Audrey at two

Audrey just passed her two year birthday. I thought I would write a few words on where she is at in development and personality at this milestone.

Her use of language jumped to new heights in just the past month or two. She now regularly uses sentences of ten or more words, and has a very large vocabulary. For example, a couple weeks ago, she bumped her head. Through sobs and tears, she exclaimed: "I was playing on the couch mess, then I fell off the couch mess, and I bumped my head on the couch mess!" (Then, when I said, sympathetically, "Oh, you bumped your head?" she threw back her head, closed her eyes, and wailed "YEAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!" This is a signature move. )

She doesn't seem to have any confusion about pronouns like I / me / your / her / his / etc. She switches back and forth among them with ease, and usually gets them right. For example, just now, she was trying to push Hosanna out of a chair, and she kept saying "That's MY chair, Mommy!" Hosanna said, "This is your chair?" Audrey responded, "Yeah, it's MINE." This has been true for a few months. It never really seemed to be an issue for her.

She also uses possessives - for example, the other day, I was putting her in the car, and accidentally put her into the wrong car seat. She looked down and around for a second, then exclaimed "I'm in Aria's seat!"

Her pronunciation is still about normal for her age, even if her grasp of language is pretty far ahead. She sometimes gets extremely frustrated when she's trying to say something complicated and we just can't understand her. The person who seems to understand Audrey the best is Aria, so we frequently ask her to translate.

She has developed a kind of sing-song, questioning manner, too. She says things with this lilt to them. Swear to God, she sounds like a kid from a TV commercial or something. Example, about a month ago, Aria bonked her head or something and was crying up a storm. Audrey came in the room and said "Aria? You hurt?" in this gentle, sing-songy way. Then, just a few days ago, when I was leaving to go to work, she said "Bye, Daddy. I love you, Daddy." It melted my heart.

Lest you think she's all sugar and spice now, I'll hasten to note that she's still enormously active, and usually, LOUD. Most days, she wakes up bright and early - around 7 a.m. - and within a few minutes, chirps (or shouts) "I wanna go to the bay-bound (playground)!" She loves yelling. LOVES yelling. She likes running around. She wants to climb EVERYTHING. She still gives us heart palpations at the playground when she climbs up the highest thing and then dangles herself off it ("Look at ME, Daddy!"), although thankfully, she's developed at least a small sense of fear recently. And her absolutely favorite thing in the world is to SWING. She wants to swing and swing and swing and swing and swing and swing. All day, every day, "I WANNA SWING!!!!!!!!!"

Outside of physical activity, her favorite things to do are 1) Read books, and 2) do puzzles. At least two or three times a day, she comes over to her book shelf, pulls out every book one by one, and flips through the pages like a hurricane. It's like she can't get them fast enough, can't get enough of them. "Read this to me, Mommy!" "Read this to me, Daddy!" (Then, if you don't answer quickly enough, "READ THIS TO ME DADDY!!!!!!!!!!!") Her favorite books are still mostly board books, like the Sesame Street letter books - Natasha's Nap or C is for Cookie, etc. She loved a book we got from the library called Higher, Higher, about a little girl on a swing. She also loves We're Going on a Lion Hunt.

We have numerous wooden puzzles in the house, and Audrey can do any of them easily. The most complicated is a wooden U.S. map puzzle. Audrey can do the whole puzzle by herself, and knows most of the names of the states. If you say, for example, "Where's Missouri?" she can pull it out of the pile, say "Here's Missouri!" and put it into the map. If she doesn't know the name of one, she'll hold it up to you and say "What's this?" When you answer, say, "South Dakota," she responds "Oh. South Dakota." Then a couple times later, she'll remember it.

Audrey still nurses frequently, including at least once in the middle of the night. She's so active that it can drive Hosanna crazy. She's nursing but flopping around all over the place, little hands prying everywhere: poking Hosanna's tummy, pulling on her moles, jabbing her belly button, pinching her arms, etc.

Audrey likes to play the piano some. For a little while, she was making up a song on the piano called "Rubber, Rubber" (after the name of our cat). She likes to sing little songs. She knows the alphabet song, and sings it all the time. She likes to sing Ring Around the Rosies (and do the whole running around / falling down thing too), and the Itsy Bitsy Spider.