6 months of Audrey

Today our little girl turned 6 months old. Here's what you need to know about Miss Audrey B.

Her body is still too tiny to contain her smiles. She wiggles, squirms, flaps her arms, and kicks her legs when she smiles.



She does not cuddle. She does not want to be held. She only wants to roam the floors and go wherever her rollings take her. She'll cry when she gets tired or hungry, but mostly she's just content calling the shots about where she goes.

She owns many "age-appropriate" toys. She plays with none of them.



She's especially fond of cars, dinosaurs, and wrenches.

Unlike her brother at this age, Audrey likes needs to put EVERYTHING in her mouth.



She's now learning to eat solids. She enjoys rice cereal, applesauce and mashed bananas.


Mostly she enjoys grabbing the spoon away; it feels like fighting a hydra to get the spoon to her mouth, but we're making progress.



She loves the camera




She looks like her mommy



But her daddy thinks she has a little bit of grandpa in her too




Her favorite person in the world is her brother. Oddly enough, other than a few immunizations, Joseph has been the source of every traumatic, painful, and bothersome experience in her life, yet Audrey still beams whenever he walks into the room.



Audrey is under this tent:


This is how she got in this tent:



This is how she feels about her brother putting her in this tent:




She loves watching what Joseph does and wants to do whatever he's doing.



In turn, Joseph loves taking care of her and greeting her when she wakes up from sleeping:




They like to play a game Joseph named "T-Rex and Meat."



They take turns. Audrey doesn't like being the meat.

Other random details: She's strong enough to sit on her own, but hasn't figured out the balancing part yet. She's got a couple of teeth poking through on the bottom. She may just have an ear infection, but she frequently does this cute little thing where she pulls on a curl on the side of her head.

Living Scriptures

Tonight, as we were getting Joseph ready for bed, we read the parable of the Prodigal Son.



We've kind of been slacking on our read-a-scripture-story-before-bedtime routine, but (much like updating our blog) we're not going to let past failures deter us. Tonight, Joseph also gave us new motivation to keep up with this tradition.

In the past, we would find a picture from a scripture story and then repeat the same story two or three nights in a row and ask him questions to see what details he remembered from previous nights. Sometimes we'd come up with some kind of game to act out from the story (e.g., Gathering animals like Noah, putting our nets in the water like Peter, building a boat like Nephi. I guess nautical-themed stories seem to lend themselves well to activities for two-year olds).



So last night, we talked about how the dad forgave his son and was so happy to see him even though the son had been doing naughty things that he shouldn't have been doing. We just focused on the picture and the story and didn't bother coming up with an action for "riotous living" or for wanting to eat pig food.

Tonight, after we reviewed the story, Joseph announced joyfully, "I'm going to pretend to do something naughty." Not knowing what was coming next, we watched with amused anticipation. Joseph quickly ran around a little table, wound up, and whacked me on the arm as hard as he could. He then looked up at me with a twinkle in his eye and waited for me to do my part where the daddy forgives his son with a great big hug.

Erin fought off laughter by biting her knuckle, but was able to recompose herself after he hit me again for the repeat performance.

I have now determined that Erin gets to be the robbers whenever she agrees to let us act out Ammon defending the king's flocks.



Also, we're also going to hold off on David and Goliath for a while as well.




(we'll explain the story behind those last two pictures soon)

Not to be left out, Audrey is also ready for her key role in the "Solomon/split the baby" story:

Road Trip I: The Prequel

We are pretty much on the verge of giving up on the blog -- been working ten-plus hour days since I started back to work last week, and things are looking to get even worse in the next month. But, I would be remiss not to blog about our big road trips that we took while I was still on my maternity leave. So.

We decided to do a "mini" road trip to Bryce National Park and Zion National Park on our way home from my parents' house in Utah. This was a test run to see if we thought the kids could handle a much longer road trip from San Diego to Seattle and back. Needless to say (since we ended up doing the San Diego - Seattle trip), it was a huge hit!

Joseph was a great little hiker some of the time. Other times he liked to be carried. Still other times, he liked to get "hiking sticks" that were about 6 inches long and actually made hiking far, far more difficult because we all had to crouch down to the ground to use the hiking sticks. But he really enjoyed it and I was pleasantly surprised at how accessible the Parks were even to families with young children like us. We were able to see a lot of amazing things without killing ourselves toting our kids around.

I'm going to let the following quotes from Joseph speak for themselves, and then just post a bunch of pictures that I will not bother to caption or explain or anything. Enjoy!

Joseph's Quotes

(these also include quotes from the stay at Grandma's house):

"I was looking into Kiki's [my parents' cat] beautiful eyes and eyelashes, and she was tickling me with her claws and teeth!"

"I forgive you, daddy." (Said to Todd after a time-out.)

"Did grandpa have a bug cake, too?" (Said in response to us telling him it was his grandpa Goodsell's birthday the day after his.)

"I want to hear the stream say, 'Give-oh'." (Said while hiking in Zion.)

"This is a nice swordfish, not a mean one." (Said about the imaginary swordfish he caught in the Virgin River.)

"Is this bus [the shuttle in Zion] taking us to Joseph's house?"

"Hoodoos [rock formations in Bryce] are amazing and cool."

"At one point, I saw a T-rex." (Reflecting on a trip to the dinosaur museum.)

Bryce:

















Zion:

Three Years and Four Months

Today our little Audrey Bee is four months. The time has flown and we love having this girl in our family. We love Audrey's huge, infectious grin. She smiles with her whole body at anyone who will look at her. Her blue eyes sparkle and she has cute little dimples. Also can't fail to mention her amazing hair. We have no idea where she got dark, curly hair -- Todd, Joseph and I all have very straight hair -- but it sure is fun!




And a couple of weeks ago, Joseph turned three years old. We also love him. He keeps us in stitches with the crazy things that he says, and he is such a sweet big brother. He's also a sweet friend, usually. Although he has a hard time sharing his things when people come over, he still loves his friends. Last week we were hiking (more on that later) and he was having a great time and kept saying that he wanted to bring his friends Ashton and Chase there. He's sweet and thoughtful.

We were in Utah for Joseph's birthday. He had requested a bug cake so I made him a bug mountain cake and his aunt made a ladybug cake.




Then when we got back, we had his first-ever "friend" birthday party. It was, again, a bug theme. The kids had bug races (where they crawled like ladybugs, flew like butterflies, and hopped like grasshoppers); ate "ants" (chocolate sprinkles) with no hands; and went on a bug hunt for some fake bugs we'd hidden around the park (of course some found some real bugs too). It was cute and easy and I think a success!





We love our little kids and the buddies that they are becoming!




P.S. Although it appears in some of these pre-3rd birthday pictures, the pacifier is now officially GONE from Joseph's life. And it was a lot easier than we had feared ... we should have banned it long ago.