So Much Fun!

Audrey is at a stage right now that I am absolutely loving. She is SO HAPPY!!! Smiles, giggles, the expectant look she gives Josh & I when she's "talking" to us, all of it. On Monday night we put her to bed at her normal time and she fell asleep fine as she always does. Forty minutes later (exactly 40 minutes), she woke up, as she always does, and I went up to give her the pacifier or cuddle her for a minute, which usually gets her right back to sleep within minutes. Not this time. Nope, she was wide awake. And ready to play. Josh and I were tired so we decided we would just go up and we'd all three lay in bed and watch some T.V. I was determined to ignore Audrey for the most part so that I wouldn't encourage her playfulness at nighttime (night is for sleeping!), but wow, it was so hard! She laid between us kicking her whole body and squealing (that's new, and WOW she can hit some high notes), talking to the blankets, and watching us. If we looked at her and made eye contact she would get this huge grin on her face and get so excited, which would then make us all excited and laughing! Finally she was being too active and kicking us so I put her back in her bassinet and Josh and I tried to go to sleep listening to her "talk". Eventually, she did talk herself to sleep. Her wakefulness and playfulness happened again the following night, but it was really more cute than anything else so we just enjoyed it.

I pulled out the jumper today and put away the pack n play which we were mostly using as storage for her toys and blankets and random socks I find laying around. The jumper is awesome! Her teacher tried her in one at daycare a couple times this week and said she was ready for it, so after dinner tonight when Josh went to work on the house, I got to working on putting this huge thing together. It took a while and I think she was getting mad at me for not playing with her, but once it was done she had a blast!



No Pictures Please!



I was off on Monday and we were all finally over being sick, so Audrey and I went over to visit my friend Heather who just had baby Emily back in December. Emily and Audrey are almost exactly three months apart, but Emily was born premature so she is actually quite small. These pictures do not do her justice, she is so tiny in person and absolutely adorable. We tried to take a cute picture of the girls together but Audrey is too much of a wiggle worm right now and Emi is too fragile to be close to Audrey!





Audrey, trying not to break little Emily

Audrey enjoyed herself. She got to play with some big kid toys that Heather had for her nieces. It was nice for me to get to hold Emily again (I first met her when she was one week old and still in the NICU), I forgot just how precious she is. Audrey was never that small for obvious reasons, but now she is almost 4 months old and it is becoming hard to remember what she was like when she was first born. Luckily, I took many pictures and videos to remind me! I never really felt like she was a delicate newborn, she was so awake and active from the start.

Speaking of four months old, Audrey has her 4 month checkup on Monday. I am not looking forward to her getting shots, but I am interested to see how much she weighs (my guess is right around 17lbs) and how big she has gotten since last time we were there. We are also going to her orthopedic doctor on Monday for the follow up on her hips. She's been out of the harness for 2 months now, so this is just to confirm that her hips have fully grown into their sockets.

I have to congratulate Lexi and Shawn on the birth of Baby Tiernan! He was born Monday, January 17, weighing 7 lbs 2 oz. He's such a little cutie and looks so much like Lexi. I wish I could be there to hold and cuddle him, and I wish even more that he and Audrey could grow up close. :( I guess now that he's here we will all just have to make more trips to visit!

I will leave you all with an adorable video of Audrey enjoying her bouncer for the first time. She was having so much fun that I felt bad taking her out and getting her ready for bed, but it had to be done (Mama needs a break!) and she was showing signs of being tired. I love her little laugh and smile. There are points in the video where she is looking at me waiting for me to do something - that's the expectant look I'm talking about.