The 17+ months update

Wow, I haven't posted in a while. I don't know what happened to October, but November got away from me because of job applications. The first weekend of November Paul went up to Carefree, Arizona (Phoenix-ish) for an art show. Since it was only about a 2 hour drive, Audrey and I went up to support him, and to see what doing an art show with a toddler would really be like. We thought she might be bored, but she really loved it - lots of people to charm, and she thought the whole show area was a big game of "chase Audrey." She would walk away from Paul's booth, then turn around and smile to see if one of us was following her, and then she's scoot a few more feet away, merrily walking in front of show visitors and their babies and dogs. Though I didn't get any pictures of her at the show, I did take this one of her eating breakfast at the pancake house one morning before we went out to sell some art.

After we returned from the show, I was buried in job applications and presentation preparation for a few weeks, and then we headed to Virginia on Nov 25 for Thanksgiving and, for me, a trip up to Philadelphia for the AAA meeting the next week. Audrey has been enjoying hanging out with Nana and Poppa (and she can now say both of those names) running them ragged by being in constant motion and making most of her desires known with her still somewhat limited vocabulary. Although many of her words sound alike (dog and duck both sound kind of like "doh") she often uses a sign to distinguish which word she means. She also has some words that she exclusively says (like "plane," that we don't know the sign for) and others she exclusively signs (like "cereal," apple" and "signing"). Though she's enjoyed being the center of attention as the only grandchild on this side, she also had fun playing with her cousin Owen, about 8 months older,one day after Thanksgiving, and all the Guilford Avenue roommate's kids a couple of days later (she is the youngest of a 6-kid group, the oldest being 5 1/2 and the closest to her age being 3 months older).

One of the funniest moments of this trip to my parents' house was that they bought her a little kid cell phone that makes noise when you press the buttons, and also, if you close the phone, it waits about 5 seconds and then rings. Audrey was attempting to wave bye-bye and leave the room (one of her favorite things to do, followed by a re-appearance a few seconds later) but every time she closed the phone and said bye bye to us, the phone would ring. The first couple of times, she answered it, but after about four times, with all of us laughing as she got more and more put out, she handed the open phone to Paul and then successfully left the room.