Weeks 41 & 42

Not too much interesting to report in Weeks 41 & 42, they were pretty good weeks for Miss A, with a couple of snow days and holidays to spend at home with everyone, and a visit from Grandma & Grandpa Looten definitely the highlights! 

We’ve been doing some little projects around the house to help it sell (like painting the baseboards) and Audrey has become so mobile that if we didn’t want her “help,” we had to put her in the pack 'n play… she managed to find a sunbeam, though, and took a good nap… her mommy’s girl! :)

 

Speaking of helping the house sell, one Saturday we had short notice for a showing, so we decided to take the girls to Chuck E Cheese (yes, we’re gluttons for punishment).  Audrey got to catch a ride with Barney; doesn’t she look thrilled and excited?

One of Audrey’s favorite things is bath time… especially if she gets to take one with Laney!  She is an absolute monster in the tub, splashing and playing and trying to stand up or lay down… there’s no looking away, even for a second!  Sometimes she even folds over, and puts her head between her legs (and, thus, in the water), and then jerks up, coughing and gasping.  It’s pretty funny, but by the end of the bath, everyone (and everything) is soaked! :)

A monster, but a cute monster!

Bath time with big sister!

We also had a visit from Grandma & Grandpa Looten over Martin Luther King, Jr. Day to have a little party to send off Daddy.  We spent a lot of time at Grandma Jo’s house, playing Chutes & Ladders (Laney’s new favorite… as long as she’s winning) and just hanging out.  Audrey entertained everyone with all her “tricks!” 

She is constantly pointing this finger… “Number 1!”

Her job during Chutes & Ladders was to randomly chuck this lego rose across the table to see how fast Uncle Tim or Mally could catch it… they were pretty fast by the end of the game! :)

Well, that’s really the last two weeks in pictures, I haven’t actually taken too many because we’ve been both not so busy (no major trips, etc) and very busy (cleaning, packing, etc) at the same time! 

We also had Audrey’s 9 month doctor’s appointment this Wednesday, and ended up with some unfortunate news: she has another double ear infection.  So, she’s on another antibiotic, and we’re hoping it clears.  If it doesn’t, then they will talk about doing tubes at her ear recheck in a month.  We could use lots of prayers about that!

Despite the ear infections, she’s still a happy, mostly healthy baby.  She is getting two more teeth, but not the middle ones on top, like most babies get after they get the bottom ones.  She’s actually getting the side ones now.  So she’s going to be a little vampire baby… but at least she’ll fit in with current trends! :)  And she’ll be a cute vampire! 

Her stats at the doctor were about in line with her curves, she weighed 17 lbs, 13 oz and was 27 inches long.  That is a little bit heavier than Elena (about 3 ounces) and a little bit shorter (about half an inch), but really pretty close to the same size as big sis!  The doctor did think that Audrey probably had RSV, too, which really just shows up as a nasty cold in babies Audrey’s age.  So hopefully that will go away, too, without further complications. 

As far as tricks, Audrey loves to play with her hands now!  She claps when you say “Yay!” and always points (see picture above!), she is getting “More” down, and she LOVES to play peek-a-boo.  She’s pulling up everywhere, into everything, and pretty much drives Laney crazy.  I wish that Laney would really play with her, but mostly she yells ‘I DON’T LIKE HER!” and refuses to let Audrey play with her toys or anything… so, we’re working on that.  Of course, Audrey is magnetically attracted to Laney, and whatever toy Laney wants Audrey to play with the least, so that doesn’t help!

Audrey has discovered the joys of real food, and loves to eat!  She can eat pretty much anything a grown up eats that’s not a choking hazard now, and she wants it all!  She especially love bananas, and peas, and any fruit, really!  She still eats some baby food, but is mostly eating table food.  She is still nursing, too, and it’s going ok… my supply is low, so keeping up with her is getting harder!  I’m very thankful for the big supply I had built up before going back to work.  Without nursing her during the day, like I did Laney, I would never have made it this long if I didn’t have that stockpile!

Audrey’s other big discovery lately has been HER VOICE!  She is definitely the quiet baby no longer!  She talks and laughs and shrieks, it’s quite entertaining! 

So there’s the update on Miss A… Daddy moves to KY this weekend, so it will be a whole new deal in the next couple of weeks.  We will really miss him!  But we have a webcam, and I’ll post lots of pictures so Daddy (and everyone else) can keep watching Audrey grow!

Week 40

Look at me go, a post after just a week! :)  Obviously, things have calmed down a bit for us after the holidays!  It is a little shocking to me to do this post and realize that it’s week 40!!  Hard to believe Miss A. is getting so big…

Sometimes, Laney actually lets Audrey play with her… here they are listening to Laney’s new princess cd… cute sisters! :)

We are still working on selling the house, so there’s been lots of cleaning… Audrey decided to help:

Poor Miss A, I wrote last week that she was back on antibiotics for a double ear infection.  Well, last Thursday morning Miss A woke up looking a lot like this… yeah, spots everywhere.  Of course, like her big sister, she picked a holiday weekend, so the doctor’s office was closed!  Thankfully, the doctor on call was open until noon, and got us right in.  Yep, sure enough, a reaction to the Augmentin, JUST like her big sister.  So, yeah, new antibiotic, and she has spent the last week a spotted (and pretty cranky) little girl.  Just in the last day or two she’s really started to feel better, and we are THRILLED to have our happy baby back! 

I have to admit, if I looked like this, I’d be pretty cranky, too!
 

But she was still feeling good enough to get into, well, everything!

In other big news, Miss A. is learning to drink from a sippy cup!  She’s getting pretty good at it, here she is pounding some apple juice!

So that’s it as far as pictures, there’s way fewer when I post every week! :)  The biggest change in Miss A. this week is that she’s starting to really use her hands.  She’s waving bye-bye, doing high five, and is even starting to really do “more” when she wants more to eat.  Of course, if I don’t respond quick enough to her saying more with her hands, she moves on to screaming loudly instead… but it’s progress! 

Love watching her grow!  We are so glad to have a healthy, happy baby back… here’s hoping she stays that way!

Weeks 37, 38 & 39

Horrible blogger, right here… but the holidays are so busy, and add to that trying to keep the house “show ready,” and my blogging time is seriously hurting.

BUT, the holidays are pretty much over, so hopefully I will have a little more time to post every week again!

And now, on to the the last 3 weeks in the life of Miss Audrey Looten…

Probably the biggest new thing Audrey has started doing happened pretty close to week 37- she started pulling up on things!  She’s really good at it now, so nothing is safe!

During week 37 we go to start our Christmas celebrations with a visit from Jess & Mike!  As usual, Jess took tons of amazing pictures, but I managed to narrow it down to just a few…

 

Just chillin’ at Grandma & Grandpa Price’s house.  Love that you can see the two little teeth!

Smooches from Aunt Yaya

 

Wouldn’t be a first Christmas without a bow on the head!

She was definitely a FAN of this toy!

Hangin’ with Uncle Charlie

Everybody loves to hold a sleeping baby!

Taking a bath with big sis!  By the end of the bath, I’m not sure who was more wet- the girls or Aunt Jessie! :)  Babies are slippery little suckers in the tub!

Snuggled up in a towel!

Her favorite “toy,” Truman!  And is there anything cuter than a naked baby?!

Poor Truman, he never gets a break!  What a good kitty…

Grandpa fed her a banana… mmmmm!

The funniest thing was Audrey’s infatuation with this comforter!  Jess & Mike got it for Laney as a Christmas present, but Audrey thought it was the coolest thing, I guess it was the texture.  She would just roll around in it for a long time.  It was so funny!

Needless to say, we had lots of fun hanging out with Aunt Jess & Uncle Mike. 

One of Audrey’s new obsessions: the door stops.  She’ll crawl into the blue room, shut the door behind her, and start whacking it.  It’s pretty funny, except for the one time she yanked the white thing off of the end, and I found it in her mouth!  

We took the girls to see the Magic Tree… which Audrey LOVED!

Audrey was in her first Christmas program at school.  Well, she mostly did this:

…and chewed on the jingle bell she was holding.  It was still pretty cute, though! 

Audrey has been eating more big person food, and the other day she was cranky, so I put her in her high chair and gave her a snack.  I realized a little later that it had gotten pretty quiet.  Yeah, this is what I found:

More pulling up…

We had a good snowstorm right before Christmas, Audrey’s first!  So we had to take her out to play, of course!  She looked cute all bundled up!

We built a snowman!  Cute girls and their Daddy!  (Yes, Audrey is wearing Laney’s pink cowboy boots… she doesn’t really have any boots of her own!)

Sitting up in the snow is hard work!

Love this smile!

Another bow on the head at Christmas Eve dinner…

As per usual, we woke up really early on Christmas morning.  Audrey was NOT a fan.  You can practically hear her in this picture “What is WRONG with you people?!”

 

But, by the time we made it out to Grandma & Grandpa’s, and Audrey got some biscuits and orange danish rolls for breakfast, she was quite perky!

So she helped Grandpa open his presents…

And played with her new xylophone from Aunt Ruthie!

And, just a few more random shots from the Christmas weekend: pulling up on yet another thing (seriously, anything taller than the ground, and she’s in):

And showing off how flexible she is at Grandma & Grandpa Looten’s… with a sock in her mouth, of course!

 

And one more funny napping-in-her-high chair shot… the funniest part of this one was that I’d been trying to get her to nap for hours because she was exhausted and didn’t feel good.  She finally fell asleep… RIGHT as we had to leave!

So, there’s the picture update.  On to the other stuff… Audrey spent part of these three weeks on another round of antibiotics for fluid on the other ear.  Not cool.  Laney had strep at the same time, so both my girls were on antibiotics!  They were both done on the 23rd, and Laney has been better since then… unfortunately, on this past Monday Audrey started running a fever again… 102! :(  So we headed back to the doctor on Tuesday, and she had an ugly, double ear infection!  So I’ve spent the last few days home with her (and a major fever- up to 103.7 at one point).  I think she might also be teething, so she’s been a regular peach the last few days!  Hopefully she will be feeling better soon, though!

On good notes… Audrey is developing some really funny habits and quirks.  She kicks her legs constantly- so much so that she’s kind of dangerous!  It’s like she’s running constantly.  Guess she might be a soccer player… or a swimmer, not sure which!  When she’s in the bathtub, if you lay her down to rinse her off she starts kicking and sprays down the whole room (thus how Aunt Jess ended up so wet after giving her a bath!).  She still gets the hiccups whenever she gets to really laughing, and she doesn’t laugh all the time, but when she does it’s a total belly laugh, and is completely contagious!  She also points all the time- she will just stick up her pointer finger, and she loves it when you do the same back to her. 

She is starting to learn lots of fun stuff, too… besides the pulling up, she is also learning to wave bye-bye, and we’re working on sign language.  She’s getting pretty close to all done, but we’re still working on "more.”  Right now she mostly tells me she wants more to eat by screaming loudly… she definitely has her daddy’s lungs! :)

So there’s the 3 week update, and I will try really hard to update again next week!  I will also post more Christmas pictures on the other blog, so check there soon!  

Weeks 34, 35 & 36

Well, I am terribly sorry to have been so absent from the baby blog!  I am going to have to blame my incredibly busy life, made even busier by some big news… I’m planning on posting at our family blog, too, but, in case I don’t get to it tonight, we are moving to Elizabethtown, KY, and have been spending TONS of time getting our house ready to sell.  Plus there was a trip to Springfield, and a trip to IL for Thanksgiving in the last three weeks, so we really have just been BUSY! 

But, I’m back, and I've brought pictures with me!  The first fun event was our annual pre-Thanksgiving trip to Springfield to visit family and kick off our Christmas shopping.  We got to spend an evening with Grandma De & Grandpa Don on Friday, which was lots of fun!  It had been awhile since we’d seen them, so, of course, Audrey had changed tons! 

Audrey was tired, but refused to settle down and sleep.  Grandpa Don tried his best to convince her napping was a good thing…

But she wasn’t buying it!  Too happy and awake!

Love, love, LOVE this picture of Grandpa and his great-granddaughters!

Saturday Josh and I spent the morning/afternoon shopping and running around by ourselves (yay for Mommy/Daddy time!) but Grandma & Grandpa Looten met us at SDC with the girls in time for the big tree lighting, which Audrey had obviously never seen before.  She LOVED it!

It was pretty cold, but she stayed nice and cozy, all wrapped in her pink blanket with a new hat on!

Hanging with Grandpa while Daddy & Laney rode a ride!

After our trip to Springfield, the next weekend was Thanksgiving, so we headed to Illinois to visit the Price family!  Lots of that family hadn’t seen her since she was a total newborn (like, 2 days old), so it was fun to go and visit again!

Hanging with Aunt Jane and the messiest face EVER!

We also made a point to visit my great grandparents.  My great-grandpa turned 100 on Dec. 7th, which is just amazing!!  They still live in a little apartment, and we had a great time visiting with them!!

Audrey & Grandma Hook

The youngest “Price” and the oldest!!

Audrey also found a new favorite toy: the xylophone!!  I get the feeling there will be one in her Christmas haul!!

This face says “onery!”

Hanging out with Uncle Clint!

So those are the major events of the last few weeks, but I found a few more just for fun pictures, too…

Audrey is already developing a love of books!

The whole moving thing has meant a lot of cleaning, including cleaning out the garage, which led to this adorable picture of Audrey in a gift bag!!

 

LIke father like daughter, rocking the Superman pose!

We put up our tree and Audrey is loving it… and everyone will just have to pardon us if it looks like their bows have been mangled… ‘cause they probably have!  She can’t resist them!

 

And, I couldn’t resist doing a photo shoot with the girls in their Christmas dresses, even though we used the family pics from Jess for our cards this year.  Doing a photo shoot with a 3 year old and an 8 month old by myself was a little ambitious… and didn’t work out too well!  There are a lot of outtakes!  But, I did get one or two cute ones, like this:

So there’s the picture update… as for the development update, Audrey is a straight up crawler now, and there’s no doubt about that!  She is everywhere and into everything (notice the bow, ripped off an unsuspecting present in the previous picture)!!  Just this past week, she has started really pulling up on things.  Mostly us, or the presents, but it’s started being tables and, well, anything she can reach!  Truman is pretty terrified now that she’s so mobile, because she thinks he is SOOOO COOOOOL!  Actually, he’s taking it really well.  He just gets up and moves when he’s tired of being manhandled.  What a good kitty…

Audrey has also started eating more table food.  She has been eating puffs for awhile, but in the last couple of weeks we’ve started giving her more food that we’re eating, and she’s starting to prefer table food to her own food… i.e. she’s not all that interested in eating baby food, she wants to eat the food she can pick up with her own fingers!  It’s provided quite the challenge, since she really only has two teeth (both on the bottom) so she can’t really eat much besides bread, bananas, and other soft stuff.  Not really a balanced diet! :) 

So that’s the Audrey update for the last few weeks.  The coming months are going to be pretty busy, but I’m hoping to be better at posting… if nothing else, I gotta have it done for the book! :)