Happy Victoria Day!

I have to work today, no holiday for us in the U.S., but we are heading up to Toronto on Wednesday evening, so that's exciting. We're going to try to drive through the night so that Audrey will be sleeping for as much as possible of the 12 hour drive. On a much shorter drive on Saturday she was trying to escape from her car seat, so we want to minimize the stress of the trip as much as possible by driving at night.

Audrey is getting closer to walking, but still won't let go. It's pretty funny. I'm convinced that she could walk if she tried, but she insists on holding onto something. Unless she picks up two objects she's interested in, then she'll stand there quite happily not holding onto anything. Last night we tried to encourage her to walk from Michael to me, but she just drops into a crawl. I'm not worried about it, I figure this way, by the time she lets go she'll be an expert walker and won't fall down too much. She's quite a speedy crawler though, and can even zip around backwards.

Audrey is extremely vocal, and tries to mimic almost any word I say. She consistently says "uh" for up when she wants me to pick her up, she says her little friend Addie's name, and says "gop" alot, I'm not sure what that one means yet :) She also has been trying to say bottle, bird and ball. It looks like she will be quite a chatterbox soon.

She's also teething, but doing really well with that, we hardly notice any problems, othe than a little occasional clinginess. She has four teeth fully in, and at least two more are coming in.

Hope everyone is doing well & wish us luck with our trip, hopefully we'll have lots of good pictures! Here are some recent ones:

Audrey & her friend Wilder. Audrey likes to feed people.






I set up the piano for Audrey to play with and she really seemed to enjoy it:





I was organizing some of the toys that Audrey has grown out of, and thought I would see what she thought of her old bouncy seat. She looks so much bigger in it now!




And here are a few more fun ones, she is quite the little monkey and loves to climb on and stand on things.

New videos

Hope you enjoy :) P.S. if you right click on the videos and choose Watch on Youtube, you can see the full image - it seems to be cropping it strangely.

We're back!

Wow, I can't believe it's been almost a month! Audrey sure has kept me busy recently. She was quite sick at the beginning of the month, but is doing fine now. She had a double ear infection and scared us with a fever of 104 degrees along with a bad cough, but everything has cleared up now.

It seems like Audrey is changing faster all the time, and getting so mobile! She is very very close to walking, but doesn't want to let go quite yet. She practically runs around cruising though. She also loves to climb and stand on things, which is a little nerve-wracking. She started to climb out of her high chair today - scary!

Audrey is eating better and can handle almost any soft table food now. She definitely prefers table food to baby food, but she still eats a fair bit of baby food too.

Audrey's speech skills are improving quickly too. She can say all sorts of sounds, and babbles constantly. She can say Audrey pretty well, which I think is impressive, and says hi, bye, dada, daw for dog (kind of), "uh" for up. She's probably best at hi, bye-bye, and dada, and won't always say it, but she seems to understand more now.

Audrey is also getting better about understanding how things work, by trying out buttons and opening and closing things. Overall she is doing just great and is so much fun!

Probably my favorite newish thing that Audrey does, is "hiding" to pop out and surprise us. If you say "where is Audrey" she will duck down and hide, it's very cute :) She also will start clapping as soon as I begin to sing "If You're Happy and You Know it."

Here are some photos:

Audrey having dinner with her friend Wilder.



Here are some photos of Audrey playing around the house. Sometimes it seems like she won't stop moving! I made the mistake of holding her hand to walk at the store today, and she wouldn't let us pick her back up for a long time!










Hope everyone is having a great weekend! P.S. I'm uploading a couple of videos, should have them up by tomorrow!

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter everyone!

Everything is going well down here in Kentucky. Spring has sprung & the weather is beautiful. We had a wonderful Easter weekend, especially since Audrey's Baba was here to visit!

Audrey is still cruising around, getting faster and faster all the time. She still falls down, but much less often than she used to. She is getting close to walking, but still prefers to hold on for balance.

Audrey loves to talk & babbles away most of the time. She pretty consistently says Dada and "doh" for dog, and bye-bye and hi. She also is getting pretty skilled at mimicking speech - last week she said Audrey almost perfectly, and we were pretty amazed! She has also managed to say Up a bunch of times, but doesn't say it all the time.

At her 12 month check-up Audrey weighed 17 lb 11 oz. Less than I hoped, but she is still on the same curve she's been on, so the pediatrician was happy. The pediatrician was also very impressed with Audrey's development and said that she is perfectly on target for her actual age. We knew that she was doing really well, but it was nice to hear it. So she's small, but doing really well. We are very proud of her. She still has a great happy personality.

Audrey had her first real illness this week, but has already bounced back. She had a double ear infection with a fever of 104 degrees, and they were concerned she might have pneumonmia, but luckily that wasn't true. She's been on some strong antibiotics, and they are upsetting her little tummy, but at least she's getting better.

To celebrate Easter Audrey went on her first Easter egg hunt, and also tried out a slide and swing for the first time. It was a beautiful sunny afternoon with our friends & family. I also included some photos from a couple of weeks ago of Audrey trying out a wagon ride. The photos of Audrey sitting in the grass show that she wasn't too sure about the whole situation, but I thought they were pretty cute anyway :)

Hope you all are doing well & the photos will be in the mail this week!