Anyone who knows us, knows that coffee has no role in our lives.  So it is ironic that our website has a coffee theme and Aud's nickname is coffee based.  But it was mere coincidence.  "Coffee Bean" has three syllables as does "Audrey Jean", so with my limited rhyming skill, that is what I called her one day and it stuck.  As for the website, I chose the theme because it was the most soothing, soft theme in the web blogging framework that I use (along with being a color palette that I generally like).  Anyway, I haven't even started the post and I've digressed.

With the upcoming birth of our new son, I found it prudent to finally get down a few of the stories/topics about Audrey that I wanted to blog about but just never got around to it.  By the way, THANK GOD the new baby is a boy, as this post will point out (no offense to my women readers).

Does the drama get better? (I can hear you readers laughing at me)

Holy cow, I've heard people say how 'different' each of their children are and I've always kind of dismissed it, but Josh and Audrey couldn't be more different in the drama department.  If you mistakenly say "No" for whatever reason and Audrey isn't 'braced' to handle it, you have a major situation on your hands.  The floodgates immediately open and Audrey is distraught for several minutes.  And if you are lucky, the ensuing silent treatment (yes, silent treatments from a two year old) will only last 10 minutes or so.  In the beginning, right as Audrey was getting very mobile and thus endangering herself in all kinds of ways, I'd average 3-4 silent treatments a day by telling her as nicely as possible, "No, don't do that Audrey".  I was simply trying to 'protect' her, but in her mind, I completely ruined her day and despised her on top of it.  Let me give you a couple examples of her sensitivity and stubbornness.

I'm so mad I'm taking my clothes off!!!

So when Audrey was about 18-25 months old she had a real hard time going to bed at night.  She'd play her little games of making you put ten things in the perfect position before going to bed, and if she wasn't tired, she's rattle off half an anatomy book of things that 'hurt' to try and prolong her awake time.  If you could get her to stop crying, she'd normally calm herself down to fall asleep pretty fast, but that was the trick; getting her to be quiet long enough so that she would slip into slumber.

Admittedly, she's finally given up these rituals while going to bed, but during the 'tough times', I'd stooped to..."If you start crying, I'm going to call the cops to take you away to jail...forever".  It seemed to always do the trick so I stuck with it - when Ann wasn't within earshot at least.  I don't think she approved...of the forever part ;)  Anyway, here is my recollection of an extremely 'trying' night before I'd learned the 'cop trick'.

We had decided that this night we were going to let her 'cry it out' if she started up.  I was hoping it wouldn't come to this, but upon putting her to bed, the 'cycle' began.

"Will you sing to me?"
"Will you rock me?"
"I need my baby bottle!" (one of the 15 things to be properly placed to hope for a good nights sleep)
"My knee hurts"
"My tummy hurts"
"My arm hurts"
"My finger hurts"
"Will you cover me up?"
"I need my purple elephant"
"Where is my pig book?"

After I basically say no to everything...Audrey would look a little defeated, but then had an idea.

"Where is Momma?"

Ann had in fact just left for Target to get a few things and I told Audrey I was getting on the treadmill so I wouldn't hear her if she started to cry and that she should just go to sleep.  I went down to run on the treadmill, only to finish an hour later and hear a hysterical Audrey screaming bloody murder upstairs.  I waked upstairs and every item that was properly 'placed' before I left to run had promptly been thrown out of the crib.  Audrey was a babbling mess.  I picked up her security items and put them back in crib and didn't say a thing and walked out.  Audrey begins wailing again as I went to bed thinking she'd just wear herself out.  It has been about an hour and a half now and Ann arrived home as well.  As I mentioned, we both decided that tonight we were going to let her cry it out.

After another 30-40 minutes of crying, Ann had given up and went down to sleep in Josh's room leaving me in charge of 'taking care of Audrey'.  I knew just what to do.  I put pillows over my head and after my brain finally became accustomed to Audrey's muffled screams I managed to fall asleep.  The time was probably 12:30am or so...Audrey had been screaming for about 2.5-3 hours solid.  Well, I woke up to her still screaming and thinking it was about 11:30pm, I was shocked to find out it was 4:45am.  That's right.  She's been screaming for seven straight hours, at least I have to assume that since she was screaming when I fell asleep and still going strong when I woke up.  I finally gave up and went to her room to go get her and bring her in my bed.  When I opened her door, it looked like a scene from the Exorcist.  Every item from her crib was spewed upon the floor.  Her sheet was off her bed, albeit still in the crib.  However, the most shocking scene was Audrey.  She had managed to get her full body pajamas off and launched out of the crib along with her diaper.  So she was standing there buck naked...let me correct myself; she was clinging to the railing of the crib jumping up and down like the devil himself buck naked screaming and balling.

OK, now I felt sorry for her and brought her to bed to which she fell asleep in about 45 seconds.  Suffice it to say that Audrey put up a few more good battles, but we won the war. After each of her 'triumphant' nights where she wore us down with hours upon hours of screaming and crying, she was too exhausted to put up a fight for two or three nights and would just crash immediately.  That, in combination with the 'cop trick', we finally got a handle on her sleeping routine again at about 24 months.

Of course now she is a champ.  She sleeps downstairs in Josh's room and listening to those two yahoos on the baby monitor concocting stories about their daily happenings or dreaming up 'break out plans' ("Audrey, make sure Dad doesn't see you!") is hysterical.  Note to self, I have to record one of these sessions so that they can hear it when they get older :)

Arachnophobia

On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being terrified of bugs and spiders, Audrey is a 100!  I've never seen someone get so terrified when they see a bug.  You can see her love of little guys in this video.  After watching Audrey exterminate every ant, cricket, and any other crawling creature within blocks of our house, I've convinced her that if they are outside, she has to be nice to them and can not kill them.  If they are inside though, they are fair game ;)  And she is always the first to scramble for the fly swatter any time a rouge fly has made its way into the house.

Part of her fear may be the fact that her tush seems to be the equivalent to O.C.B. for any spiders in our house.  She is constantly getting bites on her butt.  One night when we were doing our bedtime ritual, Josh and Audrey simultaneously spotted a spider cautiously crawling across her pillow.  My God, this thing looked like Aragog from Harry Potter.  I swear its body was about the size of a nickel and its legs were as thick as spaghetti noodles.  I mean, if this thing would have crawled across my face during the middle of the night, I might have gone into cardiac arrest.  Anyway, we quickly got the handy dandy dust buster to send that filth back to where it belonged but it took a lot of convincing to get Audrey in her bed that night.

To add insult to injury, the other night we were at Southside Speedway for Josh's RC racing.  Audrey and Mom came to watch Josh race.  Josh and I were inside the garage fixing up the car or something while Audrey and Ann were outside waiting.  I wasn't there obviously, but all of a sudden Audrey starts screaming the most terrified scream I've ever heard her yell before.  I was convinced she stepped on a hornet's nest or something and was being ambushed.  I came running out and she was hugging Mom practically in post traumatic shock.  Ann explained that a daddy-long-leg spider was crawling across her chair and crawled right into her hand.  She promptly screamed and shook it off.  One problem...she shook it off and it landed on her head.  She went crazy.  To this day, if you ask her about it, she explains how a spider "this big", as she stretches out both arms to full width, crawled on her head and bit her.  Between these run ins and her love of watching Harry Potter, it is no wonder she wakes up from dreams explaining to Ann and I how she 'battled' dragons, spiders, and snakes in her bed - with the snake wrapping around her neck and pulling her down.  Luckily she is not afraid of the dark (knock on wood)...so it is all a bit entertaining at the moment ;)

Call up the Academy

Oh...my...gosh...boys are so much easier than girls!  Either Audrey is Golden Globe actress already (which I have a feeling might not be far from the truth) or girls are on a sensitivity level quantum leaps higher than boys.  A few nights ago, I heard her crying pretty loudly upstairs with Ann as I worked downstairs in my office.  This was par for the course and I was assuming she got hurt some how.  Presumably after Ann consoled her, she 'staggers' into my my office a few minutes later and out of curiosity, I asked her what happened upstairs and why she was crying.

It was like I delivered the most devastating news possible to her.  She basically went 'breathless' and couldn't event talk. Immediately she started sobbing and trembling so bad you'd think the world was coming to an end.  At this point, I just sat back for the 'show'.  If you ever ask Audrey about something that hurt, bothered, or otherwise just annoyed her, she feels she has to cry while explaining it so that we understand the magnitude of situation.  This could be minutes or hours after the incident and it could be the tenth retelling of the story.  It doesn't matter...in Audrey's mind, the tears add to the effect.  Back to the current trauma.  As I said, within seconds of asking her, she is sobbing uncontrollably, tears and snot going everywhere, and she can't bring her self to even utter a word.  At this point I'm Googling 'acting agents' to see if any of them have online video chat to see a pure genius at work...  Finally, after a few minutes of agony, she brings herself to say 'M-M-Mom took my dragonnnnnn!'  I should clarify that it wasn't even her dragon.  It was 'demo' for an art project for Josh's preschool class the next day that Ann was teaching.  But you would have thought this was a real dragon that she had rescued from Voldermort herself and raised over the years...

They way she was so distraught...I actually did feel a 'bit' bad for her.  But only a bit.  If she didn't give me so many silent treatments, I'd probably have a little more sympathy ;)

So Audrey, I know haven't done you near the justice you deserve in terms of blogging of your stories, but here were a few.  You have so many entertaining moments of learning, risk taking, shyness, acting, loving, snuggling, caring, dependence on Josh, bullying of Josh, and now your sense of humor is really budding too ("I tooted...all right?" with a nod of your head).  Every morning waking up to your request to make you "pa-cakes for bresk-kess" and putting you to bed every night with you asking me "Will you check on us after email?" makes my heart melt.  Mom and I both love you more than anything and you bring a smile to our face every day! (even your drama makes us smile sometimes)