Big girl!

So the past few weeks have been really fun for watching Audree grow up. It's amazing how fast these little ones learn and pick up on things. I'll say something to Audree and half the time she'll say it back and I am shocked because I had no idea she could say that. Some things she even talks about without my saying anything and I just am so amazed that she's picked up on it without me even teaching her. Often she also talks(jibber jabbers) about things like she's known about them all along and is giving us the run down of things. Here are some things as of late that I think are incredibly cute:

*Audree has this book called One Pretty Princess. It is one of her favorite books. Now everything princess is "pretty." So the other day we bought The Princess and the Frog and we plugged it in to watch as a family. We told her that we were going to watch The Princess and the Frog and she started going off in her jibber jabber and every 10 seconds or so you'd hear "pretty and foggie(frog)." She just kept going and going on about it. And now whenever she sees the dvd cover she grins and says "pretty frog." And of course she loves pointing out which one is the princess and which one is the frog.

*She has a new found love for Dora the Explorer. So now everything Dora is "backpack." Likewise anything Go Diego Go is "go, go." And lastly of the show on nickolodeon that we occasionally watch anything Wow Wow Wubsy is "wow, wow." She also loves The Backyardigans but has yet to pick a word when she talks about it.

*One day we were coloring in her Handy Manny coloring book and she flipped open a page and she pointed to the picture and said "Manny, his tools!" Which was one of those that shocked me because I had never taught her tools....it seriously so amazing what they pick up.

*More and more often she is stringing together words to make sentences. It's so crazy to me when I hear her say 3 words all together to form a pretty coherent thought.

* The other day when we were mopping the floor we wanted to get Audree out of the way so we gave her the swiffer and she just went to town with it. It was so funny to see how skilled she was with it without ever doing it before. She would even do the back and forth motion that she's seen us do when we vacuum and stuff. For a video and pictures on that you can go check my facebook.

*Audree has been able to do this for a while, and I am not sure if I have blogged about it yet, but she has learned to walk down the stairs by herself. She loves the idea of being a big girl. So stuff like going down the stairs backwards never appealed to her and she rarely rarely ever did it. So she quickly picked up on how to hold on the the wood rails and walk down herself. Now crawling up the stairs is not good enough for her and she makes us help her up the stairs so she can walk up one foot after the other(not one foot up and then bring the next one on that step, she has to take big steps and each foot goes on a different step). She will crawl up when she is sneaking up the stairs or if we've deserted her and she finally stops whining and comes up. But we oblige her every so often because of how excited she gets about going up that way.

One thing that I love about Audree is how much she loves her daddy. I love to see that special bond between them and know that if I'm not around it's ok because her most favorite daddy is there with her. On Saturday I had a baby shower in Eden to attend. Mark and Audree drove me up and dropped me off and then they headed to North Ogden for a little daddy daughter date. They went to McDonalds and Audree got a happy meal and thought it was the most awesome thing in the world to dip her apples in ketchup. The were going to play in the play place but you have to be 3 and older. So afterwards they went to go look at some ducks, which I hear she quite enjoyed and then went to the local marketplace and roamed up and down the aisles identifying everything. Audree loves freedom and so she is always overjoyed when we go to a store and let her run around instead of sticking her in a cart.

So once the baby shower was over I crashed their daddy daughter date and we headed home. Audree was thoroughly exhausted and was out the moment we got onto the freeway, of course all the while holding her water and her happy meal toy :) When we got home we went to our neighborhood park. Audree had so much fun. Except for the incredibly annoying band of boys that were at the park throwing bark everywhere and taking over the whole play place so no one else could play, it was nice to get out and enjoy some fresh air. Audree was seriously so cute when we first got to the park. We put her on the swings, the horse and the see saw and then let her roam to see what she would do. She would walk close to the play place, all the while grinning from ear to ear, and then she'd walk away like she had just done something incredibly daring and had to recover. Then she'd go play in the grass for a while, grin never leaving her face, as she enjoyed the freedom of running wherever she wanted and as far as she wanted(within the park grounds of course). Finally the annoying boys left and Audree got to go down the slides a few times. I think Audree is really going to enjoy having a park just a short walk away!

Well I don't see miss Audree and it is way to silent in the house...so I better go see what kind of mischief she is up to :)