Opening Presents

Time to get caught up on some blogging! I have several pictures from all of our Christmas travels over the past week, so I will probably share them over my next few posts.

Audrey got to open presents five different times between all of our Christmas celebrations with family. She did a pretty good job at sitting down with us and opening presents for a little bit at least, though she was usually more interested in walking around and exploring all the different houses we visited.

Christmas morning: Audrey opened her stocking and her presents from Mommy and Daddy.

Christmas evening: We opened more presents at Daniel's aunt and uncle's house. This was when Audrey first discovered how much fun it is to tear up tissue paper!

The day after Christmas: More present opening with Daniel's family and siblings. This is Audrey's hat that she got from Mimi and Papaw.

A few days after Christmas: we opened presents with my mom and Marcus in Keokuk. Again...Audrey found the tissue paper to be the most entertaining part.

And a couple of days after that: we had our final present opening with my Dad and his family at my grandma's house in Quincy.

Merry Christmas from the Sheltons!

We made one of these videos last year and it was fun, so I thought I would do it again. Enjoy!

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Videos!!

Audrey is doing a lot these days, and we've been horrible at videotaping anything. I have tons of video of her laying on the ground and doing nothing when she was 6 weeks old, but very little video of all the fun new things she is learning to do now. So I decided to try to fix that the other day and videotape her doing all of her new tricks. The only problem is that she doesn't like to show off when we want her too...and she is always distracted by the camera. So it's hard to capture any of those moments on video.

Her newest thing is to make animal sounds. She can do a sheep sound and a lion sound really well (when she wants to at least!). She can sort of do a cow sound, and on occasion she has attempted to imitate a dog and a cat sound. Here's the lion sound:

And you can hear her do a sheep sound in this one. Also, one of her new "games" to play is to hand the phone to me so I can put it by my ear and say hello. Then I put it up to her ear and she licks it...she doesn't quite understand the idea of talking on the phone yet. =)

I haven't really posted much on this blog about Audrey's walking. She is walking pretty well on her own now, though she still falls down quite frequently (her face is a mess right now...a bruise on the left cheek, a big bruise on the right cheek that looks like a black eye, a cut on her lip). You can see her walking in this video, as well as bending down to pick up a toy and standing back up without falling down. There's also a little samping of her sheep and lion sounds here...and you can hear her say "doggie" (or at least her version of doggie) if you listen closely.

Audrey really likes toys that have buttons she can push, especially if music plays after the button is pushed (like the fish in this next video). On several occasions I have found her surrounded by 3-4 of these types of toys, and the music is playing on all of them! She likes to "dance" while the music plays.

Our Little Drama Queen

This afternoon, I was trying to finish making a dessert for our church Christmas party tonight. To keep Audrey occupied, I gave her some bowls and spoons and spatulas to play with. She thought they were pretty fun new toys. She figured out this week that it can be a lot of fun to put something in her mouth and then let go, so she is just holding it with her mouth. She had a good time trying out this new trick with the wooden spoons and spatulas.

Unfortunately, once I finally got focused on the task at hand--fixing my dessert, Audrey decided she was bored with the spoons and spatulas and moved on to emptying all the food out of the dog's bowl. And I didn't take pictures of that, because I wasn't too amused at the time. I've been trying to teach her that the dog food is off limits...and it has resulted in many temper tantrums from Little Miss Audrey. Today was no exception.

Actually it doesn't take much at all to cause a tantrum with Audrey the past couple of days, just looking at her sometimes seems to cause her to scream. She's been a mess. I'm thinking she is getting some more teeth. At least, that's what I tell myself. It is easier for me to be patient with her grumpiness, when I know there is a reason for the grumpiness. Plus, I think part of it is her age and the independence she has found now that she is walking. She knows what she wants, and she knows when she doesn't get what she wants. But she doesn't yet understand why she can't get what she wants. And that must be frustrating for her. Actually, I know it's frustrating for her because she lets everyone know how upset she is with her screams.

The good news is that she goes from screaming hysterically one second to laughing hysterically the next second. Bi-polar would be the best word to describe her..she is definitely a drama queen these days! I guess she doesn't want life at our house to be boring, so she keeps us on our toes!