munch!

Audrey has been cracking me up all day. This morning I was putting away laundry in her room and she was pulling out all her toys and "reading" her books...we were just talking (well, I was talking and she was playing) and having a good time.... then she ran to the stairs and said that she wanted to go down. I told her "in a minute" and finished putting away her clothes...sometimes I get one-track minded and I wasn't really paying much attention. I knew she was fine and playing but I wasn't focused on the details. When I finished with her drawers, I looked up and she had cleaned her room...I mean literally... she had put her books on the bookshelf, her toys in the toybox, her legos in the lego box and she was struggling to lift the lego box up onto her toybox shelf.... I helped her with the lego box and she then took off running and said "downstairs..." Who could say no to that? She has learned that mommy likes to clean her room before we leave it...and she did it on her OWN. I bet it never happens again....

I had to spend the morning on hold with Airtran canceling one of Ryan's flights and then on hold with David's Bridal working to get a size smaller bridesmaid dress for a wedding I'm in at the end of September...I no longer will have a pregnant belly to contend with. Anyway, Audrey obviously was paying attention to my phone habits. Later when we were playing, she picked up the cordless phone and tucked it on her shoulder and started walking around saying "uh huh, ok, uh huh, mmm, ok" like she was having this long drawn out conversation with someone...all the while she was still playing with her toys. I guess she learned to "multi-task" today!

She takes her nap almost immediately after she eats lunch which puts her going down around 12:30 or 1:00 on most days. I typically start talking about being sleepy and taking naps while she's eating to get her in the appropriate mindset...well, I hadn't really done that yet (i don't know why...distracted again I guess) and as I was scraping her last bite of yogurt ("ogurt" in the words of Audrey) out of the container, she said "night night." She was SO ready... of course she had a short nap b/c the doorbell rang but that's life. She can be such a light sleeper sometimes.

Yesterday she was asking for cereal all day. I feed her the Gerber toddler flakes...she loves them. Well, today she started asking for a "burger." How random...She gets them occasionally on the weekends with her Grandmommy and she got quite a few on vacation...but she's NEVER asked for one. In fact, she doesn't really ask for much food specifically until yesterday... Anyway, at dinner time I told her I would get her a burger. So I put her in the car and she was crying b/c she didn't understand why I told her she was getting a burger and then we were getting in the car and not the highchair. She cried most of the way there...and finally calmed down until she saw the little bag come into the car. She wanted it NOW....she is impatient like her mommy. So I got home and put her in the high chair (after she calmed down and said "please") and whipped out the burger...I unwrapped it in front of her and what do I find? Chicken. Great. I held it up to her and the tears started again! How can they do this to a 19 month old???? I was not about to drive back to Wendy's with a crying kid....so I did what any young mom does. I called my mom. :) She had mentioned that she might be coming over...so I thought she could grab one on the way. Her plans didn't work out though...but she had a miracle suggestion....she asked if I had any hamburger meat... DUH. I opened the freezer and we had 2 random frozen patties from not that long ago....I popped one in the handy george foreman, scraped the chicken and nasty sauce off the bun, added some cheese and ketchup and voila! HAPPY BABY! HAPPY MOMMY! How does wendy's mess up one tiny little burger? I didn't even order anything for myself...oh well. They'll hear about it...just not tonight. I'm not in the mood.

I cleaned out her toy closet today. Why didn't I do this sooner? I boxed up her toys that were from when she was a baby...rattles, stacking cups, etc...and filled up a huge rubbermaid tub to way overflowing. I can't believe I haven't really done this yet... She wasn't playing with those toys...just dumping them and then walking all over them. So, then I moved more toys to her room b/c it's easier to clean and contain them there and also she tends to play with things more specifically there and not just "dump and run." So now things are much more manageable down here. Everything always fit into the closet but now it's back to where she can walk in there again. I put away most of the stuff with small pieces like Noah's Ark so we can get them down and play and then put them away before we get out something else. Every day I learn something new as a mom...today I learned that less is more. She plays so much better with fewer options.

I also learned that she knows tons more animals than I thought....she will still only say brown, black, purple and orange when it comes to colors. She recognizes the others but those are the ones she says....but she sure knows what a koala, wombat, polar bear, lizard and a gorilla are. Who knows what a wombat is?? I guess that is what watching Baby Einstein in the car on a 10 hour road trip will do for you. I should have put in Hooked on Phonics. Maybe she would have read on the beach with me :)

Oh..and I almost forgot...the other night at dinner times she ran to her highchair and said "munch!" She was trying to say "lunch" because she was hungry.... how cute!