"I'll hold my own hand."

"

Man, this girl has too much personality to fit into such a small package. It's not possible to write down all the things that make this stubborn, crazy girl so wonderful. I feel like I could write twice as much as I have, but that would be ridiculous. So here's what you get.


Live and Learn

• Since we moved to Colorado, we've started hiking a lot. Aubrey's such a trooper! She sometimes gets tired and asks us to carry her, but when we tell her no she pushes on. She's done some pretty difficult hikes for such a young kid, and she's rocked them! We hiked to Castle Rock, which was a very uphill hike, and she did it all herself! She's done several 2-mile hikes already. And she loves it.

• Our new neighborhood has a pool for residents only. We got Aubrey a set of water wings, and she's gotten very confident! She is working on blowing bubbles in the water and can swim well with the wings on. She asks to go swimming pretty much every day.

• With Aubrey starting preschool, we had to finally bite the bullet and for-real potty train her. We had tried a few times before--using charts, bribes, etc.--but she decided she didn't want to do it. She was completely capable but completely unwilling. So we told her she had to be potty trained to go to preschool, and then we talked up preschool in a major way. And it worked! We had very few accidents (and just in the first couple of days), and she proved she was able to hold it for long periods of time. We had trouble with pooping (she held it in for a couple days, refusing to try, and got really bad stomachaches) and with using public toilets, but it worked itself out within a couple of weeks. Yay!
• And now she's in preschool! And it's been great. She was apprehensive about me leaving the first few times, but she's gotten over it. But she does always say, "Kiss and a hug!" before I leave. And then she asks to give Carter a kiss and a hug. It's pretty dang cute. We did have a bit of a problem with preschool at first in that Aubrey refused to say "May I please be excused?" after snack time. She apparently said to the teacher, "I don't say that at home." But not for lack of trying on our part! Punk. Anyway, we've worked on it. And on the second day of school, the teacher said to me, "She was less stubborn today!" So yeah.

Sour...

• When she's mad, she threatens to throw things in the trash or just generally throw things. One time she threatened to take Carter away from me.
• When she gets mad at me, she sometimes calls me "a bad mommy." It feels great.
• She often knocks Carter down when he's walking. She just walks by and hip checks him. It drives me crazy.
• When she wants something she hasn't gotten, she says, "I told you [insert demand here]." (Example: "I told you to get me chocolate milk!") And it's never something she's actually told me she wanted. Oof.

... and Sweet

• When I put Carter down for a nap (or down for bedtime when Daniel isn't home), she always asks if she can read him books and sing to him. It's pretty dang cute when she does it.
• She loves texting Daniel emoji messages during the day. She gets really excited when he responds back. She also does the speech-to-text thing sometimes. Once she sent him the following: "Dr do to Deedee which prime up the times for fines. Prime mind when mine run crying and dozers of four, three, two, one goes away. Come away when you apologize." It totally sounds like an angsty poem!
• When Carter gets hurt (not by her, haha), she says, "Oh, I'll go get him a toy to make him feel better!" And she does. And it's super cute.
• At school, when they were making one of their craft things, she said to the teacher, "I need to make a second one." When the teacher asked why, she said she wanted to make one for Daddy "because he does so much." Heart melted.

Fun and Games

• She likes to make up silly words to songs she likes. She also LOVES dancing. I wonder if musical theater is in her future... haha.

• She likes to super dramatically pretend she's falling down stairs. When she gets to the bottom, she lets out a dramatic "Oh!" and then lies there motionless for awhile.
• One of her favorite games involves bringing me fake food and describing what's in it and giving it a funny name. She often includes the made-up word "durlik" in her food names.

Funny Girl

• In sacrament meeting back in Massachusetts, someone said from the pulpit, "I struggle; we all struggle." Aubrey was apparently listening and responded very matter-of-factly and kind of loudly, "I don't struggle."
• From Daniel's Facebook post: "I explained the concept of liberty to Aubrey today by telling her that it means that we could live the way we wanted as long as we didn't hurt other people and that it is important to fight for our freedom. She replied by saying, "Ok, if I ever see a bad policeman, I will fight him."
• One night she said, "Mommy, can you sing "sha la la la"? I sang, "Sha la la la la la don't be scared, you've got the mood prepared. Go on and kiss the girl," and she responded, "Mom, it's dinner time; it's not time to sing." Well then.
• She really likes the movie Enchanted and is getting into Wicked songs, but she can't get the characters' names right. "Giselle" is "Gazelle," and "Elphaba" is "Elphabet."
• She still hasn't mastered asking politely for things she wants. One day she demanded I turn on High School Musical songs. When I said, "You need to ask nicely," she yelled, "Ask yourself!" 
• When we try to hold her hand to cross the street, she says, "No, I'll hold my own hand." And she actually does.

• When we met with the lawyer to close on our house, the lawyer mentioned something about our bank. Aubrey was apparently listening and said excitedly, "I have one of those! It's a piggy bank!" AH. DOOR. AH. BULL.
• The other day I went into my room to have a solitary break, and Aubrey followed me. She informed me, "If you want to be alone, you need a friend!" Of course.
• When we're out doing errands or hiking or whatever, she almost always says, "You know, it's pretty hot today. Maybe we should go get some ice cream!"
• She changes her outfit at least once a day. She'll go into her room wearing one thing and come out wearing something else. And she's very concerned about matching. Of course, her idea of matching and my idea are somewhat different... haha.