The Monkey Turns One...and many other shenanigans

So...I'm a slacker. Big time. Do I get to play the "I'm the mother of a toddler" card and the "I'm pregnant" card at the same time? Does that make up for the fact that my kid has been a year old for a week and a half and I haven't uploaded pictures or posted about it? Probably not. Bad Blogger!

Enough guilt tripping--let's get down to brass tacks! A LOT of stuff has happened in the past two weeks:

First and foremost: The Dragon turned one! And she's really more of a monkey now with her enhanced verbal skills and climbing abilities...we may have to make over the blog again.

I wanted to write a post about all the things I've learned thus far as a parent--figured the one-year mark would be a good time, but we'll save it for another time when I'm not recovering from...well, we'll get to that in a minute.

Top memories from Audrey's First Birthday?

1) Starting a new tradition of getting Daily Donuts on Lil A's Birthday morning. Audrey got an apple fritter the size of her head. yum!

2) Uncle Joe and John's cousin Jasmine decorating for Audrey's Birthday: The Engineer and the grade-schooler make an amazing team when it comes to balloons and crepe paper!

3) Everyone but Audrey wearing crazy hats

4) Auntie Em spending the day making a mini strawberry cake from scratch with pink icing and decorating it with fruit for Audrey...and Audrey picking every piece of fruit off of it without touching the cake. Classic Fruit Monster!

5) Audrey's favorite present? The floating xylophone from Grandma G. It's amazing how the most ridiculous gift became the most practical--Audrey will actually sit down and stay down in the bath tub now. Wohoo!

John and I are proud to say we survived our first child's first birthday party and are unbelievably exhausted thinking of how many birthday parties are still in the future. Whew!

The day after Audrey's Birthday, we headed into the wilderness with four Grandparents, one Uncle, one Aunt, a Mama and Papa, the coolest kid in the world, a great family friend, three cars, three tents, one trailer, enough food to feed China for a week and a partridge in a pear tree.

We camped at the Ohanapecosh Campground near Mt. Rainier and on Monday, Grandpa G, Auntie Em, John and his buddy Dustin headed for Camp Muir. (elevation. 10,080 ft.) John had committed to hiking as far as he was comfortable and made it up to the snow field (a little over half way) and the other three made it to Muir in 4 hours. This was a really big acomplishment for my Dad, who has been training for months to get to hike Rainier. Next year, he and Dustin are planning on going for the summit. I'll commit to staying at the campsite and having a ton of food ready for them to eat when they get back.

Audrey took to camping like a duck to water; she thought living outside under the trees was the best idea ever and even made friends with a chipmunk ...who I consequently attempted to kill. The stupid thing was scavenging at our campsite and I found it in Audrey's diaper bag! Eating a banana! If I had better reflexes, we would've had chipmunk stew for dinner. I did trap him in a tree trunk while I finished getting all the food in the trailer. ...stupid chipmunks.

Anyway, we had to come back to civilization sometime, even though I think Audrey and I would make it just fine living in an tent, eating chipmunk meat for the rest of our lives. We spent the rest of the week bumming around the Tri-Cities with the Gamelin Fam. We ate a lot of food, Audrey got a ton of quality time with her Grandparents and Auntie Em and Uncle Joe, and I actually got to sit around, relaxing and reading...which is why I haven't posted anything in forever--I've become accustomed to time for reading and that leaves no time for anything else since I'm back to watching the kid full time without my devious mother's helpers about.

It took a few days to fully recover from the festivities--the house looked like a bomb had gone off and I had to see if I actually had the physical stamina to chase around a toddler all day after such a long break. So, things are pretty much back to normal, meaning I'm sure to update more often with a bunch of mundane, everyday information. Maybe I'll even get around to uploading pictures!

I guess I can't end without spouting off some stats about my Big Girl!

Audrey:

• Is almost 24 pounds and 31.5 inches long
  
• Can walk, but she doesn't know it yet...we'll let you know when she figures that out
• Calls EVERYTHING "Caba", but has an ever-extending vocabulary that she never feels the need to use
• SLEEPS THROUGH THE NIGHT! 3 times! 3 times, she has slept through the night! This is an amazing accomplishment after a year of sleep deprivation for Mama.

That's pretty much all I've got for now...If you've made it this far, you must have either read this in installments or have the patience of a saint. I'll make the posts brief(er) from now on...until the next big thing happens and I'm too busy to post. I feel a trend coming here.

Norbert is 15 weeks old, the size of a navel orange and is starting to kick for Mama. We go back to the doctor on the 20th and will schedule the first ultrasound soon after. We'll keep you posted on the Norbert vs. Norberta debate!