First Dairy Queen trip

A new Dairy Queen opened in our area today, and we are VERY excited about it! We braved the crowds and headed to the grand opening today for an ice cream treat. We even let Audrey eat her very own dish of ice cream (instead of making her share with us like we normally would). I think this is the most ice cream Audrey has ever had, and obviously, she liked it quite a bit!!

Pippi Longstocking

Today I was able to get Audrey's hair into pigtails for the first time. She wasn't a big fan of me fixing her hair and she was very squirmy, so we ended up with messy, uneven pigtails. But she looked pretty cute still!!

My camera battery died right in the middle of these outside pictures...or else I probably would have kept taking pictures all afternoon!

With all this pigtails talk, I've had the Pippi Longstocking theme song stuck in my head all day. "Pippi Longstocking is coming into your world. A freckled face red head girl you want to know..." How do I still remember this song??

Yummy Broccoli

Tonight Audrey had broccoli and pizza on her tray, and guess what she was more interested in eating...the broccoli! This would have been completely normal a couple of months ago...broccoli (and all vegetables) were her favorite food. But she has grown much pickier recently. It's been a while since we've been able to get her to eat any vegetables at all. But tonight, broccoli was back to being a favorite. Personally I think she's crazy (I hate all green vegetables!), but it also gives me hope that maybe she will grow up to be a healthier eater than her mommy is.

Backyard fun

Yesterday Daniel raked all the spiky, gumball things out of our backyard. We have this tree that drops these annoying balls into our yard, and there were so many that Audrey could hardly walk in the yard without falling down. But they are gone now, so Audrey was free to run around. What did she do? She found her way to this little piece of cement outside our garage door. And she would not leave this spot! She never stays still for anything, and yet once she found this spot, she did not want to move! I wish she would have picked a spot that didn't have trash cans in the background, because it would have made for better pictures!

Hmmm...what should I do in this cool new place??

Maybe I will show you my belly button.

Here it is!!!This shirt is yummy!! (and my belly is big!!)It's so much fun to stand on the piece of cement next to the garage door and the trash cans.I think I will just stand here and laugh all day long.

Park Outing

The weather has been a bit warmer lately, still not warm, but closer to warm than it has been in a long time. So yesterday, Audrey and I went to the park for a quick little outing with Lindsey and her boys.

First we fed the ducks...for more on that see my Photo a Day blog.

Then we went up to the playground for a few minutes. Here is a picture of Audrey at the playground.

Notice how there is not any playground equipment in the picture. That's because as soon as I put Audrey down next to the slide or the ramp or any of the playground things that I thought she would like, she would take off in the opposite direction!Here I was all excited to get a picture of her on the slide, and she didn't want to have anythying to do with it. The freedom of all that open space was calling her name!And then she discovered this fun and exciting activity: stepping up the tiny step at the edge of the playground onto the concrete.

And then stepping back down the step into the playground mulch. And back up.And then back down. Over and over again. All of this fun stuff to do at the playground, and this is what she picks! Oh what a silly girl!
She did take time to stop and give this big stone dog a hug and a kiss though...pretty cute!

Too cute!

Audrey has started to raise her hands up in the air when you ask her where something is. It's like she is shrugging her shoulders and saying, "I don't know. Where is it?" It is the cutest thing. I remember when my friend Kellie's daughter Ava used to do that, and I just loved it!! Tonight Audrey and I were playing "Where's the Doggie?" and chasing Maggie around the house (Maggie was definitely annoyed by this game, as every time she laid down and got comfortable, Audrey would come running over to pet her and Maggie would have to get up and try to find a safe Audrey-free spot again!).
Audrey has been a huge grump lately, having fits and temper tantrums and meltdowns one after the other. Getting new teeth, possibly some molars, as well as being sick last week and not sleeping/eating well are probably the culprits. After a good long nap this afternoon though, she was much happier tonight. We had so much fun playing around the house. Audrey loves to open and close doors by herself, and it's even more fun when Mommy is waiting on the other side of the door to say Peek a Boo!I get easily bored being home all day long, playing with the same toys and reading the same books. And I'm assuming Audrey gets bored too. So I've been looking for some new ideas of things we can do. Audrey loves to sort things and take things out of bowls and buckets and then put everything back in. This keeps her more entertained than any toy we own! I read somewhere about filling a Pringles can with pipe cleaners to let toddlers practice taking things out and putting things back in. So I thought I would try it. Audrey seemed to enjoy pulling all the pipe cleaners out of the can, but putting them back in was a bit more difficult. It takes more coordination than you would think since the can is so tall and the pipe cleaners are so tall and bendy. She got a few in, but this game mostly just caused her to get very frustrated! Later she figured out that she could easily put the thermometer in the Pringles can and then dump it back out, and she decided that was way more fun than Mommy's pipe cleaners!!

Audrey's words

I was able to videotape Audrey saying some of her words this afternoon. It's not super clear, because I was taping her while she was eating her snack this afternoon, and her mouth was full of crackers. I know I'm not teaching her proper manners by encouraging her to talk with food in her mouth. But she is always so distracted by the camera that she won't cooperate when we try to videotape her. I thought the food might take the attention away from the camera, and it worked!

(If you are reading this on Facebook, you will need to click "View Original Post" below. For some reason, Facebook doesn't import videos).