Little Audra is changing so much! One weekend to the next is so different for her at this age. She is such a sweet, little girl and is developing the cutest personality! I always look forward to our weekends together! We can't help but compare her to Xavier at this age. The two look so much alike...
Audra on the right in both pics!
But they have such different interests. So some of Audra's favorite things at 13 months:
Being read to: She seriously gets such excitement from us reading her books and she could listen to us read all day long. Her favorite book at the moment is Hop on Pop. She picks up the book and reads it to herself (saying "ba, ba, ba, ba" in perfect rhythm), then hands the book to me to read to her. She also really likes when it goes off rhythm with "you must not hop on pop"right
then gets back on rhythm with "walk, walk, we like to walk..." She always laughs at that part! Out of her big stack of books, this is definitely her favorite. She loves to flip from page to page, and when we get to the end, she flips it to the front to start all over. Last night, we read Hop on Pop for 20 minutes (not even kidding!) until I hid the book (bad mom, I know!) so she'd explore other books.
Books: Some of her other favorites are the Sesame Street Bubbles, Bubbles (she loves to point at the big eyes), Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (that has a push button that signs the song), the In My Roost book that has the finger puppet, and all the books with pictures of real life babies or doggies. These are the books she spends the most time reading and reads (or I read to her) multiple times in one sitting: others she will pick up, flip through a couple pages and put them down. The other day when she was babbling in her high chair, I made out her singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Cutest thing ever when I pick up on things like this!
Being Social: Last weekend, she started Music Class at a church in town. This was the first time I've exposed her to other kids her age. Karli watches Xavier and Audra during the day and she doesn't get exposed to other babies the way Xavier did at the day care center and then at Jessica's where she watched 5 other babies at the same time. I was so curious how Audra would handle other babies but she was such a star! First, she's so curious that she crawled from person to person to see what was up. Then, as the teacher finished a song with her "Yaaayyyy!" encouragements, Audra always, always, always, looked at her with the biggest smile and laughed so loud! She has the class of 5 other moms/babies cracking up! Every "yayy!" was followed with an Audra belly laugh! By the end of class, everyone knew her name. Little Miss Popular!!
Sweet Potatoes and Greek Yogurt: When she sees the orange food on her plate, she flaps her hands and kicks her legs! Also, when I start feeding her greek yogurt, she can't get enough and always holds her mouth open wanting another bite!
Looking out the car window: Oh this is one of the sweetest things. I'll look in my rearview mirror and see through her mirror that she's quietly taking in the outdoors. She just stares and is at such peach when looking out the window. And she will do this for so long! And I forget she's back there! She loves it so much.
Imitating our actions: So she loves to try putting on her shoes, socks, and last weekend she tried putting on a diaper over her clothes! She knows where all this stuff goes and it's so interesting because she still can't talk, but has absorbed so much. She puts all clothing over her head and crawls around with it dangling from her neck. She also loves to try putting on her hair bows and barrette and often will give me her barrette and look down so I can put it in her hair. So sweet!
Staring at Xavier's Fibber game box: This one is the most unique. From across the living room, she saw something on the bookcase that caught her attention. She crawled quickly over to it and grabbed it off the shelf. Then she held it up and stared at it for 10 minutes. She put it down then came back to it and stared at it again. Steve wasn't home but said she is obsessed with this game box! Haha!
Giving out hugs: She will hug me, Steve, her stuffed animals. It's the cutest! And when she hugs us, she grabs onto our shirts to give us the biggest and tightest hug. She didn't do this until a month ago, so we are taking in all the hugs we can get from her. We are happy she's showing us feelings (haha) cuz for the longest time, she pushed us away.
Get ready for lots more posts about Audra! I think this is the time I posted a lot for Xavier too. The personalities really take shape and I want to remember these days forever! And I'm sure she will enjoy someday reading about them too :)
