, Audrey is starting to use the potty more, because as a little three year old told us in the hallway at school "big kids go in the potty, babies go in their diapers", I felt my foot in my mouth when I said "oh then you must go in the potty" and her mommy told me "no, but she tries", oh well. You can tell our girl is a big kid because she has undies that she thinks she looks quite good in.


And lastly, for the big girl news update, we will be promoting Audrey to big sister come July when a new baby joins the family.

Christmas 2012

Better late than never...right?

We took a trip to Michigan back in December to visit Grandma and Grandpa, Uncle Alex and Uncle Dan went too.  Here are some pictures:

Audrey got a bike for Christmas, maybe by the summer she'll be big enough for it.