Gracie at 18 months

Oh, this girl. She's a super stubborn, opinionated, overly sweet and affectionate 18 month old who still loves her mama, and I can't seem to get enough of her. I adore being a mom. I love watching them grow and enjoying all the phases. It is truly the best that life has to offer in my opinion.

Some fun things to remember from this stage

-Words she says, "edy, set, go" and then she runs or expects you to chase her or tickle her or something. Kitty, Da or D-dy, dance (diga diga), have a good day (slurred together), thank you (slurred), bottle, oooo (nooo), and dirdie (birdie). I'm sure there are more but I'm having a mind blank and will have to add in later.

-She loves playing outside and will cry at the door. She climbs rocks, rolls around on the dusty deck, falls down repeatedly and absolutely ruins whatever she has on and needs a bath when she comes in. Argh. One time I was trying to get dinner done and was watcher her and Adin through the window. She went to the sandbox and started throwing the sand up in the air and over her head over and over and over again. When she came in she had more sand in her hair than someone would get at the beach. She was super angry at me for sticking her in the downstairs tub and spraying her down with the sprayer. She screamed the whole time and didn't like baths for a few days after that. I'm thankful that we finally have a good yard, but I can't help but wish it were just flat with grass and no dirt.

-She adores her bottles and their may be a day when I regret switching her to that from nursing, but I doubt it. I love the cuddle time that the bottle gives us before naps and bed. Our pediatrician in Pleasant Grove told me that with their last baby he let him have a bottle before bed till he was almost four because he would sit and cuddle and rock with them at night. His point was that they are only kids/babies once and to soak up every bit of them that you can.

-She is a pretty good eater. She does really well at dinner time and eats most of our meals. She has decided that she wants to feed herself. It makes for quite the mess, but lets me get things done or enjoy my own meal. Two favorites that stick out above and beyond would be spaghetti and hashbrowns. She inhales both those things.

-She has decided that she is no longer going to sit in her high chair. I don't have a booster seat yet so she can barely see over the table to eat. The other day we decided to try making her sit in her high chair because she is much more contained in it. Brian helped and we wriggled her stiffened legs and arched back into the high chair. She tried chucking her bowl of spaghetti across the room. She was crying so hard and so mad that she fainted (her "normal" fainting that she does when she cries really hard). When she came back to it was like she forgot what she was mad about. I gave her the bowl of spaghetti and she just sat there and ate. Hilarious. For a while I could still get her to eat snacks in her high chair but the last couple days she is refusing those as well. I'm going to have to shop for a booster seat. 

-I think she is finally outgrowing two naps. The last 4 days I have put her down for her second nap, but she doesn't ever go to sleep. I wish that meant her morning nap was extended but it hasn't yet. I also wish that meant she didn't actually need the nap anymore but she does. She is cranky and tired the rest of the night. 

-Oh, my, goodness, this girl loves to grab my finger. She has no respect for what I'm doing (using the restroom, cooking, vacuuming, trying to relax). If she wants/needs (I say that because sometimes she just takes me places for no reason) she comes and gets my finger and pulls till I come with her. Sometimes its for food or a bottle refill. Sometimes to go outside. Sometimes to reach something for her. Oftentimes its to get her a couple chocolate chips from the pantry. 

-This girl is obsessed with animals. She gets so excited and points and squeals. We really need to get her back up to the zoo. Our foster cats are the sweetest and allow her to absolutely mawl them. We are trying to teach her to be soft and she's kind of getting it. 

-She loves to play with the kids, but doesn't like them mothering her. Occasionally she will give them a kiss. She says "oooo" to them A LOT and tries to push them away. We're trying to teach her to be soft with them too. :) 

-She is super affectionate with me and will often just come up and hug my legs or throw her arms around my neck and squeeze. She always lets me love on her. She cuddles with me and quite often just wants to be held.

-She gives her dad luvs and kisses every night before bed as part of her routine and gets excited to see him when we meet for lunch or when she sees his car pull up at the end of the day. If I am not around. he is definitely her number one.

-I am loving having a girl again and really enjoy dressing her up cute and doing her hair. She loves her shoes and often wants to try on different pairs. If she has a new outfit or jamies she definitely notices and looks down at the clothes as best she can and checks them out. Our other two never cared what we put on them. She is really good and leaving headbands in, and we call them her pretties.

I just love this girl so much. She has a strong personality but I love every bit of it, stubbornness and all.

Back to School

This summer flew by. It didn't help that the kids started more on the early end of August than on the late end. I was more of a nervous wreck about it than the kids were. They were just mostly excited. I had put in a request that Meg be in a class with her one close friend, Mariah. It didn't happen, but Meg did get the favorite teacher in the school. I worried myself sick with that one. Should I request to have her moved down to the other class with her friend or just let her stay. I carefully broached the subject with Meg to see how she felt about it. She absolutely wanted to stay in that class. She had a few acquaintances and the "mean girls" were in that class. She just really wanted to have the teacher that everyone wanted. Brian encouraged me not to rock the boat. So we didn't. She seems to be doing just fine. I worried about Adin because everyone said that his teacher wasn't very patient and was very strict. Adin is a little bit of a jabber mouth. An absolutely adorable jabber mouth (most the time it cracks me up how much he can talk...sometimes it exasperates me). He has gotten in trouble a couple times. On the first day he said that some kids around him were asking him questions and when he answered them, he got in trouble. He said, what am I supposed to do, not answer the kids that would be rude. He adapting just fine. Part of me hates sending them away. I worry over all sorts of little things and want to be there to protect them or stand up for them. They both love it and rarely complain.

 Great big second grader. :( I still remember cuddle time after his naps when he as 2 and 3 so this is just plain sad.

 Fifth, Fifth!? Ahhh! So heartbreaking. She is 10 and going on 15. Begging daily for mascara or blush. Plucking her eyebrows and talking about boys.

Here's to another school year! Hopefully a good one.

The Best Little Things

Summer is a mixed bag. Some of the days are absolutely great and then the next day is horrible. Last week there was one day where everyone was in a good mood and got along. Meg gave me a pedicure and a manicure (her favorite hobby right now is doing nails). Then she did my hair...a really tight pretty dang good ponytail. :) Then she requested a makeover with a special request of "cat eyes". She wanted to look like Taylor Swift. That was followed by a good hour practicing lip syncing in front of the bathroom door. Then she requested that I film her lip syncing. Pretty cute. I played catch with Adin and threw the ball for him to practice batting. Gracie wasn't teething and napped well. I felt pure contentment. The very. next. day. was BY FAR the worst day of the summer. The kids were fighting incessantly  and very disrespectful to me. It ended up earning them 2 hours of extra work on Saturday as a punishment. That's how it goes, I guess.

I adore these kids of ours. They bring me the most joy. It's a struggle right now because I'm not sure I've ever felt more stressed and depressed than right now. Brian despises his job and we really hate the town. I'm trying to take on the mantra, bloom where you are planted. I'm trying to make the best of the situation but overall I feel so low. I think it's a combination of never being the same since my thyroid removal, coupled with stress about Brian's unhappiness, coupled with my own unhappiness. I also finished nursing Grace this week, which was so much more emotional for me this time. I actually wrote a post about it, but haven't posted it  yet. Anyways, just a lot I'm dealing with that makes me have far less patience than I normally do. Then I get frustrated with my lack of patience and end up feeling even more down on myself. Vicious cycle. I am so hoping something will get better.

I wanted to document a couple of conversations with Adin. We were eating breakfast together. He insists that I wait for him every morning to eat. He MUST eat his breakfast with me. Meg, on the other hand, wont eat breakfast with anyone because she hates the way people chew. Anyways, he said that his plan in life was to find a girl that loves Disneyland and marry her. Then he would need to get a job where he made lots of money so that he could live in California and have season passes. Then today, at lunch. He said, Mom, I know how getting married works. I asked, how. He said, well, first one person sees someone that they think is cute and then the other person thinks that person is cute too...and they just...get married. :) I love the way his mind works. I also love that he loves Disneyland as much as me.

Now for a little Gracie update. She is 16 months. She got her first 4 molars all at once and was miserable. I was constantly giving her motrin because she was in so much pain. Their all cut so we've had a little break where she has seemed a little better. She loves to give me loves. She will run up to me and give me a love on my legs, then run off and play some more. She is constantly grabbing my had to take me to the door or the TV or just to walk around with her. She goes and stands by her high chair if she is hungry. She switched from nursing to a bottle fabulously. She now gets super excited when she sees her bottle and blankie. She loves whatever meal we are having. The main snacks she likes are hot dogs, bananas, pears, and cheese. She loves Michael Jacksons, "Beat it". Adin started out booming it for her in his bedroom. They would go in there together and she would get so excited and dance. Now, Brian starts it on the computer and her eyes light up. She does this adorable high step dance with some spins and says "dika dika dika" in a high pitched voice. Not sure what that means, but she says it often...usually when she is happy. She also says uh, ohhhhhh. She uses her low voice for this one and emphasizes the ohhhh with a really wide o-shaped mouth. She'll say it over and over and is usually frustrated, chucks something, and then says uh ohhhhh over and over with an edge of frustration to it. She says da, da  very consistently when she sees Brian. She absolutely loves him and will sit at the computer with him while he surfs. The other day, I was certain she said "zozen" for the movie Frozen that she adores. I haven't heard her say it again though, so maybe not. She is still pretty stranger danger, but does love other little kids. She loves to go on walks and often holds my hand and drags me to the garage and then to the stroller. If I ever tell her we are going to go "bye-bye" she heads to the stroller and is ticked when we are actually going in the car. She still hates that. She brings an indescribable amount of happiness to me even if she is a little tough. :)

Vacation EXTRAS

This trip we had two extra days to fill with things. Brian did his research (as usual) and found some really fun things to do. We ended up having to narrow things down. Our spare days were equally as much fun as Disneyland this year. I'll let the pictures help me tell the story of these two days.

Spare Day #1

 This day started with a trip to the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood. It's an old Hollywood theater built in the 20s. It hosts a lot of Hollywood premiers still today. The movie they were showing was a new Disney movie call Maleficent. The ambiance was awesome. This theater was so cool inside. I wish the picture would have picked up more of the background. We were running a little behind and were lucky to get seats by each other. Another ten minutes and the theater was packed. Before the show they did an completely awesome magic show. It only lasted 20 minutes but it was something none of us had experienced in person. We got to watch them cut a lady in half and switch places in a box, and the trick with swords placed all around the magician and then he just gets right out.  It was absolutely awesome. Gracie didn't make it through the whole movie so I wandered the halls for a bit, but the kids loved the show.

 Outside the theater.

 Funny side story was that because we were in such a rush to get to the movie neither of us paid attention to where we parked in a parking garage. As we were headed back to the van, Brian said he needed to go to the bathroom. I told him we'd go ahead and get loaded into the car. We joked about wishing each other luck finding the van. The kids and I got to the van (found it easily) and were snacking for a while. Fifteen minutes went by....then twenty. I started to worry that Brian was lost. I left Meg and Adin in the car and went up to look for Brian. As I rode the elevator up, the door opened and there was Brian. The first words out of his mouth, "Where have you been?"..."Umm, in the van, where have you been."  Well, he was lost. He used the restroom quickly and then headed down and couldn't find the van. He was trying all sorts of floors and was totally turned around. He got nervous which made him need to use the restroom again. Then he started looking again. My cell didn't get reception in the parking garage so he had to no way to find us. I led him back to the van. He just needed to go one row over from where he had initially thought it was. Hahahaha. We teased him quite a bit.

Another funny side story. Once we got into the car, we were driving around and I made a comment about us being tourists. Not knowing Adin was listening suddenly Adin piped up and said, Tourists, I'm not a tourist. You guys can be tourists, I'm a hare because I'm super fast. Haven't laughed that hard in a long time.

 Next we tried a famous hot dog joint call Carneys. It was a restaurant in an old train. It was pretty cool, but we were in a panicked rush. Our extended time in Hollywood had us running behind to make it to a marionette show that we had tickets for. After eating we drove like complete mad people to try to make it on time to the show. It was only 15 minutes away, but the most direct route showed it would take us 35 minutes. Yikes! Brian was driving like a true californian. :) We were only 10 minutes late and hadn't missed any of the show, just some preshow talk.

 The place was beyond kitschy and really unique and fun. The kids got cheap little marionettes after and some ice cream. It was super memorable.

We capped off a pretty perfect day in a pretty perfect way. Farmers Market is a staple for us when we go to California. We love it. No trip to CA would be complete without it at this point. This time we went in the evening. It was cooled off. We spent a while watching the fountains with the music and then browsed through the shops and ate.

DAY 2

Day two was a Sunday so we try to keep it a little lower key. We visited San Juan Capistrano. This place is peaceful and breathtaking.

After that we were headed to the beach and stopped at another popular place. It's called Rubys Shake shack. It's right off the highway and overlooks the beach. It has a tiny parking lot so you literally wait in a car line off the side of the highway for a spot to open up. It was delicious. The burgers were awesome. Charisse got a PB shake that was too die for. I have a feeling we'll be back. :)

Our ocean day was pretty perfect. Gracie was a wild card. I wasn't sure what to expect. She was crawling out of my arm. She didn't care one bit about the sand.  She went straight for the water. She lost a little bravery when the waves were strong, but she didn't get grumpy the whole time.

 Adin was absolutely fearless and crazy at the beginning. He was jumping into the waves and squealing. It was so fun to watch. That came to a fairly abrupt halt when an undercurrent got ahold of him and slammed him against the sand. I watched it happen and worried for him. He came walking up to me breathing heavy, trying to act cool, and said, "Did you see that, I was thinking to myself, Well, I'm dead." :) After that he was not adventurous and liked to play in the sand.

 Brian was awesome this year. He has a lot of endurance and just goes and goes. Meg gave it a go, but didn't love it.

Gracie was attacking Meg, with her sandy feet. Meg was helpless. It was only funny to Meg for about 10 seconds and then she started bawling. :) It was such a relaxing fun day. Oh California, you treated us well. How I miss thee. :(

Heartsick and Updates

I'm a little heartsick today. I always have a little sad nagging in the back of my brain knowing that time with these kids is flying by too fast, but sometimes when certain things are going on it's more than a little nagging. I'm working on closing the door on nursing Gracie. I find that I'm different than a lot of people and thoroughly enjoy nursing my babies. Gracie has been no different. I have cherished the quiet time that I get to go upstairs and nurse her as part of her bedtime routine. The bedtime routine is biting me in the bum bum right now. I never involved nursing in Adin or Megs bedtime routine and it was SO easy to wean them both. Gracie was so difficult in her infant stages that I used nursing as a way to get her to wind down and sleep. I was desperate and apparently became soft in my old age. :) Anways, that's what we are working on right now. I have my cancer treatments looming and she is 15 months. I nursed Adin and Meg to 15-16 months so I have been super blessed to be able to go this long with Grace. I know it's time. Every logical part of me knows and feels it's time, but the emotional part of me is mourning the fact that she is already to this age. She is becoming more and more toddlerish every day. I love her and her cuteness to death, but I'm sad she's grown so quickly. Her first 15 months of life have been a roller coaster on so many fronts that it has made time fly by. Darn it. That's making me more cognizant of time slipping by.

Another thing that has me heartsick has to do with Adin. He is looking older and older to me. Heck, he's getting baptized in November. Darn him. He has asked me a few times in the last couple weeks to tell him about what he was like as a baby. I remember some things but not as much as I wish I did. I tried to look back through this blog and out of the three kids, I did the least amount of recording of him. That breaks my heart. I adored him through all his stages, but I didn't write it down. I can't ever go back. I can only remember the best I can. I'm going to search through the journals by my bed and try to compile everything I wrote down, but I know it's not enough. That kills me.

Right about now, Adin is still a sweetheart. He hasn't made a ton of friends yet in this move and so we are spending a lot of time around each other now that it's summer break. He is still just as tender hearted as ever and I think he still has a sweetspot for me. I love that. He is quite obsessed with video games so we are monitoring how long he is allowed to play everyday. He craves positivity from Meg and soaks it up when she gives it. He loves playing with Grace. He plays with her in the sunroom. He hides in the curtains and when she finds him he runs screaming. I love to hear their simultaneous giggles in there. He  has more energy than the rest of us so he is usually the one to push Grace around on her little car or in the dumptruck.

Meg is as fun as ever too. She has her moments of sass and disrespect, but we're working on that. Overall she is a super big softy. She craves positive feedback and attention. She tries really hard to be good and is too hard on herself when she messes up. She is able to tell when I am frazzled and is great at helping me out when I am. She's in a hurry to grow up and was over the moon when she got her daddy  noticed it may be time for her first stick of deodorant. She is begging to wear a training bra, which I still have not consented to because she doesn't need it yet. She really wants to wear makeup and looks for anything that she thinks may be a reason I would let her wear a little. She looks older to me everyday and is a daily reminder that time is moving all too quickly.

 

Gracie has turned over a new leaf and really likes her daddy all of a sudden. She loves to sit with him at the computer no  matter what he is doing on it. She loves to come grab at your hand and have you walk around with her. More often than not she leads you to one of the doors that leads outside and points at it. She loves to play and be chased, but you can tell it makes her legitimately nervous and she always runs to me for safety. She says uh-oh really clearly with her mouth in the shape of an o and often drops things just to say uh oh. She definitely understands what no no means, but that doesn't mean that she will stop what she is doing. She loves to be outside points at the cats and says Key (short for kitty). Her other word that she know is Da for daddy and it's clear she knows what it means because she'll point at daddy across a room and say da. She loves for me and brian to kiss and tries to push us together. She loves all food. I can't think of anything off the top of my head that she doesn't like. She's actually becoming less picky and will eat most of the things she used to reject like graham crackers and yogurt bites. She does the most adorable run. She get's up on her tiptoes and does this dancy/prancy little run that is pretty much done in place. She walks faster than she runs because her run is all tiny little steps. I've kind of caught it on camera, but not the best.

We've all taken our fair share of pushing her around in this. She will pull it out, sit in it and stare at us waiting for someone to push her.

First try at a swing....not so much. I could tell the belly drops scared her.

She loves walking around with a blanket on her head and we have to follow her and make sure she doesn't walk into things.

 

We found out Brian got the loan repayment we moved down here for. We feel overwhelmingly blessed because many many people try for that loan repayment and few get it. At the same time we felt sad because that means we are locked in down here for at least two years...three if we want to get the loans paid off completely. This transition has been the hardest one we've ever made. We are too much of homebodys to enjoy the pressures that come with small towns. We love the slow pace, but do not like feeling like a spotlight is always on you. We miss the diversity of Salt Lake and we miss the easy access to things. We will stick it out for at least two years and see where things are as we decide the next step.

Next post will be back to vacations...just wanted to jot a few things down to ease my melancholy mood about these darn kids growing up so fast. :(

CALI- 2014

We were hopeful that we could make it back to Disneyland this year, but thought it would be toward the end of the year. We ended up getting more in tax returns than we anticipated and the mentions of disneyland began. Brian and I have been sooo burned out from this move. We have been incredibly blessed by getting a job down here and have been even more blessed to find out our loans will be repaid, but short of that this move has been anything buy smooth. It's been a mess and Brian hates the work. We will just be counting down the days. We both desperately needed a recharge. So in a short amount of time we went from hoping to planning. Kory just happened to facebook me while we were in the planning stages and asked when we were going to Disneyland next. A day later we planning with the Calls. It was my lifeline for a while. Knowing it was on the horizon was wonderful and exciting. Disneyland is not a relaxing vacation, but I personally adore every tiring moment of it. I love everything about that place, short of the pricetag. We were rather concerned about Gracie causing problems because she is super high maintenance, but she did awesome and actually forced me to really live in the moment the whole trip. I didn't spend time thinking about the stressors in our lives and now that we are back in the throws of life, I sorely miss California. I miss farmers market. I miss the beach. I miss the baby center at disneyland. I miss waiting in line for Splash Mountain. I sorely miss the smells and sights of Pirates. Eesh. It makes my heart hurt just typing it. With the exception of Spring Break 2005, this was the crowdy-est we have ever had. We plan to move our every-other-year trip to a more off season time next time around. Thankfully we went in with the expectation of it being crowded so some days were what we expected and some days we were pleasantly surprised. I am going to do a three posts for our trip. One will be for Disneyland highlights (it will be long), one for the beach, and one for our farmers market/off day.

 Mainstreet-awe the sounds and smells

 The girls-waiting for Haunted Mansion. Our tradition is to ride Pirates first because it is me and Brian's favorite ride. This year Pirates was closed when we got there...so was Haunted Mansion and Splash Mountain and Winnie the Pooh. Not a great start. Haunted Mansion ended up opening up as we were walking back so that was our first ride of the trip.

 Pirates is hands down my favorite ride, but I loved riding Splash with the kids this year. Adin always wanted to be in the front to "get soaked". Meg was always anxious and nervous about getting wet. :)

 Prior to the trip Adin mentioned how much he wanted to do the Star Wars show. I didn't want to get home and have him remember he missed it, so I asked them how important it was. Very important to both of them apparently. To guarantee getting chosen to participate you need to be right in the center in the front. They pick these kids because they know you have to be waiting there for a while before the show starts. Trick two is you have to act very enthusiastic to get picked. We've got this business down and both kids were picked. Phew. Gracie and I saved seats with backpacks for 45 minutes. Gracie had had it.

 Meg's turn to fight Vader.

 Adin's turn. We got this on video thankfully but apparently Adin's face was quite intense because the speaker guy commented on his fierceness.

 Don't let this picture fool you. I think Grace was pretty anxious the duration of the trip because she didn't want anyone to hold her but me. This is really her looking at me, freaking out, begging me to take her back.

 First visit to Cars Land. Very cool.

 This was the first year Adin was tall enough for Screamin' and Indiana Jones. He LOVED both.

 The babies. Quite the troopers.

 Gracie adores Sophia the First and her little 1 year old reaction to seeing her was adorable. Lots of ohs, pointing and reaching for her. As soon as it was her turn I set her down and she walked halfway to her and stopped. She wouldn't look at the camera despite lots of "getting attention" noises". She was enthralled.

 Adin's #1 ride.

 Meg's #2 ride

 Meg's #1 ride

 Adin's #2 ride.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Meg and Adin's #3

 

 

Gracie's favorite ride. It was adorable. She was enthralled. She would dance and squeal and point. She says dika dika dika while she stomps her feet (that's her dance). Most other rides she just sat there acting mildly entertained like she was sitting at home watching TV. This one she loved.

 

 

Not sure if Brian's doing the peace sign or #2. This is he second favorite ride...so maybe...not sure.

 

 Disneyland 2014 was epic, and I think I miss it more than ever.

 

We tuckered this girl out.