yes i am this cute

Audrey can now sit up in her bumbo! This is a super cute outfit of her - love it:).

spending time in the OC

Just recently, Alex's company was closed. So, changes are going to come, but we're optimistic and going to see what happens. There's possibilities in the works and Alex received a nice severence package. This allows him to be at home with us, working on his reel as much as he can. But also gives him some time to take the girls down to visit with family in OC. We're about an hour away, which means we can see them often, but time tends to pass quickly and before we know it, it has been a month, sometimes more! And when babies are growing, a month is a long time! Laurel is crazy for her cousins and asks for them all the time. They all have the best time together and I wish she could be around them more regularly. But visits like these will have to do for now!

Valentine's Day

Finally another holiday! Much to Laurel's delight:). She is now constantly focusing on the next holiday at hand. Megan happily informed her that the next holiday is St. Patrick's day - one that isn't really "celebrated" in our household. We have no plans to drink a Guiness, even Alex, and no plans to be Irish anytime soon:). But it gives her something to look forward to! So that's what we'll be celebrating in March.

For Valentine's Day at pre-school, everyone brought in Valentines that were put into bags and taken home. Laurel made her very own for all of her friends out of foam hearts and stickers we got at Target. We've been in love with the $1 bin lately - easy crafts and fun gifts for cheap. Laurel received a Valentine bag of goodies from us as well. She doesn't really have a sense of time yet, so she knows these holidays are coming up and then all of a sudden, it's the day! Not sure she knows what to do with that kind of anticipation and final fruition.

Audrey lately

Audrey's personality is really starting to show herself now. The verdict - the opposite of her sister:). When Laurel was a baby and still now, she has such strong emotions. She laughs hard, squeals loudly, gets so excited, is up for anything. When she was a baby she giggled all the time, smiled easily, was visibly so excited to see us. She had definite reluctance and was clingy, but her personality is big. Audrey on the other hand is going to be the quiet soul. She is so sweet and passive, very calm. Unless she is very tired or very hungry, she is mostly content. Her smiles are slow to develop and her giggles are few. She is patient and can play by herself on her play mat for quite a long time if I need her to. She can work up a chatter but isn't as loud as Laurel was. She enjoys the nursing cuddle but isn't a rocker like Laurel was. Laurel preferred to be held and Audrey is content in her crib. She's becoming a good little sleeper. It's taken some time and the naps are still a work in progress but the night time is forming a good schedule. Audrey still wakes up twice during the night. She goes to sleep around 6:15/6:30 and wakes to eat sometime in the 10:00 hour. Then she has been going down for a long stretch and not waking until about 3 am. Lately she's been waking me up around 7 am with a quiet chatter and hum in her crib. Such a lovely sound to wake to:). Audrey used to wake up earlier in the morning and I was worried that the garage door underneath her room was waking her up. Either she's gotten used to it or it isn't as loud as I thought it was. I am not sure when she'll get around to sleeping through at night. I think by most standards, babies can sleep through the night without eating at 4 months. She doesn't really seem anywhere close with 2 wakings still.

Her naps are slowly starting to lengthen, at least one of the 3 is usually a good 1.5-2 hours. Sometimes the morning nap is the long one, sometimes the mid day nap is long. She still needs three naps, usually one long and two short. Maybe in the next month or two she will take the two short ones and make it into one long so we'll have two long naps every day. She's pretty much calling the shots on her sleep schedule. I really tried to read up and force the issue and I am following her lead now and things seem to be falling into place on their own. At about the time she hit 3 months though, she began to be able to stay awake up to 2 hours in time. I had her on a 90 minute wake schedule before and she started to cry for long period instead of falling asleep so I moved her naps further apart. Seemed to work out!

Audrey is starting to play with her toys, with us. I have a little bag of rattles, spinning toys, little noise makers. She grabs for them and holds them with quickly improving coordination. I have a little toy strand across the handle on her car seat that she plays with in the car too. She puts on quite a cute little concentration face:).

Audrey does chatter with you one-on-one. She doesn't talk much otherwise unless you engage her in a long "conversation". She is learning several new sounds and is interested in the sounds we make. Her little whines and calls from her crib or when she's sleepy sound like a little cat:).

The times when she is actually upset, she has very little patience. And she has no slow work up, she goes from happy to frantic in a snap. If she wails out of no where, she's hungry. If she's overwhelmed by too many faces around her, she will start to put on a very sad pout and then will scream. The other day she was over tired before bedtime and I had her up on my hip and she threw her arms out and her head back and wailed out of no where! Poor thing!

Audrey at 3 months

Here's my baby bug at 3 months! Such a sweet girl!

call her strawberry!

Laurel is on the longest play-acting kick she's ever carried out:). She is strawberry shortcake - i am lemon - alex is blueberry - megan is orange - grandma/mom is raspberry. Oh and Audrey is a baby berry-kins. These are all little characters from a remake of the Strawberry Shortcake cartoon that shows everyday on a new cartoon channel. Our living room is Strawberry's house, with the space between the arm chair and the couch being the door. Laurel insists on being called Strawberry and calls us by our coordinating names all the time:). Twice now she's awakened in the middle of the night upset, declaring that her name is Strawberry! She is liking other things as well and makes up complicated names for herself. She likes the Bubbleguppies show on Nick Jr. (a show about little mermaid children) and she likes Word Girl, a super hero on PBS. So sometimes she is Strawberry-Word Girl-Bubbleguppie! So funny:). She cracks me up. And don't call her anything else! I called her a Cutie-patootie the other day and it resulted in a 1/2 hour tantrum. Wow. She can go from 100% happy and lovely to tantrum in .5 seconds!:) So don't call her anything else.