Bragging about Audrey

Audrey has opened the floodgates with talking this week.  She is definitely more talk than babble, and it's kind of funny that I have to remind myself to listen for words instead of just nodding along with her gibberish.  I'm not going to list out everything she can say, but I am going to take this occasion to go through the things she can do besides the language explosion.  It's going to sound really conceited, probably, but too bad!!  This entry is more for me to remember her milestones.  And besides, my girl is amazing!!

Audrey has known the letter "B" for a couple of weeks and gets all excited when she sees it different places, but in the last few days she's discovered that the other letters around it are significant, too.  She can now also identify the following letters reliably: A, O, R, S, Y, and Z.  She saw the word "SALZBURG" next to a piece of music I was playing tonight and excitedly pointed out everything except the L and G, since she recognized the U that time, too.  The next ones I'm pointing out are the ones in her name and Emily's name, since they're on her wall and on a lot of things we have, so, E, D, I, and L.  Tonight, we got out the set of foam letters that are all different colors, and she and Emily had a great time with them!  Emily is totally confident with all 26 letters, which is great, but, she'll get to learn them all again in a year and a half when she enters Kindergarten - oh well.  Both girls enjoyed me quizzing them for a few minutes, but then Emily just wanted to sort them by color.  And how can you argue with that, really?  So, both girls had a great time sorting, then mixing them up, then sorting, then mixing them up...  I asked Audrey what color each stack was, and she can identify all 6 primary colors, plus, of course, PINK!   She also can point out shapes of stars, hearts, and circles - and she draws lovely, complete, round circles, too!

And, the singing.  Wow, the singing.  I can't even list all the lullabies she can sing, plus nursery rhymes and girl scout songs.  They are so on-pitch that you really don't miss the words that she can't sing yet (she gets the general gist of them but she's definitely not saying words).  She sat on my lap at the piano tonight and sang beautifully while I accompanied song after song after song that she requested, and then she sat quietly and listened for a few minutes while I played a little Chopin waltz. A lapful of girl AND some piano time - how lucky am I??  I really, really need to get this videotaped before she gets tired of activities like that, and moves on to the next thing to work on.

And of course, she likes to take a moment and arrange her fingers carefully, and then hold them up, saying "I twoooo!  I twoooo!!!"  And have I mentioned that she seems to just get more and more beautiful??  Her hair is such a crazy amazing color, and her blue eyes just get more and more expressive.  She came into my room on Friday morning, and I woke to her tapping me on the arm saying, "Nuggo!" (Snuggle!)  Who could resist that, really?  Then Emily came running in, all high energy and full of plans and ideas and enthusiasm, and she tried to snuggle too but was too wiggley and ready to get moving, so, that was the start to my day. And then, in the afternoon, I went to my ultrasound and found out:

We're having a girl!  Another Sullivan sister!   Emily says she'll be a boy until her hair grows long, and at first she said she wanted a brother but now she's excited for another sister.  I'm relieved to know in advance because I think I could've named a boy if we had gone the surprise route again, but finding another girl name that's as gorgeous and perfect as the first two we chose is going to be nearly impossible.  But now I have 4 months, instead of the few hours that I had with Audrey.  Travis is glad that we are ready with a stash of clothes, and I'm relieved that our toys will largely be sufficient.  I think we'd have to venture into new territory for a boy, and I'll admit that I'm very much intimidated by superheros and trucks and pretend weaponry. 

So, Travis is hopelessly outnumbered, and seems to be quite happy to be that way.  Lucky us! :)