Grace Watch #13 (June 2-23, 2008)

Hmmmm....where do I start?! I know it's been forever, but June has been a busy (and fun) month for us. Hopefully it will help make this Grace Watch more interesting. :)

Happy Camper

New Words: She's gotten to the point that she will say just about anything we say, so it'd be impossible to list everything. Here are the ones I remember:
sky - sty
family - mamily
where are you? - ah you?
Cinderella - Ella
animals - ammos
moon - moon
nice - nas
squirrel - wirrel
marshmallow - muh-lello
enchiladas - lahluhladas
S'mores - mores!
cougar - tooder (I was wearing a BYU shirt with a cougar on it)
arm - ahm
waterfall - wahwall
fire - lar (?)
{blowing air out of mouth} - oof (I showed her how to blow the seeds off a dandelion, and she walked around going "oof, oof"
Oh, my! - oh, my! :)
oh my goodness! - oh-nuh nooness!
swimming - mimmeen (with arm motions as if swimming)
truck - tuck
candy - tanny
grapes - doops (I might have done this in an earlier post--I'm not sure)
seat belt - beeboat
kiwi - leelee
Barbie - bobbie
caterpillar - batabibber

New Foods: As you may have guessed from her new words, she's tried many new foods since I last wrote. Her least favorite was the kiwi fruit, which she ended up feeding to us. Her favorite new food was marshmallows (especially as part of a S'more), which we ate while camping. (Yes, we went camping, and we had a fabulous time!)

New Injury: She's had lots of normal falls and head bonks and such, but none that resulted in a visible owie. Yay!

New Other Stuff:
First Pet: Don't tell our landlord, but we have our first family pet. It's a caterpillar, and we have yet to name it. We found it eating away all our strawberry leaves, so we put it in an empty water bottle and gave it some leaves to munch on, and munch it did. For two days. Until, one morning, I found it making a COCOON!!! (or chrysallis? I never quite "got" the difference in school) Anyway, we're pretty excited about it. We'll let you know if we get a butterfly or moth from it. :) In the meantime, here's a picture of the cocoon/chrysallis (it's the fuzzy thing towards the right side of the bottle):

On a random note, a couple weeks ago Gracie discovered a travel alarm clock in our bedroom and has enjoyed playing with it lately. Unfortunately, it is adult-proof, so now she has set it to go off at the most random times (oh, and she has somehow set it to central standard time), and neither Dave nor I can figure out how to stop it. Now, I consider us (and especially Dave) to be fairly technically savvy, so this is pretty frustrating. Oh well. At least it is stored in her Lego box, so if it goes off in the middle of the night, it doesn't wake us up.

Camping!
Here are some pictures (and brief descriptions) of our camping adventures:

Gracie had a really hard time relaxing on the trip...

Here she is playing on the big slide with Uncle J

Walking on the playground's balance beam with Nana's help

Playing around at the campground

Nana got Gracie's hair wet so she could pull our her hair tie, and
we were both surprised when her ponytail decided to stick straight up!


Taking Papi (Dave's dad) on a walk around the campground

Her favorite part of the camping trip was the squirrels.
She walked around saying, "Wirrels...ah you?" (or, "Squirrels,
where are you?") all the time. It was adorable!

Other Cute Pictures
We've started work on the 2009 Gracie Calendar: Swimsuit Edition if you'd like to pre-order your copy. Here are a couple of the pictures, for your viewing pleasure. (I don't know how Dave gets such cute poses of her!) :)

Playing on the spaceship at the park

Happy Father's Day!


Not quite the right fit...


Enjoying her new baby doll stroller


Nothin' better than playing in the sprinklers in your pj's!



Finally! Real pigtails!


So tired that she fell asleep mid-sandwich!

The end!

Welcome!

Welcome to Gracie's blog! So far I've just copied the old "Grace Watch" entries from our blog to this one, and all the new ones will be posted here. Feel free to visit often!

Grace Watch #13 (May 20-June 1, 2008)

New Words/Phrases: There are quite a few, so I'm just gonna make a list of the word/phrase, and then how she pronounces it.
Ouch, Charlie - owuh, dahr-lee (this refers to the YouTube video "Charlie Bit My Finger," which she loves to watch; look it up--it's very cute)

(watching "dahr-lee")

clouds - towds
Spaghettio's - sgettatoes
color - calar
*she's learning her colors; so far she can identify crayons in the colors pink (mink), red (reh), green (nee), blue (boo), purple (purple), yellow (lellow), orange (unch), and brown (nown) :)
awesome - ah-num
I did it - did it!
I gotcha - I dotutcha
I love you more! - I muh moo moh!

Foods: She tried her first popsicle (see below) and gave it a thumbs-up.

New Injuries: Her first injury this time happened at Grammy/Gramps's house. She tripped in their backyard and bonked her head on the cement as she fell. She only cried for a few minutes and was a very brave girl. She got quite a bruise from that one!

Then, last night at Dave's parents' house, she was walking around in the bed of Papi's new truck (a favorite activity of late) and fell, hitting her mouth on the wheel well. Her teeth cut through her upper lip and it was bleeding, so of course I freaked out! We ran inside and realized it wasn't as bad as it could've been, and after we wiped away the blood, Nana asked if she would like a popsicle. Thank goodness for Nana! I don't think I would've thought of that, but it did the trick. She calmed right down and ate the whole thing, and it really helped soothe her cut lip. So far, her lip hasn't seemed to bother her much either. She's such a tough cookie!

fat lip!

"Oops" Moments: (As in, "Oops, we shoulda seen that one coming!")

Oops, left her alone to eat yogurt!
(If you enlarge it and look at her hair, you'll
notice that she discovered the joy of clapping
with yogurt on her hands!)

Oops, she shook her sippy cup so hard that the valve
fell out, and now she's painting the floor with milk!

Other: On Memorial Day, we went with Dave's family to see the new Indiana Jones movie, and we really enjoyed it! I was very worried about taking Gracie because we had tickets to the 1:30 showing (which is in the middle of her naptime), plus she's gotten so active that I was afraid she'd be running through the theater with me chasing her and everyone in the theater being annoyed. Amazingly, though, she sat through the whole thing! She just sat in Dave's or my lap and ate her snacks or watched the movie, occasionally saying "Whoa!" and/or laughing. She didn't even ask to get down and walk or anything! Afterward, some people leaving the theater said, "We didn't even know that baby was here--she must've been such a good girl!" If only she would be so calm during Sacrament Meeting!

Speaking of church, she is doing much better in Nursery than she did at first, but you wouldn't know it from the dramatics she displays when we drop her off! Yesterday, she started crying as soon as the closing prayer was over in Sacrament Meeting (in anticipation of being dropped off). As soon as we leave, though, she calms down and plays beautifully! I suppose she gives it her all just in case we'll cave in and save her from the torture of toys, songs, and snacks. No such luck, kid! :)

Fun Pictures:

Trying to take a family picture--Gracie wasn't pleased.

Playing with the hose in the backyard

New Skill: Graham cracker balanced on nose (with
peanut butter helping just a bit)

We've been having some fun with Dave's voice recorder, so here's a clip of Gracie talking.




Last, but not least, here is a video of Gracie and me playing with her stacking cups. Isn't it great what will entertain a child?!

Grace Watch #12 (May 5-11, 2008)

New Words: Some of her new words include happy (appy), slide (lide), cow (tow), rake (rik--see picture below), Ariel (Areo--kinda like a feminine form of Oreo), Jasmine (Nah-meen), and she has this new phrase: "lor lap", which means, "I want to sit on your lap." :) And she has also recently discovered how to say the sound for "L", and she thoroughly enjoys it! Before she would just say the "D" sound (e.g. hedoh for hello), but now she goes all out for that L sound by sticking her tongue all the way out of her mouth whenever saying something with the sound in it. Go ahead and try with the word "little"--it's pretty fun. Anyway, here's a video of her saying a few words with "L" in them. (Sorry for all the back-and-forth action; she wanted to grab the camera, and I wanted to keep it away from her.)

New Food: She tried fruit snacks for the first time (that I'm aware of) last week at Mimi's house, and she loved them! (Who wouldn't?) She also had her first sampling of that All-American Cake from Costco (y'know, the one with like 5 layers of chocolate cake and 5 layers of ooey-gooey fudgey frosting, with big pieces of shaved chocolate on the outside?) because we had that at the family Mother's Day celebration. Amazingly, she liked that too. :)

Papi taught her how to rake. What a big girl!

New Injuries: Ooh, we had some bad ones this week! First, I smashed 3 of the fingers on her left hand in a kitchen cabinet! I had it open getting food out and she put her hand in the side where the hinges are, and I closed it on her! I felt so awful! Then the next day she slammed a drawer on her thumb (same hand), breaking the skin. Then, on Sunday Dave was playing "I'm Gonna Get You" with her, and she fell and got a rug burn just below her nose. I don't know why it got there and not her nose or lips, but anyway...it was sad. However, one cute thing that has come out of all these owies is that she likes to have us kiss her owies to make them all better. After she gets an owie, she says, "Owie...tiss?" and then one of us kisses it and she says, "Ah-behbee" to say "All better." It's so sweet!

Other: On Friday we went and visited Grammy & Gramps (Dave's paternal grandparents), and Gracie had a lot of fun playing in their backyard. They have a fun fountain that she loves to splash her hands in, and they always have juice, crackers, pudding, and all kinds of goodies that we don't have at home, so she loves it there! Here's a picture of her playing in the fountain.

Mother's Day: I guess this has more to do with me, but I had such a wonderful Mother's Day, thanks to Dave and Gracie. For my gifts, Dave took me to Michael's on Saturday to let me get a bunch of scrapbooking stuff that I'd been wanting for a while; then Gracie gave me some sidewalk chalk as a present so we can draw pictures outside together. :) On Sunday morning, Dave got up with Gracie and let me sleep in, and then they woke me up to breakfast in bed!

I tell ya, Dave cooks a mean breakfast. He made me hash browns, eggs (both scrambled and fried, 'cause he wasn't sure which I would rather have), bacon, and pancakes, with a fresh orange on the side and both milk and juice to drink! And it was all delicious! Gracie sat on my lap while I ate and sampled all of my food, which made it that much cuter. He also made dinner that night and made me feel special all day long. I love that guy!

I'm such a lucky mommy!

Finally, here are some more favorite pictures from the week:

Gracie in her cute hand-me-down nightgown from her cousins.

Look what I found in my laundry basket!

Her favorite part of coloring is shaking the box of crayons. Cheap thrills, huh?

This is what happens when you play in your crib for an hour
instead of sleeping--you fall asleep on the way INTO Target. :)

That's all, Folks! See ya next week!

Grace Watch #11 (April 14-May 4, 2008)

(I really need to figure out this html stuff. The first way I posted the pictures, with Picasa, didn't always display them. So I posted them through blogger, and now sometimes each picture shows up twice. I tried to correct that, and it messed up the whole thing, so I'm leaving it the second way. So, some of you may get to see 2 pictures. Lucky you! :) )

Happy 22 months to Gracie today! I can't believe she'll be 2 years old in only 2 months! (Wow, lots of 2's!)

A child after my own heart--she loves dessert!

New Words: I don't think I can remember all of her new words, (1) because it's been so long since I did a Grace Watch, and (2) because she is picking up several words a day now. It's so exciting! Plus, the words she's been saying for months are becoming a lot clearer. For example, "I love you" used to be "wuv wuh", and now it's "I wub woo"; plus, it seems like she understands what it means more now. It's pretty heart-melting for Dave and me. Okay, here are some of the words she's learned (and her pronunciations, if different than the real pronunciation): bottle (bobble, as in bottle of shampoo), honey (uhn-ee!), lady (lay-lee), ice cream (i-noom), Lilo (Luh-lo, of Lilo & Stitch), pickle (pipple), knee (neh), chocolate (chaw-dit) {confession: I just gave her some chocolate so she'd say "chocolate" and I could write the pronunciation. Yes, I almost always have chocolate (albeit dark chocolate) on hand.}, ribbon (bibbon), ribbit (as in what a froggie says), boat (butt, heehee), chug-chug (chuh-chuh), little (lillo), giraffe (jaff), CD (dee-dee), horse (huss), eat (it), and the names of all my AZ family members. I should spare you all those, but it's really cute how she pronounces some of them: Paul (Pow), Rob (Row), Jenni (Nenni), Ashlee (Arlee), Blake (Bik), Spencer (Beh-ber), Emmee (Uhmee), Kaybree (Bay-bee), Chase (Chis). And she thought so highly of Chase (who's almost 3) that she made up sign language to go with him. She says his name and kinda rubs her hands together. (Actually, I'm wondering if she remembers me showing her "cheese" once or twice, which is twisting your hands back and forth; "Chase" kinda sounds like "cheese"....)

Chase & Grace--a match made in heaven!

She's also learned some prepositions (for lack of a better name for the group of words!): on, off (op), in, out (ous), up, down (nown). AND, one of the most exciting developments is that she has started to put words together, which is the next step towards sentences! The first one was "Light, on!" and the other one was "Gate, open!" (referring to the baby gate we have). :)

New Foods: I think we already covered them in the new words section: pickle, ice cream, and chocolate. And she asks for popcorn like every day--she could eat it all day long and not get tired of it. We had some on the train ride at the Phoenix Zoo, and I swear she ate twice her weight in it by the time the ride was over!

New Injury: Amazingly enough, she hasn't had any injuries this past month! Yay! (Now that I said that, something's gonna happen...:S)

***Correction: I just remembered! On Saturday we were shopping at Target. Gracie was sitting in the cart and all of a sudden got this really startled look on her face and looked at us like, "What happened?" She kinda started moaning, and I said, "What's wrong? Do you have an owie?" She made the sign for owie and said, "Owa!" She was moving her mouth weird, and I said to Dave, "I wonder if she bit her tongue...?" and he said, "Oh yeah, could be." I said, "Do you have an owie on your tongue?" and stuck out my tongue, and then she said, "Tunn, owa!" Then she started crying! I picked her up and held her, but then she started crying even more. (Dave's theory: she knows I'm a softie and will be {overly} sympathetic, so she cries/complains more to me. I think he's right.) Anyway, Dave headed for the checkout while I went and got one last thing, and she cried all through the store as we went to meet him! For some kids that might not seem strange, but Gracie hardly ever cries when she gets hurt, so I was a little concerned. But Dave's theory proved to be right in this case: sure enough, as soon as I put her in the cart when we got to Dave, she stopped crying and happily said, "Hi!" to Dave. That's what I get for trying to be a nurturing mother! Grrrrr...

Are you ready for swimsuit season? 'Cause we are!

New Skills: Daddy taught her how to load his gun! :) Okay, not as bad as it sounds, I promise! While we were in AZ, Dave had to do something, so he and his little brother bought Nerf guns that shoot little foam darts. Well, Dave taught Grace how to push them into the holes to load the gun, and she loves it! He shoots them all around the room, then she gathers them up and loads them in the gun. It's really a good system they've (he's) worked out.

She is also venturing into the world of singing. Every so often I'll hear her kind of humming or ahhh-ing along with music. We watched "Charlie & the Chocolate Factory" last week, and during one of the songs the Oompa Loompas sing, "Ooooo-oooh, oo-oo-oo-ooh!" and she repeated it. I'm so excited for her to start singing! And any time we sing or she hears music in church, she starts leading it with both hands. Apparently we have a future choir director on our hands!

Other News: In Arizona, Gracie went to Nursery with Chase and had lots of fun. He told me, "Ali, Gracie cried before [meaning after] you left, but I gived her a hug and kiss and she was okay." And she was! It was so cute! PLUS, they decorated pictures of ladybugs and got to play with real ladybugs during class! (I know, brave Nursery leaders!) So as soon as we got home, we hung up Gracie's ladybug picture on her newly-decorated bulletin board:

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(Those are pieces of red tissue paper glued to the paper.)

Also, while we were there, Chase (who speaks very well for his age) asked me a couple times, "Um, Ali, when will Gracie talk like this?", referring to how he talks, in sentences. I would laugh and say, "Probably in about a year!" and he'd say, "Oh, okay." I love how kids' minds work!

All done! Good for you for making it through that! Thank you for reading!

Grace Watch #10 (March 31-April 6, 2008)

New Words of the Week: I'm just gonna jump right in. Some of them were "rock" (wwwwok!), "couch" (towps--she makes it much harder than it needs to be), "Roo" (as in, Kanga's
baby), "Eeyore" (i-ore), and all the other characters from her Winnie the Pooh phone. On Saturday, since it was her 21-month "birthday," I decided to make a list of all her words and phrases as of 21 months, and I stopped after writing about 120. I know she has a lot more, though, 'cause I keep hearing her say things and I think, "Oh yeah, I forgot that one!" Crazy, huh? I guess what she lacks in stature, she makes up for in vocabulary!
Funny story: We were out taking a stroll and she found some big rocks that intrigued her. I said, "rock" and she repeated "rock" and bent down to touch one of them. When she stood up, she started rocking back and forth and saying, "rock!" I was impressed that she made that connection! :)

New Food of the Week (and Grace's reaction): Popcorn. A couple weeks ago we sang "Popcorn Popping" for the opening song in FHE, and we realized we had never sung it to her before. (And we call ourselves good Latter-day Saints!) Anyway, she loved it and made us sing it over and over again, while she did the actions (well, mostly the "popping" gesture). Then, a couple days later, we gave her some popcorn and she loved that too. She kept asking for more and opening and closing her hands, and I couldn't figure out why she was saying popcorn and signing "milk," but then I remembered singing that song to her, and it all made sense.

Warning: Bare baby midriff!

New Injury of the Week: I took Grace to an ophthalmologist last week to get her eyes checked. We weren't concerned about anything--her doctor just had us take her to make sure there weren't any problems, since we have some family history of various eye troubles. She checked out fine, and the doctor said her eyes look great! Anyway, while we were there they dilated her eyes, and the doc said sometimes it throws off balance/coordination a bit. We went to the waiting room to allow her eyes to dilate, and as she was playing with some toys she turned around kind of quickly and fell. Unfortunately, as she fell her head hit the side of the metal toy basket. So sad! She cried for a few minutes, but then noticed the other people watching her, and she stopped crying so she could continue entertaining them. The show must go on, after all! :)

Dilated pupils!

Fun Times of the Week: We got to have Gracie's friend, Jenna, over one morning this week, and we had TONS of fun with her. She's such a cute little girl, although I think Gracie came on a little strong for her tastes. I tried to find toys for Jenna to play with, and as I showed each one to Jenna, Gracie would come over and take it from me. It wasn't even jealousy--it was more like, "Oh yeah, I forgot about that toy--I'll take that one!" Finally, about the 4th or 5th toy, Gracie let Jenna play with it. Here are some pictures of the 2 cuties:

May we help you?

Drinking their "wawa" together

What a cutie!

Author's Note: Have I ever mentioned that I absolutely LOVE Gracie? Probably not. Anyway, I do. And lately she's becoming so much more affectionate, and I'm just soaking it up. She'll just put her arms up and say, "Up, up!" and when I pick her up she gives me a kiss and a hug (complete with pats on the back). She is the sweetest baby, and I'm so glad we got her even though she teaches us WAY more than we teach her! Here are a couple of my favorite pictures of her and me from this week.

Grace Watch #9 (March 24-30, 2008)

Hello all! Fun times straight ahead.

She did this on her own, crazy kid!

New Words of the Week: The ones I remember are "peaches" (pa-peach), "Dem Bones" (buh-bohm), and "Round and Round" (wohn-wohn-wohn). I think some explanations are in order (well, at least for the 2nd and 3rd ones). My brother Paul gave Gracie a video for Christmas that has several books/stories told with animation and songs. She hasn't really taken an interest in it until the last couple weeks, and now she almost likes it better than Baby Einstein! The first song is "The Wheels on the Bus" and she loves to do the actions and (kinda) sing along. She says, "Wohn-wohn-wohn" and brushes her hands back and forth against each other to do the actions for "round and round." She also does "Move on back" and "Swish, swish, swish," but I wouldn't pretend to know how to spell her versions of those phrases! The next song is "Dem Bones" (as in, " The toe bone's connected to the...foot bone!" and so on), and that is her favorite one! This really surprises me, because it's sung by a bunch of weird-looking skeletons whose bones come apart and go back together as they sing. Oh well--I guess she doesn't know what they are, huh? Maybe someday I'll get ambitious and take/post a picture of her watching the video.

Oh, and another word is "swing" (wing). She asks for the swing (complete with w/ "swing" in sign language) many, many times every day, and last week I was a good mom and took her to the park to swing 4 days in a row. I know--I'm amazing! ;)

Doesn't she look thrilled?! ;)

New Food of the Week (and Grace's reaction): Grace got to partake of tri-tip steak this past week. We had Sunday dinner with the grand- and great-grandparents (obviously--we've never bought tri-tip!) last night, and Grandpa barbecued some very yummy tri-tip. I cut it into little pieces for Gracie, but she wouldn't eat it. So then I got a piece of it and dipped in her Jello ("jeddo") and she loved it. She's not big into eating meat, so I wasn't surprised that she didn't eat tons of it.

She's created her own "little corner of the world."

New Injury of the Week: Ever since Gracie learned "open" and "closed" she likes to practice on anything she can: her toy bowls that fit together, her play food that Velcros together, and kitchen drawers at her grandparents' house. (I think you all know where this is going...) Well, as I was helping clean up the kitchen last night at Mimi's house, Gracie was playing with their drawer, saying, "O-men...towsed...o-men...towsed (pause) ahhhhhh!" I looked over at her and she started shaking both hands and saying, "Owa, owa!" and crying! It was so sad! I picked her up and went and cuddled her on the couch for a few minutes. I also kissed each finger and told her that would make it better, and then I had her go show Daddy. That got her excited (she LOVES to show Daddy new things, like new outfits, hairdos, toys, etc.). Daddy said all the right sympathetic things and then kissed each hand, and then she was just fine! She still had to show Papi and Grandpa, for dramatic effect, but Daddy's healing kisses really did the trick. She was fine the rest of the evening, and she doesn't have any marks or anything!

Favorite Pastime #12: Watching herself in videos

Fun Stories of the Week: On Saturday Gracie and I got to go to a baby shower for a friend in our ward, and Grace had so much fun playing with the other kids there. She found her friend Audrey's sippy cup that looks like one she has (which was at home) and started drinking from it. I said, "No, no Gracie--here's yours!" and gave her the one I had brought. A couple minutes later I saw that she was drinking out of Audrey's again, and that Audrey was drinking out of Gracie's! I said, "Sorry!" to Audrey's mom, and she said, "Hey, I don't care if you don't care!" so we just let them drink out of whichever one they wanted. Later Gracie found someone else's sippy cup and stuck with that one--I guess he had the best water of all!

Drinking [milk] out of a fast food cup...
Why do I get such a kick out of her doing "grown-up" things?
The world may never know...

Then, Saturday night we had the missionaries over for dinner, and they were pretty impressed with Gracie's sign language. She would say something that was mostly unintelligible while doing a baby sign, then I would go get whatever she wanted, give it to her, and she'd say, "Thank you!" After this happened a couple times, one of the missionaries said, "So, do you have a Urim & Thummim or something?!" We laughed and Dave explained that we've taught her some sign language to help us better understand her. They thought it was so cool, and one of them said, "Yes! Now I know what to do when I have kids!" It was cute. (On a side note, it's still really weird for me to realize that I'm older than pretty much every [non-senior] missionary who's serving a mission. Makes me feel old. Oh well.)

So, that's it. The End.