toys

gracie LOVES her kitchen we bought her for christmas so much! i'm being facetious here. she plays with very few of her MANY toys. she prefers my oven and a variety of items from the pantry. i have trained myself to look in the oven before i turn it on, but i know that one day i will forget and have a sweet little melted present.
just a little note: today we were in the optometrist's office with paul and she spread bunch of brochures all of the floor. with one word of clean up from paul she proceeded to sing the entire clean up song by herself with her version of all the words. i don't know if i have said it before, but she loves to clean up! she has for quite a while been able to hum the tune, but today was the first time she sang all the words. too cute!

valentines

tonight (valentines night 2009) gracie and i sat on the ground at the coffee table and at nachos from taco bell. no tv, just a lively conversation about her favorite things: levi, daddy, dora, monsters (monsters inc. movie). she would take a bite of a chip and then say, "mmmmm, deliciouso!". we watch too much dora! i loved tonight - might be on the top of my valentines evening favorites.

just in case you are wondering about paul, we celebrated last saturday in anticipation of the difficulty of getting a babysitter on valentines (thanks robyn!). he work 85 hours this week and needed a movie night. paul's movie nights consist of him going to his parents house and watching a movie as loud as he wants and raiding their kitchen.

too big

I'm getting the "my baby is too big and she isn't a baby anymore blues". Unfortunately for Gracie who is obsessed with real babies and baby dolls (see the one on the ground behind her) I have not forgotten what it was like to be pregnant. So for those of you who care and those of you who don't I guess this is my announcement that I need another year to forget the 9 months of stomach flu that you call pregnancy. I have Levi a couple of days a week and the 3 of us get a little bored inside sometimes since the weather doesn't let us go outside to the park. My new favorite place is "Pump it up". Its an entire warehouse of inflatable slides and toys. I am amazed that these two don't get scared when they are climbing up the ladder, but they do really good.

This is Gracie's first shirt she picked out by herself. We were at Target and since she refuses to stay in the cart, so she was wandering about in the clothing section. I turned around to see her run around the corner with this shirt. She was so proud of it and said, "gracie shirt". I looked and it was her size so how could I resist?

Big girls get their own new pink bedroom right? After 2 years of tip toeing around and whispering and not watching TV when Gracie was asleep because her bedroom was in the center of all activity, I finally got sick enough of it to move her downstairs. It was a little scary at first because our bedroom is upstairs, but after one night I got over it. Gracie did really good too, it only took her 5 nights to sleep through the night again. The blue stripes are tape. I will post a picture of the finished room, but I am waiting for her big girl bed and that isn't going to go in the room until she can climb out of her crib.

Another picture of 'G' and 'beeps'. This was one day that they were really getting along good (doesn't always happen). Levi came and scooted in next to Gracie for a little lunch. She didn't mind her personal space invaded and Levi didn't mind that he was going to fall off any second,

One happy thing for me is that since Gracie's room was moved downstairs then I get an office! Paul & Brian moved my new desk upstairs last weekend. They were both grunting like the guys on the strongest man competition because it was so heavy. Thanks guys! For the last year I have been standing at the kitchen counter on the computer. Maybe this will help me blog more, maybe not.

christmas

better late then never on a christmas post right? it was really fun this year although gracie didn't completely understand what was going on she did get excited about things. she helped paul set up the christmas tree while intently watching frosty the snowman on tv. paul is really good about setting up the tree every year even though he isn't home much he will bust it out in an hour or so one day when he sneaks home early from work.

she was more than helpful putting the ornaments on the tree. one glass ball had to be sacrificed to show her what happens when you throw them down the stairs onto the tile. eventually all the ornaments were on the top half of the tree.

paul doesn't do ANYTHING in the morning until he has a shower. christmas is not excluded from this rule. i didn't do it on purpose but the clock is in the background of this picture showing 9:00. we all showered and dressed before we opened any presents.

i took this one christmas morning before paul woke up.

levi came over and gave gracie her traditional winter hat (it is sooo cute) and looked around at what toys he was going to get to share.

there is a lot of thought going into opening this present, so much that it is making her tounge hang out. she opened her first present - an elmo dvd about how he goes on the potty - and she didn't care about the rest of her presents so we had to take a 30min break and whatch elmo.

santa did come to our house - what little girl doesn't need a little pink quad?

it was really fun this year to try to start our own family traditions. the holidays are a lot more fun with gracie around. for years i didn't know if i would have any kids so i really appreciate having her in our little family even more when the holidays come around.

lately

this is what is new with us lately:

levi and gracie think they are siblings. they love and fight like brother and sister. lately levi will chase gracie around the house on his knees saying, "im gonna get you". she begs him for more as soon as he stops. they also wrestle, yep wrestle. i put this picture here to show their size difference (3 months). unfortunately gracie is kind of feisty and aggressive for her size so levi only thinks wrestling is funny if he is the one on top.

gracie has successfully learned how to take off her diaper and run happily around the house. this picture was one day when i was cleaning the kitchen and then looked over to see her little bare bum on the table. do you see her diaper next to the table? i am putting off the inevitable potty training until... well i don't know when, i guess i am just not in the mood now.

paul was released from the bishopric. he was called as the ward mission leader and loves his new calling already. he still doesn't get his sunday nap but we do see more of him during the week.

gracie is talking a lot. sentences now if you are me and can understand them. my mom said she has a lot of 'L's" in her words and it is true her tongue is all over the place.

it took six weeks of crying, but gracie happily goes to nursery now. thank you christina and laura!

catch up

I am going to try to catch up so I will start with posting a few Halloween pictures. Gracie got sick an hour before the trunk or treat but I had taken her earlier in the week for these pictures. She started crying when she saw the costume. For some reason it scared her, especially the hat she hates things on her head. Then I had to bribe her with treats the whole time to get some decent pictures. You can see her eating the treats in a couple of them.

I started a new tradition this year to make pumpkin bread on Halloween. I even put my 'perfectionist mom' aside for the day and let Gracie help me make them. See the sugar pouring onto her lap? We haven't cooked together again yet. This was our pumpkin we carved. Paul came home and asked me if it was suppose to be mickey mouse. It does kind of look like him.

I thought Gracie would get totally into playing with the pumpkin guts but she wanted nothing to do with them.

Gracie picking out a pumpkin at the pumpkin patch. We went with Candice, Brian and Levi. Paul even took her down the huge slide. The funnest part was seeing Paul and Brian climbing up the 2 story slide while holding the babies!

This is Gracie all ready to go to our friends house for a Halloween party. I think the holidays are so much more fun with kids! I get into celebrating them more because it is so much fun to see Gracie having fun and saying 'ohhh pumpin!'

A weekend away

So we finally got brave enough to leave Gracie for a weekend. I thought it would be hard for me, but it turned out to be extremely relaxing! April came down to Vegas and stayed with her. She brought Garrett and Hayden. We stayed with my old roommate Lisa (and Erik and Kyson) in Salt Lake which was so much fun to see them. We went to the Saturday morning session of conference. When we were walking out of conference all I could say to Paul was that was wonderful! I tried to take a picture of us while we were there, but it was just poring rain the whole day. We didn't mind the rain at all, really enjoyed it actually. Paul went back to the conference center for the priesthood session and the rest of the weekend we hit all of our Utah area favorites and didn't feel rushed to get back to the babysitter. I honestly thought we were only going to be able to stay one night because Gracie would be freaking out. When we were leaving I gave her the we are going bye bye for 2 nights speech and she seamed to be registering it. April (affectionately named apple by the nieces and nephews) I am sure spoiled her because she is so good at that. Unless April lied to me then the only time Gracie cared we were gone was when she would wake up in the morning or from a nap. The most shocking was that she was actually quite independent when they went to the park.
When we came back yesterday everybody was on my parents front porch and all I could see were her little pig tails and eyes peaking over the fence wondering if it was really us. I picked her up and tried to hug her, but she didn't want me. She went over to Paul and looked at me like I was a stranger. She has been doing a funny thing lately when she gets mad at me about something then she will actually stop talking to me. How does a 1 1/2 year old know how to do that? It took about 20 minutes and a bribe to take her on a walk in the wagon to get her to come to me, but she still wouldn't hug or kiss me. It wasn't until she was going to bed 3 hours later that she decided I was the real thing and it was safe to love me again.
We missed her a ton and talked about her a lot. When we would see hyper kids in stores we would look at each other and say, "that's Gracie". We loved our week away though and can't tell April how much we appreciate it!
Since April has left, Gracie has looked at me about 15 times and said, "Apoo bye bye?". I think she definitely formed a bond with her this weekend. April bought Gracie a little dog and last night I asked her what the dog's name was and she said,"Apoo!". She also learned a new word this weekend: Ahh Dawt (what's that).
Per request I am posting April's instructions for Gracie that we left on the fridge. When I was typing these up Paul was reading it and said, "Wow, you can tell who is in charge in this house!"

Gracie’s words:
Baba – bottle (she likes these a lot – I don’t care how often you give her one)
Poo poo – sometimes she says this when she has too much pee in her diaper or when she toots (I think she has learned that one now).
Ahssshi – outside
Upee – up please
Ei – levi
Nana - grandma
Ippy – sippy cup
How - help
Bah,garble,garble,garble – blankie (this one is hard you just have to tell that she is looking around for it)
The rest of her words are understandable or just garble.


Gracie’s shows: you can ask her which one she wants and she will tell you.
Dow dow – Dora (for some reason she points to her bum when she says this, grandma always mixes it up with poo poo and changes her diaper)
Pabo – backyardagains
Windawella – Cinderella
Melmo – elmo


Gracie tricks:
Save dora until you want to take a shower, give her a bottle and a blankie and put her in the red chair.
Always tell her where you are going if you are leaving her sight. (she actually lets me go downstairs without her now if I say I will be back in a minute)

Are you cracking up yet? I am.

If you can’t tell what she wants and she is vigorously signing please just say show me and follow her.

If she doesn’t want to let you change her diaper you can bribe her and tell her she can have 2 blueberries or smarties if she lets you change it. (I try to limit smartie intake to one pack a day)

If she is super fussy give her a bottle and take her for a drive. Sometimes she is like her mom and gets a little crazy with lots of people and noise.

She takes one nap a day (1 ½ hours to the minute – kind of creepy). She usually goes down between 10:30 and 1:00. She takes a bottle and cuddles to sleep like bedtime.

She is really good at doing something when you ask her to, she will clean up her mess if you ask and humm the song while she does it, and you can get her to do almost anything if you tell her you are going bye bye – she doesn’t care where just bye bye.



Gracie Food: NO NUTS!!!!! She eats whatever you are eating or she also likes this stuff:
Breakfast – scrambled eggs or oatmeal with a blueberry in every bite (she feeds herself the eggs, but you have to feed her the oatmeal).
Lunch – 4 chicken nuggets (in freezer) or grilled cheese sandwich.
Dinner – gerber soup in her cupboard or anything you are eating.
Snacks – she is a mini version of grandpa (snack baby). If you show her a snack she will tell you if she wants it or not. There are a bunch of snacks that she likes in her cupboard.



Gracie bedtime routine:
Books (optional)
Bath in downstairs bathroom (optional)
Jamies (usually have to bribe her with the next 2 steps to get her in her pj’s)
Prayer (girl you better pray with all your might that she will sleep!)
Bottle (8 oz)
Clear the room of all other people, turn all lights off except the one over the sink, turn on baby einstein