Sometimes I Mess with People's Minds

Over the summer when I babysat Audrey, Anna and I would try to mess with her mind. See it's very easy to do so with a three year old so we took advantage of that.

One time after swimming, Audrey wanted a snack. Audrey eats way too much for her size. She has food envy where anytime anyone else is eating she has to eat what they are eating, and she's been this way since she was a baby. Since she is a bit large for her size, her family makes her eat better snacks.

Audrey asked for fruit snacks to eat but we were pushing her to eat actual fruit. I tried to use her food envy to get her to eat some of my orange, but she complained that the orange was too big for her, and she wanted a clementine instead. I bugged her a few times to eat it but she wouldn't do it. Then I told Audrey to close her eyes, and put out her hand. She was nervous and I could tell she knew what was coming but did it anyways. When she did it, I put a piece of the orange in her hand. Then she opened her eyes again and told me no! And threw it back into my lap. I tried to convince her to close her eyes again but she couldn't be fooled!! So I ate that orange all by myself.

Another time at the pool, Audrey tried to make me do princess dancing. It was almost exactly how it sounds, I would hold her and we would slow dance in the pool like how the princesses do with their princes which was oh so much fun.

Usually we would just stand there and dance but she would occasionally demand that we should have music. Audrey enlisted Anna as our singer, and told her to sing a Cinderella song. Anna started singing "So This is Love" which is in Cinderella, but Audrey did not think it was from Cinderella and told her to sing a different one. The other Cinderella songs are not really danceable, so Anna started singing "Belle Notte" instead. We danced for all of the song that we actually knew the words to. As soon as we finished Audrey told us, "That's from Lady and the Tramp!!" Sadly we could not convince her that it was Cinderella the next time we did princess dancing, she knew we had tried to fool her.

Princess dancing became a routine game at the pool, because it sure beat out Mermaid Hair Salon (I just love when 3 year olds try to do my hair!!). She knew exactly what to do when she was Cinderella. Towards the end of the song, she moved her hands from my waist and took her hand out of mine and wrapped them around my neck and she put her head on my shoulder.

Basically, Audrey is the epitome of a princess. She knows all the stories and sometimes she thinks she is one. She told us about how she needed a wedding veil because all princesses have one, and it was not just a suggestion, it was basically a demand. So I made her a veil.

Audrey in her veil, plus a random crown.

Audrey in her veil at the pool!

Recent Occurances

 

Audrey strapped her Belle figurine to her shoe. She wore it around for a couple hours. I'm not sure why she put it there when she had pockets, after a couple parents were confused I did take it off at least.

This is from Busch Gardens in May when I went with Emily's choir. It's kind of sad that even though I make faces in a lot of my pictures on rides I can't keep them or even take pictures of the pictures. But I did sneak this one in.

 

This is a note from Kelsey which I think is hilarious. She is such a drama queen.

Trying on helmets at Target. Anna is a bunny, my dad is a shark, and I am a cat. I think writing that out looks stupid but I'm sure you really can't tell what they are anyways.

 

 This was not when I babysat Audrey, this was from Anna. The story here is that Audrey was drinking from a water bottle with a straw and was leaning forward to do it. Then Anna went over a speed bump and Audrey leaned the water bottle back at just the right time and it flew into her hair.

 

I have no idea what we were playing. I think it had something to do with princesses, and she took a ride on Kelsey, the monster or something like that. But I'm pretty sure Audrey would make a good nun.

 

 So this is the start of my cross stitch with a puppy.

Progress one week later and with a new pink embroidery hoop.

Next week's progress. Almost done!

Sometimes I'm a Liar

There are times when I lie. But that's not because I do it on purpose, ok in certain situations yes, like when dealing with Audrey who is three.

Anyways, I said I would do the grandma cross stitch, but when we went to Michael's today I looked at it and it was not a counted cross stitch, it was a stamped cross stitch. That basically meant that it was on cloth that had some of the words and colors stamped on. So it was basically cheating. But I took a picture to show how fun it was.

Instead I picked one with a cute dalmatian puppy sleeping and underneath, it says Never underestimate the power of a nap.

Here is the cross stitch I am working on now, it is just about done, I just have the back-stitching left which is to add the accent (the brown and red) on top of the hummingbirds and flowers, and the blue border.

Back to me being a liar. When you work with a three year old you lie a lot. She asks questions and if I'm not paying attention then I just say yes to go along with it. Like this, "Is this Cinderella's wedding necklace?" "Yes, sure." And she believes it, and yes that was an actual conversation.

My favorite is her version of stores we go to. I'm sure you can catch on, but it is a simple formula, we are buying ___ so it is the ___ store. Some favorites are:

The Sweater Store

The Ice Cream Store

The Hair Cut Store

The Food Store

The Juice Store
The Parachute Store

The Band-aid Store

The Fruit Snacks Store

The Surprise Store
The Blue Ketchup Store
The Care Bear Oven Store
The Ballet Store

I just say yes, of course we are going to the "juice" store or whatever and don't care to correct her. Notice that half of the stores are about food, that just shows what her favorite thing in the world is.

Never a Dull Moment

Audrey is very much into princesses at the moment. Every book from the library has to be about princesses and most of the toys she plays with are somehow made out to be princesses and their princes. One of the key parts of every princess story is their marriage and the happily ever after. Audrey is obsessed with weddings, and coming from Provo, I think it is hilarious.

This week my family received the Richmond bridal magazine. Audrey noticed it and went looking through it. She looked at a few of the dresses and said she really liked one for her mom. She didn't understand that her mom didn't need another one. On the pages with dresses on them, she would yell out, "I LOVE this dress." As this is an all too similar occurrence in Provo, I think she is growing up well.


Audrey has this funny thing where she hides whenever she knows someone is coming into a room to look for her. Well today, she went and hid in the bathroom, behind the toilet. When I came to look for her she popped out from behind it, ramming herself into the toilet paper dispenser. Her actions actually broke our toilet paper dispenser, she tore it out from the wall.

Anna and I took Emily, Audrey and Allyson to the pet store today to go look at the different animals. We went and looked at the cats, which were behind glass. The cats rubbed up against the glass and since Audrey couldn't touch them, she patted the glass which was adorable.

There was a dog training session in the front of the store that I took Audrey to watch. While in the dog section, Audrey loved looking at all the dog toys and the dog clothes. She even found a dog house and decided it was her size.

This is Audrey checking the roof of the dog house.

Basically, Audrey is always a handful but she gives us a lot of things to laugh about.

Everyone Likes to Dye their Food!

While I have lived with Kara, Madeline, Brett, Sarah and Amelia we have made a lot of baked goods. One of the common features of these baked goods is a strange color by added food coloring. We've had blue cinnamon rolls (a few times), red cookies, yellow cake always ends up strange colors and many other colorful foods. At one time, I even said that, "not dying your food is a crime." So when I was babysitting and I found out that Audrey also liked to dye her food I was very proud.

The first day I watched her, she wanted yogurt which is her favorite snack. But she wanted it purple. I thought it would be a Trix yogurt that came prepackaged as purple. But no, she had a normal white colored vanilla yogurt. She pointed to the cabinet to show me where the food coloring was and we put it in. She thought it was great, because it dyed her tongue.

A couple of weeks later, I used this technique to get her to eat something healthy. She wanted gold fish or something for snack but I told her that if she ate fruit we could dye it different colors. She picked a banana and I put on a few globs of blue and red and told her that it would mix in her mouth to make purple. This seemed to excite her and she quickly ate a few bites of the disgusting looking banana, then ran to the closest mirror. It actually did seem to work, her tongue looked purpley so she was thrilled.


Audrey loves Dora the Explorer. She has watched many episodes and has some Dora toys. When we went to the store she put some of the things Dora likes to say into action. I told her all the things we needed to buy which included fruit, yogurt, milk and cereal. After I read the list, in Dora fashion she said, "When you see milk, say milk!" When we got to the dairy section I told her that I saw the milk we needed and I got a couple of gallons. At that point it was almost too bad she didn't sing the "We did it" song.

Feelings of a Three Year Old

One day, Audrey got really mad. It was because I asked her to unload the dishwasher with me. She had just eaten lunch and was sitting at the table. She decided to take it out on the thing closest to her, which happened to be a table. She yelled, "I don't like this table here!!!"

Audrey then proceeded to push against the table to push it out of its position. However, her effort did not work, as she does not have the strength to push a table. She just pushed her chair further and further away until she could barely touch the table. She was so excited at her achievement, until she realized she still had to put the dishes away.


Another time I watched Audrey we looked at some pictures from her preschool. She just loves looking at pictures and telling me about everyone in it so I had already looked at her class picture before. However this time, she pointed out all the kids and told me about the kids she plays with. When she got to a certain boy she said, "That's Hayden, I love him. He's so handsome and so cute."

He just looked like a typical preschool kid with scruffy blond hair and a t-shirt but I guess that's next to perfect for a three year old.

Here's a cute video of Audrey being tickled. Enjoy!

Don't Take Everything Literally

At this point, the only thing I have going on is babysitting so of course that is what I am writing about.

Audrey LOVES to read books, especially anything with a princess or dancer in it. I go to the library twice a week and we always pick out a couple to bring back. A couple weeks ago I brought back a book called Belinda Begins Ballet. She loved it from the start. Most books we read once or twice and she's happy to return them but she kept that one for two weeks and read it at least once a day.

When reading Audrey likes to ask questions like: "is that her mom?" and "what color are her eyes?" She also likes to ask them during each time the book is read. So she had read the book many times at this point (at the end of the two weeks) so it was a surprise when she came up with a new question for me about the book.

On one page she asked, "where is the teacher's eye?" I quickly pointed it out for her but she was discontent. "No the other eye!" I tried to explain that the other eye was not shown because of how her face was oriented, but Audrey persisted. "Where is the eye on the girl's dress?"

I was a little confused because her wording didn't seem to make sense, but I looked at the sentence I had just read. It said that the teacher had her eye on the girl, Belinda. Then I understood that she took that sentence literally, she actually thought that the teacher's eye was on Belinda. Three year olds are hilarious.

"My sticker! He swiped it!" -Audrey as her sticker fell on the floor

Every time I wear earrings, Audrey looks at them and plays with them so I asked her about them.
"Do you like earrings?" -Laura
"No, they make your ears look weird." -Audrey

"Choose a different favorite color!" -Audrey because I had the same one as her

The other day Audrey took my glasses and ran around the house with them. When I caught her and put them back on I asked her why she took them. She told me that it was because she didn't like them.

Basically I know the cutest little girl.

Adventures in Babysitting

For the past few weeks I have been a nanny of the cutest kids. Audrey, Kelsey and Allyson.

This is Audrey! She is three and is absolutely adorable. I nanny for her everyday for 6-8 hours. We go to the library, park and we feed the ducks a lot. She says some of the funniest things.

Right here we were making cookies and she wanted a picture with the spoon for reasons unknown.

So she filled in the blanks on these for Mother's Day. They are hilarious! She genuinely thinks they are the truth, like that her mom likes to clean her room, and that her mom is 3.

She is very honest which is funny sometimes. I forgot my library card one day, so the next day we went back. When I checked out the books, she told the librarian that I lost my card. Then I had to explain that I left it at home, but the librarian laughed because the 3 year old was telling on me!

I have an mp3 player on my phone so I like to play music for them sometimes and they dance for me. Audrey started doing a dance and told Kelsey to follow along. They looked like they were doing the little teapot dance, except they were just rocking back and forth. Then Audrey made her own move, she said "take the cookie out of the box, and eat it!" And yes that's exactly how it looked.

This is Kelsey. She's 8 and is in third grade. She's pretty funny and is quite a character. Everyday after school she comes home and tells me all about the really stupid and annoying people in her class. That makes me laugh, just because I used to do the exact same thing.

In this picture we made lemonade and she dumped a huge spoonful into her small cup just so she would have some left at the bottom. Thus the picture is her eating all the sugar out of it.

Kelsey is quite a drama queen. She called her mom to ask where something was, and in the voicemail she called it a tragedy that we couldn't find it anywhere. There was lots of sighing and pretend crying and I think some stifled laughing from me in the background.

I actually don't spend much time with Allyson so I haven't had any fun experiences with her. But she's almost 12 and is in 6th grade. So basically she's too cool for a babysitter.

I'm sure I'll post more funny things they do so keep coming back!