Kitty?

I was going through the pictures on my phone and came across about a dozen like this:

 
I don't remember taking those for some reason.  :)

Bridget is now obsessed with the cats, especially Avalanche.  She will walk around the house calling "Kitty?" until we find him, the she laughs and tries to hug and pet him.  For the most part, he is pretty tolerant, but if he has a chance to escape, he will.  When he runs through the cat door (which B loves to throw toys down now), she will cry at the door and drag me over to open it.  We have to stand there and call for Avalanche, but he never comes - surprise, surprise.  He acts like he doesn't like her, but when she is sitting still, he will go sit on her feet and last night he slept in her room!

Poor B stood in a fire ant mound at daycare yesterday.  The teacher said she looked over and Bridget's jeans were covered in ants.  They said she never made a peep and the bites didn't seem to bother her when we got home.  I counted 15+ ant bites on her little legs yesterday.  That just adds to the list of things that I don't really like about our daycare... Ugh!

Here are a few photos from my phone.  This is an intense game of Mario Kart.  Audrey insisted that she could play all by herself, so her character just drove in tiny circles!

This is Audrey in her German Shorthaired Pointer shirt.  She wouldn't smile for me because she was too busy snacking on cereal.  Hazel doesn't appreciate the fact that this pointer doesn't really look like her but that's what she gets for having bad pointer markings!  ;)

And this is Andy and Bridget right at this moment - they both had long days!

Dance Class.... Success!

Just like I suspected, with Daddy at class, Audrey didn't resist going in and participated in the whole class!  In case you can't tell, Audrey is the second from the right.  She is in class with a bunch of blondes.  Before we left, she asked if we were going to the dance class with all of the tan haired girls! :)

After we helped her change into her tap shoes, we looked up and couldn't find Bridget.  She had run into the classroom and was standing in line with the other girls!  Too bad she has a whole year before we can sign her up!

Audrey even made a little friend in class who came to the playground with us afterwards.  The little girl has a sister who is a couple of months younger than B and her older brother was wearing a Star Wars shirts, so bonus points all around!

Backyard Camping

Last weekend, Andy put the tent up in the backyard and invited the Stevens boys over for a backyard camp out.  Jack didn't come - he said that he was too tired.  :)  While the kids were roasting marshmallows, Tyler said "I wish Jack was here.  He would really like this."  Awww!

Everyone had fun roasting marshmallows and then we got into the tent to try to settle down for bed, "try" being the key word here.  The boys finally crashed at around 10:30 and the girls were still lying on their sleeping bags fighting sleep when I went to the house at 11.  I was going to sleep out there with them, but Andy thought I'd be grumpy in the morning after sleeping on the ground all night.  Bridget ended up joining me in the house at about 2 am and stayed up fussing until 3, so I think I slept worse in the house than I would have outside! 

On Monday when I picked the girls up from daycare, Audrey told me that she told her teacher all about Star Wars and then she proceeded to name which kids in her class were and were not Star Wars fans.  It cracks me up that she led the class on a Star Wars discussion!  The next day she said that she told Miss April all about Yoda, although I'm not sure if she meant the actual Yoda or Bridget!

Audrey has taken to calling apple juice "Jedi wine" and I'm hoping she doesn't call it that at school.  It sounds like some kind of creepy Michael Jackson kid luring drink!

I need to add to the list of stuff that Bridget does that big sis never did:  She ate a bug (I think - I pulled some wings out of her mouth and am not sure where the rest of it was) and she has started pulling her diaper off and running around naked.  This kid is great birth control! ;)

Bridget is a huge Daddy's girl like her sis though!  When we are driving home from daycare, she asks "Daddy home?" over and over again.  If the phone is down where she can reach it, she will bring it to me and say "Daddy?"  I will call Andy and put him on speaker phone and their conversation is usually "Daddy? Hi Daddy!"  When he gets home from work, she has to sit on his lap and snuggle and he can't walk to another room without her chasing him down.

We have many nights where we end up with one kid or another in bed with us.  Occasionally, they both end up with us and we wake up to cuteness like this:

Audrey came into our room last night and then Bridget woke up when she heard Andy get up to shower, so I brought her in our room, got her some juice and put on cartoons while I showered.  B got to steal some cuddle time with her zonked out sister.

Dance Class Fail

Audrey started back up with dance class this morning.  I signed her up for ballet/tap and she was fine walking into the classroom until she noticed that it was a different teacher and different kids.  This is how I left her when we first walked in:

And this is how she sat for the ENTIRE 45 minute class:

I tried being sweet.  "Come on honey, look how much fun the other girls are having!"  Then I tried being stern.  "I paid for the class and we are here now, so you might as well just get over there and dance!"  When the other kids put on tutus and tiaras, she told me that she can dress up like a princess at home, and when it was time to do the tap portion of class, she told me that she already knew how to tap dance.  I'm going to have Andy take her next week to see if she will be more eager to participate in front of Daddy.  We've got five more weeks of this, so she better learn to enjoy it, dammit!  If not, we'll have to try sports or swimming this fall.

Bridget now wants to play with the camera all of the time too.  This was her first shot - not bad:

Then most of the others look like this. 

She would rather take self portraits I suppose!  Big sis jumped in on this one (and Mommy helped snap the pic):

Little B likes to keep me on my toes and makes me realize what an easy baby Audrey was.  B has pooped in the bathtub twice (Audrey has never done that) and today, she took a washable crayon and colored the kitchen cabinets, island, laundry room door, hall bath door and hallway walls!

On Wednesday, Tina and I got to shop the consignment sale early since we were selling stuff and Andy had softball, so Uncle Jason watched the girls.  He asked Audrey which Disney princess she was going to be for Halloween and she said "I'm not a princess.  I'm a Jedi!" 

Here is a cute picture that my little Jedi took of Han Solo and Yoda:



BFFs

For some strange reason, on Thursday, Andy decided that he would take the front part of the crib off, converting it into a toddler bed.  I knew Bridget wasn't ready for that yet, but he had started taking it apart before I got into the room.  Bridget thought it was pretty cool and went to bed fairly quickly for Andy that first night.

We weren't so lucky the next couple of nights.  I had to just let her crash in my lap at nap time and she was staying up and fighting bedtime until 10:30 or 11:00 before she would finally go to bed.  Even then she would end up in our room about an hour later.  Last night, at 9:30, I was tired and fed up, so I went and put the front back on her crib.  Guess who slept in her bed all night?  Andy is trying to make my baby grow up too fast!

When Andy first took the front off of the crib, Audrey cried for about 15 minutes because Daddy broke Bridget's bed.  On Saturday, she decided that it was pretty cool that she could lay in bed with Bridget, so after B fell asleep for nap time, Audrey said "I'm going to go lay down with Bridget."  She almost fell asleep too, but ended up coming downstairs about 20 minutes later.  I see lots of sleepovers in their future!

This picture is of the girls at Home Depot.  Audrey wanted to hold Bridget's hand the whole time, but B wanted nothing to do with that.  They did walk around with their arms around each other for a little while.  Right after I took this picture, Audrey said "Bridget is my best friend forever!"

I got Braves tickets from a company that we do business with, so on Sunday Andy and I got to go out to a nice dinner downtown and then to the Braves/Cardinals game with our friends Chad and Kristen.  It was Kristen's first Braves game and unfortunately the Cardinals killed us, but we had awesome seats!  We were 9 rows back from home plate and our tickets had food credits on them, so we had free drinks - who knew that they had wine at the ball game?  :)

Yesterday I dropped off all of my baby stuff for a consignment sale.  This sale just takes fall/winter clothes, and even with just two seasons worth of clothes, I had so many outfits that the volunteers asked me how many girls I had.  I have even more clothes saved up for the spring/summer sale.  They are going to think I gave birth to a litter of girls when I drop that stuff off next year!

Labor Day Weekend

We stayed busy this past weekend and enjoyed the cool fall weather!  On Saturday, the girls and I went to the pool with the Stevens clan.  Their neighborhood has a toddler pool, so Bridget was able to play in the water without me holding her, so she was thrilled!  Despite being in the upper 80's, it was a little chilly with the breeze, but we stayed and swam for a couple of hours.

On Sunday, we went over to Grandma and Papa's and decorated monkey cupcakes with the boys.  Here are our little workers...

Bridget just wanted to eat the M&M eyes, so Mommy helped decorate her cupcake!

And here is Audrey's finished product!

Yesterday we took advantage of the Labor Day sales and bought new living room furniture.  The leather set that we spent a fortune on at Macy's about 7 1/2 years ago was starting to deteriorate rapidly.  We took the girls to Toys R Us afterwards for being so patient while we furniture shopped and Bridget now owns her own bumble bee Pillow Pet and Audrey got an Ahsoka action figure (she is from the Star Wars: The Clone Wars cartoon).  Audrey asked Bridget what she wanted to name her bee and Bridget said "A bee?"  Audrey replied with "Abee?  I think that's a great name, Bridget!"

Here is B looking thrilled on the ride at the toy store:

We assumed that Audrey would want to be Aayla Secura for Halloween, but they don't make costumes for her.  We found an Ahsoka costume and thought we could fool her into thinking it was Aayla.  As soon as Andy showed her the picture, she said "That's Ahsoka, not Aayla.  Aayla doesn't wear boots.  And she wears pants, not a skirt, and she doesn't have a bow tie on her skirt..." and she went on and on!

Then she said that she wanted to be a butterfly for Halloween.  When Andy said "I thought you wanted to be Aayla?" she replied "I'm already Aayla!"  Duh!!  Every morning, she asks "Is it Halloween Day yet?"  It's so much fun now that she understands holidays and gets excited for them, although I'm not happy that I have a month and a half left to explain why it's not Halloween yet.

Photography by Audrey

Audrey likes to use my iPhone camera as well as my digital camera lately, so I thought I'd share some of her work!

Self portrait:

Grandpa (aka Darth Vader):

Grandpa and Bridget:

Dylan:

And this one was taken with the laptop camera.   :)

This and That

Sorry for the lack of updates, but we have been busy!  Audrey had her first dentist appointment last Thursday and first of all, I would like to start going to a children's dentist. We walked into the office and there is a game room and a theater room on one side and big plush chairs and a coffee station on the other! They have the kids go back without a parent at this place and although she was a little hesitant, she walked back with the tech. Bridget was the one who started crying as they took big sis back. "Ah dee?? AH DEE??"

The tech came out every few minutes to update me on what was going on. The first time she came out, she said that they were still just chatting with Audrey and trying to make her comfortable. She also brought Bridget out her own Belle toothbrush and a bouncy ball. The next time she came out, she said that they finally had Audrey laying in the chair and were starting to clean her teeth. She said that I could go peek, but was worried that if Audrey heard me, she would get upset. Since I had Bridget there, I knew it would be hard to sneak a peek without being noticed, so I just took Bridget into the theater room to watch Ratatouille.

She did great! The hygienist said that she was very shy and nervous and would only whisper answers to questions.

On Friday, we headed up to the lake with the Conders again.  Audrey was SO excited when I told her where we were going after school.  As soon as we got home, she helped B change and get her shoes on and ran out the back door - the only problem was that Andy wasn't home yet!

Sam had to stop and get gas in the boat before we went swimming and Audrey kept saying "Are we going to go to an island to swim yet?"

Once again, Bridget decided that she didn't need a floatation device while in the water, so I had to hold her while I floated on a noodle.  Audrey mostly played on the shore but did venture out to deeper waters on Andy's shoulders.  He ruined it though by saying "Hey Audrey, did you see that alligator swim by?" 
We had our baby nephew Dylan's first birthday party on Saturday.  Although the poor guy was under the weather, he ate his birthday cake like a champ!

We did lots of other boring stuff, yadda, yadda, yadda and here we are today!  Bridget had her 18 month checkup today and our little Midget Bridget finally had a little growth spurt!  She was 32 1/2" tall (50-75th %) and 22 lb 12 oz (25-50%).  Here are big sisters stats for comparison.