The Toddler Perspective

As Audrey gets older, she is starting to interpret the world around her. While we were on our trip to Florida, there were several moments where Audrey made us all laugh with her thoughts and actions. I had to share them here, because they are too cute to keep to ourselves.

-Audrey fell down outside of the church on Sunday, scraping her left hand on some rocks. We went to the bathroom, cleaned them off, and put a bandaid where the skin was broken. Throughout the church service, she held her left hand palm up so as not to disturb her boo-boo. At lunch, she continued to baby her left hand, refusing to use it to pick up food, her cup, or her utensils. After a nap, we decided to take her swimming, and she asked to take the bandaid off. She swam in the pool, bandaid free using her hand like normal. When we came back up to the house to dry off, we put the bandaid back on. Immediately, she stopped using her left hand again. Evidently, it wasn’t the boo-boo she was worried about, but instead she was trying not to mess up her bandaid.

-When we were on the plane home, the flight attendant announced that we were beginning our descent into St. Louis. Audrey got very excited and started repeating, “We’re going to St. Louis. I want to go to St. Louis.” We smiled at her enthusiasm, because we expected her to be reluctant to come home. Once we got our bags at the airport, we headed for Metrolink. At that point, Billy and I expressed our excitement that we were almost home, to which Audrey responded, “I want to go to St. Louis.” Naturally, we told her that yes, we were in St. Louis. Once we got off the train, we started the four block walk home. As soon as Audrey saw our building, she started crying, “I don’t want to go home, I want to go to St. Louis.” That is when it dawned on us that she was not connecting that St. Louis is where our home is. We tried explaining that, but she continued to whine the rest of the way up to our unit and even after we entered the door.

-Audrey recently discovered her sense of smell. Now she smells everything. Throughout our trip, she would blurt out anything she smelled. "I smell ketsup." "I smell cheese." "I smell sand." On the plane ride to Florida, we were sitting a row behind an infant. He filled his diaper right before take-off, but could not be changed until after we were in the air. For the ensuing 15 minutes, Audrey continually blamed her daddy for the smell.