Good-bye!

I have decided that it is time to say good-bye to the Life with the Shelton's blog. As you probably know, I also keep a Photo a Day blog in addition to this one. Originally, this blog was dedicated to family pictures/stories, and the photo a day blog was simply a photo from the day.

Lately, the photo a day blog has become more than a photo a day. It has become posts with multiple photos, along with stories and thoughts and notes about our family. As a result, I have not posted much on this blog.

It seems silly to keep up two blogs with the same purpose. Thus the reason for saying good-bye to the Life with the Sheltons blog. All posts will now be on my Photo a Day blog: www.emilysdailyphotos.blogspot.com. I will see you there!

The Great Outdoors

Audrey loves to play outside, and we have not been outside nearly enough this summer. I blame this on the mosquitoes that have overtaken our yard. It is ridiculous. But we braved the mosquitoes tonight and played outside for a bit. Audrey had so much fun. Maggie on the other hand, I don't know. Audrey really likes to tease Maggie with this water bottle.


Showing me her "beez" (leaf).

Watching an airplane up high in the sky!
I love the way she runs with her arms flapping all over the place. It is so adorable.

Counting!

I have worked with Audrey on counting a little, trying to get her to count to 3 mostly. The best she had done so far was saying "one, two" (actually it's "none, two" according to Audrey)repeatedly.

So she completey shocked me today as we were going upstairs and she counted to twelve! She needed a little help on five, but she did all the other numbers completely on her own initiative. Now before you start thinking my daughter is a genius who just magically can count to twelve, you should know that I often count the stairs outloud as Audrey and I go up them...just because I'm a dork and it gives us something to do. I never thought she would learn her numbers just by listening to me say them as we go up the stairs though. And obviously, she's only 22 months old, so her "counting" is really more like making sounds that kind of sound like numbers. She's not so good at pronunciation.

This video isn't her best "counting". She's a little slow to get started, and then Maggie starts barking and distracting her. But you get the idea.

I kind of wondered if she though that the numbers only go with the stairs and can't be used to count other things. But one time today I got her to count to 10 by counting some stickers in her sticker book, so maybe she gets the concept. Or maybe not. She'll probably wake up tomorrow and forget all about our counting adventures today. She is very unpredictable like that!

Dance Party

When in the right mood, Audrey loves to dance. The other morning I babysat Simon and Elliot and they had a good time listening to music and dancing...especially Audrey!

Bows

After Audrey woke up the other day, before I even got her out of bed, she insisted that I put a bow in her hair. So I put one bow in, and then she quickly found another one (bows are everywhere in our house it seems) and wanted that one in her hair as well. So she got to eat her breakfast in her PJ's, with two non-matching bows in her hair...and it was so much fun!

Fear Conquered!

Audrey is no longer afraid of grass...what a milestone! Yesterday, we played such a fun game that she didn't even think twice about running around in the grass. She would "nun, nun, nun" (run, run, run) and pick up a leaf in the yard, bring it to me, then run back out to look for more. This game probably may have lasted all day, but I was being attacked by mosquitoes and finally had to drag her inside.

Play time

This afternoon I managed to get some pictures of Audrey while she was playing. This was a pretty impressive feat because normally if she sees me with the camera (or if she sees me at all), she gives up whatever she is playing with to come and grab the camera (or me). So I normally try to stay away when she is nicely entertaining herself.

But today she was looking so cute in a new dress (I saw it at Kohl's yesterday for just $2.60 and couldn't resist) and she was having so much fun playing with her Yo Gabba Gabba sticker book (a FREE find at a garage sale) that I had to take a few pictures.

I also learned a new trick today for getting Audrey to smile at the camera. When you ask her to say cheese, she does this. (See also my photo of the day). She sticks her chin straight up in the air and often looks away from the camera.

I found today that if I ask her to say names of the characters on Yo Gabba Gabba (can you tell she is obsessed with that show?), then it will almost always make her smile. This is the smile she gave me after saying "Muno", which I think is one of her favorite characters.

New Sounds!

Audrey has learned a few new sounds. She can do a rooster and a donkey and a Papaw. The rooster and donkey sounds aren't quite right, but they are pretty cute. The Papaw sound is something Daniel's dad taught her to do.

Yummy Watermelon

Finally...a new post!

Hello, Life with the Sheltons Blog!! It's been almost three weeks since I've posted here, and I'm so sorry I have neglected you! I have several posts and pictures that I have been meaning to share here, it's just been a matter of finding the time to do it. I have been keeping up with my photo a day blog regularly, so I don't feel like a total blog failure.

For now, here are some pictures I took of Audrey playing outside tonight. She kept running around her slide again and again, then she would stop and go down the slide. And then "run, run, run" (that's what we were saying while she was running) around the slide again, and then back down the slide. And the whole time she was smiling and laughing. I love when she plays little games with herself. She is turning into such a big girl!

And here is a picture of how long Audrey's hair is now! Crazy, considering that she was pretty much bald a year ago! It's still fairly short in the front and on the sides though. She definitely has a mullet going on. I've been putting pigtails in almost every day lately, because they seem to conceal the mullet. And I think she looks pretty adorable in pigtails!
One more update: I have officially given up on keeping track of Audrey's Words. I just can't keep up with her anymore! She keeps saying things that take me completly by surprise, because I don't remember teaching her to say them. I guess she is just picking up on things in our everyday converstaions now. Which is a little scary, because who knows what she will start saying now! She is still not putting two words together or saying any kind of sentences, but I'm sure that will come soon enough.

Videos, Part 4

Here is my final video post (for a while at least!).

I turned the video screen around so Audrey could watch herself, and she loved that. It even got her to sit still for a few moments so I could capture these videos!

Seriously, I love the way she says "Ham". I think she says it in all three of these videos; it is my favorite word of hers! In this next video, she says a few new words she has learned this week. Ice, towel and tent. I was folding towels the other day with Audrey, and we made a tent out of the towel. And she thought that was so fun...so that's why she is saying those words.

Here is Audrey going through the list of names she knows. Some of them she can say fairly well, and then sometimes she just makes up sounds for the names. I forgot to ask her about Katie and Amy...she can pronounce those fairly well, and it's so cute when says them.

Videos, Part 3

One of the Elmo's World episodes that Audrey likes is about jumping. While watching it the other day she started trying to jump herself. Her feet don't quite leave the ground, but that doesn't seem to stop her from trying.

To help Audrey be more cooperative about getting her diaper changed, I have started showing her how to pretend to change her baby's diaper. We change the baby's diaper first, and then we change Audrey's diaper. It seems to be working, as you can see in this video!

If you're getting tired of all the videos, I'm thinking I will just do one more day of this video series. Then we'll get back to regularly scheduled programming. =)

Videos, Part 2

Audrey loves, loves, loves ice cream. We occasionally let her have real ice cream, but most of the time when Audrey thinks she is eating ice cream, she is actually eating frozen Go-gurts. We learned the trick of freezing Go-gurts and calling them ice cream from the Lanters. And Audrey thinks it is the greatest treat!




Our dog Maggie drives me crazy most of the time, and some days I would love to get rid of her. But Audrey really likes Maggie, which means we probably never will purposely get rid of Maggie. Here's an example of Audrey playing with Maggie. I bought Maggie a dog toy the other day (a rare occasion), and Audrey that it was so funny that Maggie had her own toy. She kept running and crawling all over the house, chasing Maggie and laughing at her.

Videos, Part 1

I have a lot of video clips from the past couple of weeks to share with you. Sometimes our video camera sits in the cabinet collecting dust for months, and other times we use it almost every day. Lately, I've captured a lot of fun little moments with Audrey, so I thought I would start a video series here for the next couple of days. (If you are reading this on Facebook, you will need to click "View Original Post" at the bottom of this page to see the videos).

First, a couple of animal sounds. She's been doing these for a long time, and you can tell by how quickly she answers. She is probably so sick of us asking her to make sounds and words all the time!

Audrey loves books. She is especially fond of the Babysitter's Club books that I used to read as a kid. The books are on a shelf that is just her height, and she loves to pull the books off the shelf and bring them to me. She spends some time studying the front covers, then she usually wants me to flip through the pages. And then we repeat the whole process over and over again!

Here's a sample of some of the words she is saying right now. I've been updating the list I made a while back. It's amazing how much she can say! Granted, she hardly ever pronounces anything correctly and I am usually the only one who can understand her...but still, it's fun to get a little peek as to what is going on inside that little head of hers.

I need to try to get some more words on video because some of them are so cute! She has the most enthusiastic "Hi" and "bye-bye" that you've ever seen...but I don't think I have ever captured it on video. I will try to do that soon. I also need to videotape her saying "ham". First of all, it's just funny to me that "ham" is a word she likes to say. There is a picture of ham in one of our magazines, and she just gets so excited about ham. Plus the way she says it is so cute; she emphasizes the "mmmm" at the end. And it cracks me up every time! So stay tuned for lots more videos in the coming days!

Chicago Trip

Before I talk about our trip to Chicago last weekend, I just have to comment on how much fun Audrey is right now. Tonight she was just being so adorable and silly and funny, I didn't want to put her to bed (but I did put her to bed, because even though she is cute, I still had lots of things to get done without her around to distract me!). She is talking so much. Rather than just repeating words on command, she now uses words to communicate what she is thinking, and it's so much fun to listen to her!

Her newest word is "no". It took her a while to start saying "no", but now that she is saying it, "no" has become a quick favorite. Last night we had some people over for Daniel's birthday, and she said "no, no, no" to every kid who touched one of her toys. I have to admit that hearing her say "no" is really cute, but I know the cuteness will fade quickly as she turns into the selfish little girl who won't share her toys. So we're going to be working on the concept of sharing from now on!

Anyway, on to the purpose of this post: Last weekend we went to Chicago for a mini-vacation. On Friday we met my sister Elisabeth and went to Ikea. It was my first trip to Ikea, and I loved it! It was also Audrey's first trip to Ikea (obviously!), and she loved it as well. Her favorite parts were the children's area (she wanted to climb on every bed and play with every toy) and the bathroom (where they had a kid size sink so she could wash her hands all by herself!).


After several hours at Ikea, we went to the mall and out to dinner with Aunt Elisabeth. Then we took Audrey swimming at the hotel pool. Audrey and I were the only ones with swimsuits, so we went swimming while Daniel and Elisabeth took pictures. Audrey hadn't been in a pool since last summer when she was still a baby. So it was fun to see her react to the water, as it was like she was in a pool for the first time. She was a bit scared at first, but she seemed to really like it by the end. She especially liked climbing on the stairs and getting in and out of the water (with Mommy's help of course!).
On Saturday, we met my friend Katy at the Chicago Children's Museum at Navy Pier. Audrey was a bit timid and grumpy at the start of our day there, but she warmed up and had fun by the end. Her favorite exhibit by far was the water play area. Here she is in her too big and incorrectly buttoned raincoat, ready to attack the water.These water spouts were the best. She loves washing her hands, and here she could stand and wash her hands all by herself (just like at Ikea!). It was like heaven for her, I think! And the raincoat proved to be ineffective...she was soaked by the time we dragged her away from the water!

After the Children's Museum, it was time for Audrey to say good-bye to her new friend Katy.

And timed for one last picture in Chicago.And then Audrey completely crashed on the way home. She was asleep by the time we pulled out of the parking garage at Navy Pier! Poor girl...it was a busy weekend, but she was a trooper and cooperated wonderfully the whole time.

Eighteen Months

Audrey is now 18 months old. We had her dr's appointment today. She weighed in at 23 lbs, 8 oz (39th percentile) and 31 1/4 inches (51st percentile), so she is still staying right on average with her size. She is developing just as she should, and the doctor didn't have any concerns at all. I'm pretty sure she remembered her last dr's appointment (which was horrible!), because she started crying as soon as we entered the exam room. Audrey never likes to have the doctor examine her. She always screams bloody murder when they touch her, even just to take her temperature. But today seemed even worse than normal. I think she inherited her mommy's fear of doctors.

Here are a few 18 month pictures with Raggedy Ann. Obviously she doesn't think it is very cool to sit down and look at the camera for pictures!

Showing off her brand new pediped shoes. Mommy is pretty excited about these cute silver shoes!

Her favorite activity at Sprouts (a playgroup at our church) is to play with the shopping cart and groceries.

She has been so silly lately! One night she thought it was hilarious to put the puzzle pieces in her mouth and then let them fall out. And then to keep doing it over and over again.