Beach

I see you, mommy!

Nose, nose, nose!



NO!!...Daddy!

I don't want to.

Excuse me?

Yes?

Isn't she lovely?

Steps, mommy! Old St. Augustine - wearing her favorite dress :)

The best girl in the whole wide world!

Look at that little pouty face! We were on our way to a birthday party today.

Trying to get her to laugh, wipe the serious look off her face..."oh, mommy!" she says.
Of course any mother says that of her daughter. Gracie has such a sweet 'n sour personality. She has exuded such a sweetness from the moment she was born, all through infancy and even now. Most days we have such sweet moments together, for example last night as I'm tucking her into bed, I laid my head on her pillow next to hers and she gently rubbed my hair. She constantly says "thank you, mommy! thank you, thank you, thank you!" And does a thank you dance. We are having so many moments of real connections, staring at each other and just laughing. She gets me, I get her. And she's got the sour (sassy) moments, we can't all be perfect! Now she says "NO!" to us & talks back and gets an ugly scowl on her face. She's feisty, throws her head back in my arms. Fun times! It's really not fun to give spankings. So I take those moments as well and during a sour time I hold onto and greatly look forward to the sweet ones.
The past few weeks have been a bit eventful, but I'm grateful to have had these opportunities. I took on an Indian wedding, which is a lot of work. 3 events to get the bride & her sister ready. One of which getting up & leaving by 4am to get her started at 5am. At the end of the day, 7pm I walked in the elevator to leave & tears welled up, I knew I had 2 more days to go and was exhausted. The next 2 days I attended a make up class, 8am-8:30pm each day but was very fortunate to take. One of the instructors was Lisa Layman, who is Will Ferrell's makeup artist. Being gone 4 days in a row with such long days was really difficult.
After one of my long drives home, this was my surprising view coming down the street! Only daddy would let her go nude on her tricycle! Hilarious.

POTTY TRAINING? WHAT'S THAT? Never heard the words!
Gracie unsurprisingly regressed in her potty training and by the 4th day was angry at everything, so she was mad & didn't want to potty anymore. She's coming back around, slowly. Makes me upset because she had it & was doing so well. Next round of makeup classes this month my mom will be watching her, I'm stocking the house with M&M's and pull ups and no pressure to my mom to have her trained in those 3 days! :)

OUR TRIP TO LOWE'S LAST WEEK
I decided to not use the good sense in my brain and put Gracie in big girl panties to go on our trip to Lowe's, asking her to tell me when she has to potty. Expecting the poor girl to do that after she's had a hard 4 days. So in the hardware isle, she's playing with bolts & I see a huge puddle in the floor. I said "oh no!" Daddy turns around and says "OH S**T!" Gracie takes a step back to look at her master piece she's made and says "OH S**T!" I say, "well not really, pee pee." Glaring at Todd.
Side note: And I have to say that Todd would be so embarrassed if he knew I wrote this because he feels horrible, poor guy's been working on his Yosemite Sam mouth & has been doing really well, that is until the shock factor of the Lowe's episode!

Later that evening she peed in front of the frig, I didn't see her do it but I hear "OH S**T!" The next day she spills milk, "OH SH**T!" We went to the post office, the sticker is stuck on her hand, I hear her in the back seat "oh S&&T!" I'm really frustrated by now, wondering if she's going to say it more & more because she obviously knows the use for the word or if it's going to dissipate. Are we going to get kicked out of play groups? haha We go to my friend Katie's house & while playing trains with Jack she bosses him around "NO Jack, no. NO Jack!" Then something's wrong with her train..."oh s**t" she says softly..."oh, no s**t". Thankfully Katie was laughing & more importantly Jack didn't pick up on it. And now thankfully all day today she hasn't said it!