lilwhiskey(s): Aubrey's Big One

First, a little about this gorgeous girl who just turned one.

As you can see she has this amazing blond hair and sparkling blue eyes and a nice brown Florida tan. I am asked all the time if her father is blond, and I understand that he was when he was little. I think its striking for people to see her with just me, because my hair is so dark and Hailey's isn't nearly as light. Regardless, I get lots of compliments on how adorable she is, and I have to agree she is stinkin cute!

Its a good thing she is such a good looking kid, because she is TROUBLE! She still does her modified scoot-instead-of-crawl and she is fast. She is also a very accomplished climber and has mastered getting on and off the couch, tries every day to throw herself over the back of it, climbs on chairs to get on tables, uses the step stool to get whatever she wants off the counter, and managed to get on Hailey's bed just yesterday. She can't walk - hasn't even tried to take a step - but can go from the floor to standing without holding on to anything. She usually claps for herself when she does that trick. She has become a good mimic and makes whatever sound we make to her right back. The girls can spend large amounts of time growling at each other and just giggling. She says several words, although probably only distinguishable to me...ba(ball), woofwoof, joos(juice), mama, dada, hayey(Hailey), whassat (whats that), huwoe(hello) which I think is quite a lot for 12 months. She does hear Hailey talk ALL DAY LONG though, so it shouldn't surprise me that she is speaking earlier than Hailey did.

She loves music and dancing. Hailey sings all the time and Aubrey tries to sing along and dances. Hailey's preschool has a song called "the Animal Alphabet" that we listen to in the car all the time and Aubrey gets very serious and tries to do all the hand movements just like Hailey. It cracks me up. Her other loves are eating - she will eat anything and everything but she is still 2 pounds lighter than Hailey was at 1 yr, Hailey - she wants whatever Hailey has and wants to do whatever she is doing, and dogs - loves all dogs, especially little ones. Overall she is a very happy and easy child and we love her to pieces!

We spent July 7 much like we spend most days, except we skipped Hailey's swim practice because we didn't think it would be nice to make Aubrey do something she doesn't really enjoy on her birthday. By 8 am we already needed a wardrobe change because Aubrey climbed on top of the table and tried to eat a black crayon.

Hailey had a very tough time handling that it was Aubrey's birthday and that she got to open the presents. Fortunately for Hailey, Aubrey really didn't care to open presents, so Hailey ended up doing most of them for her. We spent much of the day waiting for Jon to get home so he could put together the present that Hailey picked out special for Aubrey.