15 months!

Well, just to make things more manageable I am going to make a strong attempt to at least do a little monthly update! I should be able to pull that off right?? :)

It is all a little out of order but here is a clip of the last month.

Here is our little fam on a torry pines hike. We love that place!

Audra loves to help me with the laundry! I'll ask her if she wants to help me and she will walk to the laundry closet and stand and wait. As soon as I open the dryer she will hold her hand out waiting for me to hand her clothes and then she puts them in! Such a fun little helper game!

When she wakes up for the day or from a nap usually the first thing she does is walk over to the iHome and point for me to turn the music on. If it's not her favorite song she will point again for me to change it to a different song. One thing is for sure, this little one knows what she likes!

Doing a little art project with stickers and markers.

She did a good job getting a couple of them on the paper and then colored over them.

This is her favorite beach game. Daddy builds and Audra smashes!

I painted her nails one night after her bath. She loved them! I left the nail polish bottle on the dinning room table and the next night after her bath she handed it to me thinking it was a new nightly ritual! So cute!

We got this cute table and chair set at the thrift store! She seems like such a big girl having snacks out of her high chair.

Had to post this cute one! She is wearing a sweater that my great grandma made for me.

She thought it was hilarious to wear my vest one night!

Just enough hair for some little pig tails now! :)

She loves eating with a fork!

Another new tradition is going on a run with daddy after work which mommy loves! Such a treat to get a moment of peace before dinner.

She spent the whole weekend with her daddy last weekend and they had such a sweet time together and I think really bonded on a different level. I loved seeing how extra snugly she was with him when I got home from my doula conference. The conference was amazing as a side note and that may be a whole blog in of itself.

She is 15 months now! Some other cute things she started doing this month:

• At bed time she now walks into her room, points to her ladybug that puts stars on her ceiling and then points at her crib to get in. So cute! She is so independent! I wish I could take credit for it but she started doing it all on her own.
• She also started sitting while she is waiting for something. I think because I tell Lucy to sit while she waits so one day Audra started doing it and I couldn't believe it!
• She LOVES shoes! She loves wearing them, she loves other people's shoes and she loves saying shoes.
• She got another molar this month bringing her up to three.
  
• I didn't take her paci away yet. I just couldn't do it! Bedtime is so peaceful and I'm not sure I'm ready for a change even if it is just for a few days. Plus we are going to oregon next week so my new plan is to do it when we get back. :)
  
• Generally she is a pretty obedient girl and I am so thankful for that! Maybe we haven't gotten to the real testing your boundaries age. Today she got upset because I took her shoes off when she got home and I told her in my serious mommy voice, "No no Audra we do not throw fits do we?" she looked at me seriously and shook her head no. AHH it is so hard not to smile sometimes when I am disciplining her she is just too cute!
  
• Just this week at Legoland she started enjoying the splash park! Every other time she has been nervous of the unpredictable sprinklers but this week she was loving it! Even the part where a bucket dumps on her head.
• Hmm what else... she likes to say "I do" a lot.
• She tries to say another and gets pretty close. Especially when we are in the car and she wants a different song. Sometimes I change it and sometimes I tell her no we are going to finish the song we are listening to. Audra's friend Finley's mama had a baby about a month ago so we took Finley to her dance class a couple of times. When we were in the car Finley would ask for another song so I think that's where Audra got it. So impressionable these little ones!
• She LOVES playing outside and the older she gets the more I am thankful that she can pretty much everyday.
• She has started using her potty chair again on occasion but only if I can get her to sit long enough.
• She likes to put things where they go or how they go. I had put some ducks in a play shopping cart and she pulled them out, put them on the floor, and they fell on their side. Before she could walk forward with the cart she said, "Uh Oh!" and had to set them upright. If Daine leaves his shoes by the front door she brings them to him and puts them in his lap for him to put them away. Also, one day he left his glasses case on the couch and she picked it up and put it on his bed. She now says Uncle Daine too. It comes out sounding like Un Daie. :)

That is all I can remember right now! We have her check up on Monday so I may update with her stats then. We are continually amazed at how she is growing and changing and what a sweet girl she is. So thankful that she is our sweet girl!

UPDATE: She is now 70th % for height at 31 inches! I thought she had gotten a bit taller since our last appointment. Just one more inch and she can ride more rides at LegoLand! Also she is 15th % for weight. Coming in just barely over 20lbs. Good thing we made that cut off since I already turned her car seat around. :)

Mother's Day

What Andrew had planned for mother's day!

What Audra had planned for mother's day:

It was lovely sleeping in on Sunday morning and waking up to flowers and a card and a girl who had been fed her breakfast and a hubby making breakfast for us! Audra went down for her morning nap and we had some nice quiet time and started getting ready to go to a rally for a local OBGYN. We went right after nap time and when we go to the rally Audra was just wanting to snuggle and fell asleep on me again. hmm.... thought it was sweet and loved snuggling her and then got home and realized she was developing a fever. So that was why she was so snuggly. The rest of my day and night was spent snuggling her and her fever broke at some point in the wee morning hours. This meant I was only able to cash in a few of my mother's day coupons! Good thing they have no expiration. ;) I think I will wait and cash in my pedicure one when my mama comes to town in a few weeks! Which will also be a belated mother's day present to her from Kel and I. Pedicures are really more fun in groups anyway!

This weekend I am gearing up to go to the doula training conference! I'm so excited and have been reading like crazy to prepare! It is all day Saturday and Sunday so Andrew will be on full time Audra care.
More on sweet audra in a bit, it has been a super fun month!

We are alive!

There is no way I can go back and sum up these last five months easily so I figure I will just pick up here! Yikes five months! Should I even keep doing a blog?? :) I think it's safe to say that between Thanksgiving, Christmas, my sister doing American Idol, Audra's first and hopefully last cast, getting ready for our girls big 1st birthday party, Audra's first trip to Disneyland, Easter, company visiting throughout all of that, siblings living with us off and on and all our regular weekly outings like Legoland, Sea Life, the park, days and evenings at the beach with friends and other just regular life necessities the blog has not been a priority.


Our sweet baby or I guess toddler girl will be 14 months in a couple of days and is just growing and changing before our eyes! She is all girl and will turn a simple starbucks coffee sleeve into a bracelet and just glows when I let her wear one of my necklaces. She loves her babies and her stuffed animals and loves to hug and kiss them and give them to me to hug and kiss but also loves basketballs and cars and her favorite thing to do during bath time is "catch fish". She has this plastic fishing pole and fish with curly tails that her Grandma Palmer bought her and if I do say so myself, she is pretty good at it! At this point she is fearless. She races towards the roaring waves with giggles and excitement! She is now running! She loves dancing. She has just figured out how to get herself up onto the chairs in our living room and now uses her glider as an at home swing.

She loves to climb into her stroller Grandma and Grandpa Bachran got her for christmas.

This is at target, I was looking at belts and handed her this one that is elastic and beaded so she thought it was a necklace. Boy was she thrilled to wear that throughout the store!! Cracked me up!

Her vocabulary is growing like crazy. I think her new words since my last post are doggy, hi, what's that which comes out mostly as whassa (she says this all day every day too, has been for months, and it is still the cutest thing!), more recently who is that which comes out whoosaaa, all done, Lucy, oh yeah (just this morning she was wanting to get up on her glider to swing and I said, "Audra don't you want to go outside to the park with mommy and daddy?" and she said, "Oh, yeah!"), up, toes, pretty which just comes out puhrrr, audra, hug, uh oh, and her newest favorite is "no"! We are teaching her some Hawaiian words too. For example she knows how to find her Piko which is her belly button. I tell her to sit on her Okole which is bottom and she knows what that means.

At her last appointment in February she was back up to the 10th percentile for weight and 50th for height. Still a tiny thing!

She has 8 teeth fully in and two molars that have broken through.

Hmm what else.... She is a sleeping and eating champ now. She goes down without a peep and sleeps almost 12 hrs every night. In fact her Grandma Gerry babysat her last Saturday night and tried rocking her for a bit but Audra just kept pointing to her crib so Grandma Gerry just put her in and she went to sleep. She is also finally napping! I used to consider anything over 30 minutes a nap but now she takes at least an hour nap in the morning and an hour in the afternoon. Of course we have off days for napping but generally she is a great napper. She loves lots of different foods although the week she first started walking if I couldn't put it in a smoothie or in a snack trap she wouldn't eat it because walking was just too much fun!

I am thinking about taking the paci away next week because I know the longer I wait the harder it will be. Why next week? Well my brother is living with us right now and he will be gone for a week so I figured that would be a good time as I know there will be tears involved. Right now she just has it at nap time or bed time and this morning when I put her down and she didn't see it right away she asked for it by saying pac. I guess that's another word...

Here is a minor attempt to go back and round up some pictures from the last couple of months anyway.

planting strawberries, lavender, oregano and thyme with Grandma Gerry.

Ok I must stop now and get back to my girl who is awake!

Audra and her fancy cardboard box walker!

Our sweet little busy nine month old girl!!

9 months!

This was a busy month for Audra!

• She had her 9 month Dr. appointment a couple of weeks ago and she was 15lbs and 7oz and 27.5 inches tall. Since becoming mobile she dropped down to 5th percentile for weight but is 50th percentile for height. I'm just glad she is on the charts since neither I or any of my siblings made it on there for weight! Her pediatrician said she probably will fall off the chart by her birthday but it's totally fine.
• She loves climbing to a stand on anything including the sliding glass door and my pant leg and spends her days going from one object to another to stand. It is pretty cute to look down and see her standing next to me just holding onto me with one hand.
  
• She also loves cruising along furniture.
  
• She can wave goodbye sometimes but not every time we ask her.
• Since becoming so mobile she is into EVERYTHING!!! I pretty much follow her around the house all day making sure she doesn't hurt herself.
  
• She thinks it's pretty fun to use her cardboard box as a walker. I know fancy right? :)
• She still eats pureed food but loves to feed herself pieces of chicken and turkey and avocado and banana. She especially loves feeding her food to Lucy so now Lucy spends most meal times in her kennel so Audra isn't tempted to feed her.
  
• She can now say Dada too!
• She is sooooo much happier now that she is on the move!
  
• Every time I go to get her in her crib she is standing now!
  

I think that is it! I seriously can't believe how big she is getting and how much she is changing every day now! I just feel so grateful to be her mama! Even on the longest days she is such a joy!!

8 months

• With 8 months came Audra mastering crawling.
• She took her first road trip to Santa Cruz for a wedding and to see her Palmer Grandparents and did really well considering how much time spent in the car over a few days.
• She also said her first word this month! MAMA!! :)
• She also took another trip to Oregon.
• While we were there she sat in the sassy seat at dinner which is a little chair that hooks right onto the table and loved it! She loved sitting at our level and talking and yelling and doing her fake laugh! She was a riot!
• She got her top two teeth while we were traveling too which made for a fun combination!
• She loves smacking her lips while she plays
• She sat in a restaurant high chair for the first time and ate some bread while we waited.
• She can also now gracefully move from a sit to a crawl and vice versa.
• She loves to sing (are you surprised?) and will actually go into this little falsetto! It is so cute! Sometimes when we are in the car I will ask her if she wants to sing and she will do it!
• She is loving lots of other foods now but mostly sticking to veggies and fruits. Avocado, bananas, sweet potatoes and apple sauce are still staples. She also enjoys the earth's best chicken and sweet potato puree.
• I think that is it! Just can't believe how big she is getting and love her more everyday!