Audrey Elise Dale

Audrey surprised us this weekend. Ian and I were talking in our bedroom and Audrey came up to us excitedly saying, “I peed!” She had her panties on, so we weren’t sure why she was so excited. I checked her panties and they were wet. That’s when it hit me that maybe she sat on the potty and peed with her panties on. I asked her which potty she used and she showed me the one in her room. She had indeed used the potty on her own! Albeit she did forget to pull down her panties, but we were excited anyway.

She’s had Friday and Monday at school with no accidents. She had Saturday morning without accidents. Sunday morning had some accidents, but several times she just barely peed enough to get her panties barely wet and then stopped herself so she could finish in the potty. It seems like she’s starting to get it more.

Well, this is a bit late, but… We ended up having to basically cancel Audrey’s second birthday party. She was vomiting for two nights before her party. It was an odd bug because it only struck in the evening. I hated to cancel, but didn’t want to spread it on to anyone else. Rescheduling just seemed like too much trouble since I wasn’t feeling well myself.

She did get to see family and Matt and Lauren’s family that weekend, though. So it was nice she got to celebrate some. I realized after the fact that I felt bad about not having any sort of cake (although after her being sick that might not have been the best idea). I also realized after the fact that we never sang her happy birthday. She loved that at her first birthday party. Oh, well, there’s always next year to make up for it. Audrey just needs to make sure not to get sick next time.

We did have one very funny event that weekend. Susan had bought the book Go Dog Go. We didn’t have the book. At one point, Audrey brought the book to me and said, “Read Go Dog.” I was amazed because I didn’t think she’d heard us talk about it and so my thought was that maybe she could read it. I opened up the book and started asking what different pages said. She actually said the key words on the pages I asked about. I got even more excited in thinking she was reading. Then Ian came by and said he thought they had that book at school. Then I knew it was just like she does with her books here at the house where she memorizes the key words and associates them with the pictures (or at least that’s what it seems). I am glad she likes us to read to her.

She’s been turning into quite the nice little girl (most of the time). She likes to share most of the time. Last weekend she made me sit down near her kitchen. She was eating goldfish and at some point decided to offer one to me. The best part was that she then thought of Daddy lying on the couch and said, “Daddy turn!” She ran and took one to Daddy too. She then went between us once or twice more to share some more.

Ian liked the other day when she was narrating after getting home from school. She has finally seemed to get attached to one blanket (at least temporarily) and when they got into the house she said something about finding her blanket. She then kept talking as she tried to find it and told Ian when she’d found it. She did it again yesterday.

She’s not doing too well with the potty training. She was doing amazingly well at first. She now seems to feel like it’s too much stress for her. I think teething may be part of the issue. She has her first two-year molar in and seems to be working on another one. We’ll have a few months more of teething before all of her teeth are in. She just had a good day at school right when I was ready to delay the training for a while. I guess we’ll keep it up for a little while longer and see what she does. I’m currently asking her every time I change her if she wants panties or a diaper. She’s about 50/50 on what she wants at the time.

She’s really getting to the point where she can understand us most of the time. This makes it a lot easier when we’re reasoning with her. Like to explain that she can only have a “chew up” (vitamin) once a day. We thankfully had already set the precedent that she could only give Yuki and Moku treats once a day. She still throws fits sometimes for these things, but at least when she’s in a good mood she does okay.

There is so many more cute things that she’s done, but this is all I can think of for the moment. I’ll try to keep in mind to update more often.

We’ve had two potties at home for a little while now, and Audrey’s started trying to go potty with Julie before bedtime recently, and apparently at school she’s been having to go in the bathroom at school and pulling off her diaper when other kids were going potty, even if she didn’t actually need to go, so Miss Laura (her main teacher) suggested that we might want to start potty training.

This afternoon we went by Walmart to get some underwear for her (pull-ups aren’t recommended because they’re still diaper-like so there’s reduced “feeling”). When we got home, Julie got a pair on Audrey, and starting taking her to the bathroom to try and potty every half hour as was suggested by Miss Laura. I had to go run some errands so I wasn’t home all the time, but apparently Audrey had zero accidents over the few hours she had the underwear on, and had Julie take her to the bathroom at least one time before the 30 minutes was up. It’s of course early still, but it certainly looks like Audrey’s a quick learner (maybe she’s been ready for a while now, especially with watching the bigger kids potty at school). Hopefully that means that we won’t have much issue (other than at night, of course — not much to do if she can’t hold it and either doesn’t wake up or doesn’t wake us up), but we’ll have to see.

Need to see how things go tomorrow, but with the start Audrey had today, I think she’s definitely in potty mode for good.

Audrey’s immune system had a test yesterday. We were out back and I was trying to put together a sand and water cart we’d bought a few weeks back. All of a sudden I hear Audrey say, “Ow.” She started grabbing at her left pants leg.

After that, she seemed almost okay for a little bit. Then she started grabbing her pants leg again. I realized at that point we needed to get her pants off. I pull them down and out comes some sort of wasp. She ended up with 9 stings on her leg. I woke Ian up and we called to talk to a nurse a little bit later. It turns out that 10 stings or more meant she’d have to go in immediately. Otherwise we just watch for signs of a reaction.

She never had any reaction. The bumps probably disappeared in about an hour or so. I know they were gone when the nurse called a second time to say to give her Benadryl just in case. So we were pretty lucky. They didn’t seem to bother her at all, though. She was running around and playing like nothing had happened.

She’s accomplished a lot since her last update. She’s talking quite a lot now. I’ve lost count of how many words. She loves to go outside. She practically hyperventilates when she realizes we’re going to go out. She loves the sand and water cart that Ian ended up assembling. She spent several hours yesterday on the back porch playing with it.

She’s at a Montessori school now. It seems like she’s liking it fine. It seems like they spend lots of time outside, so I’m sure that helps.

Every now and then, she’ll just pick something up and put it away without being asked. It’s so nice to see that. This is the first day she’s really resisted a nap and we’re hoping at the moment she’ll actually take one. She is so overtired that the rest of the day won’t be much fun if she doesn’t. We shall see, though.

Well, it turns out my fear of childproofing was a little unnecessary. As of yet, she doesn’t get into too much stuff she shouldn’t. She does insist on putting her foot in Yuki’s water so we have to try to keep it on the table until she goes to bed. She also thinks it is fun to put Yuki’s food in the water bowl and watch it float. Dumping Moku’s water bowl onto the carpet is amusing for some reason.

She is currently minding fairly well when we ask her not to do something and she understands us. However, I have noticed the mischievous streak getting larger recently. We have a terrible time getting her to sit still to get clothes on. She has also until recently loved getting her shoes on. Now she runs from that too. I can usually trust her to come back to me when shoes are involved, though, since she likes them so much.

She can communicate with us somewhat now. She shakes her head for no and nods for yes. She also says yes. She points at things she wants. She tries to say more and will shake her cup when she needs more milk. She only gets milk when she’s going to bed or taking a nap. She’s learned that asking for more means we’ll take her out of her room and go get more milk. So now she’s saying it even if she has lots of milk just because she wants to escape. She’s started shaking her head no even when she sometimes means yes. I’m trying to pretend I don’t know she means yes so that she’ll learn not to say no so much, I hope anyway. She has also said dog, teddy, toothbrush, hi, apple, and puppy. Hi is the only word she says consistently, though. I have only heard the other words once. She said banana for the first time this morning. She’s always liked bananas and until recently has called them nanas. This morning she saw bananas in the food trough for the zoo toy she got for Christmas. She said banana. She’s begun speaking in toddlerese but we don’t understand much of it yet.

She’s very steady on her feet and has tried running some. You can usually tell when she’s tired since she begins falling a lot while walking and will get really upset. She’s recently learned it is fun to lead other people around by a finger or hand. We went to Kohl’s this afternoon and she had to lead us through the store again after we’d already checked out. She had fun leading Grandpa Daniel around since they’d both stomp on the tile floors. She kept interrupting the golf Wii game to do this while we were there over the Christmas holidays.

She had a pretty good Christmas this year. I of course bought her too many more toys. I realized last night that the play room is getting pretty crowded. Hopefully I can keep that in mind before buying too many more toys. We do have room for more, but I’m not the only one who buys her toys. She really likes anything that makes noise. When we got back home yesterday she went around to all the toys she’d missed for the week and pushed the various buttons to make music/noise. It was rather amusing to see which toys she missed the most. She also missed Yuki which was obvious since she insisted on visiting the photo many times a day.

Audrey started walking this weekend. She spent lots of time Saturday walking around the dining room table barely holding onto chairs or the table. She was also circling her slide in her play room. She figured out how to climb up onto it and slide down this weekend too. It seems she’ll have to build up more strength for that.

She ventured on Sunday morning to take about 6 steps unassisted in her room to get from the crib to her toys. She also spent a lot of time at Michele’s house just standing up and leaning against my leg. She didn’t seem to want to sit down very much.

She’s also learned which lids go with which pots in her kitchen set. She does better with the smaller pots and lids. She has fun putting them on and then carrying them around together.

She’s been teething like crazy the past month. She basically had 4 molars come in around the same time. There were always at least 2 breaking through at the same time it seemed. She’s finally stopped soaking her shirts and all have broken through at least somewhat. Hopefully she’ll have a little break before she starts that again.

I’m excited that she’s started walking now. I’m also concerned about what all we’re going to have to do in the way of childproofing now. She is starting to venture around the house more. I’m sure we’ll be busy this next weekend.