Christmas Photos, Audrey Update

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We had a great Christmas. Everyone was miraculously healthy. We traveled to Texas and drove to Houston and visited the Neill family first and had a wonderful time in Houston, and then traveled to Spicewood to hang with my mom and Richard, and then rounded out the trip at the Lairds house allowing the crazy cousins to play, play, play…it was a busy, exciting (tiring 🙂 trip. The kids were spoiled rotten with all of the presents from Santa and Grandparents and really the pictures tell a better story than I can.

Now we are back. I have been sick literally for the entire year of 2013 so far. I just can’t seem to kick this yucky bug – so I am way behind on blogging about my precious girls (and work, and house chores…), but I wanted to take a minute to update today since Mi Mi is visiting and helping with the girls and I have a quiet moment while Audrey naps.

Audrey: She loves to talk! She is learning new sounds and words daily – says Wa Wa, Apple, Tree, Beee–a (Bella), Dee Dee, Mi Mi, Da Da, Poo Poo, Pee Pee, Woof Woof…but still no MaMa (what’s a girl got to do to get some props? ha). She will stand up and walk about 10 steps, and loves to push her walker – but still prefers crawling really fast to get around. She LOVES to climb. She is very agile – makes it up the stairs in no time. She can also climb on the horse and rock back and forth – it is really something to watch. She has so much energy! When we got back from Christmas her sleep schedule was really off – nursing in the middle of the night and such, and so me being sick and knowing she was perfectly healthy – I finally decided to let her cry it out at night. It was so hard for me to listen to (and I’m sure she wasn’t thrilled either) – but I’m happy to report that after a week of fighting it for about 30 minutes twice a night, she is now sleeping through the night for the first time in a year. Whew…of course, I think she just came down with my bug yesterday – she is all snot nosed today…so we’ll see how long this lasts. She and Bella are now bathing together in the bath – they both LOVE it. Bella has taught her to blow bubbles with her mouth in the water. They have this beautiful bond that melts my heart. Nobody makes Audrey happier than Bella…and Bella LOVES to play with her baby sister as well. I really hope they will continue to be good buds as they grow.

Bella: Had an amazing Christmas! She was all about Santa this year – and got makeup (the real kind that show up as she said) and a make up doll head – so she was thrilled. I’m really proud of her too, because we have rules about it (must be done in the bathroom, must be removed after playing with it when moving to the next activity) and she has followed them to the tee. She is really into her dress up stuff that Mi Mi gave her, and she is also loving the kid i-pad (innotab) that Dee Dee gave her as well. She is growing so much. Mi Mi is visiting right now because Jeremy went on a hunting trip and she came to help out. They have been having a blast together as usual heading to the beach, zoo, etc…Bella wrote out an entire list of activities that she wanted to do with Mi M

i. It was awesome because she would ask me the letters of the words she wanted to write and then she would write them all by herself! I was absolutely amazed at her progress, but here is the MOST exciting news of all though: we started with the BOB books, and she is truly learning to READ! She gets the concept of looking and sounding out the letters and can READ the first two books all by herself. She is very interested in learning it right now and so I’ve been sitting with her for about 30 minutes to an hour the past couple of days and hope to be able to continue with it as long as she has interest. I AM SO PROUD OF HER!

I have to run off to a meeting with Bella’s preschool teachers now – but I think this is enough of an update for now. Hope to update more soon!