Gracers

She may look mad, but it was the best smile I could get out of her for the camera. She's a bit lens-shy these days.

Grace is a funny little girl - here are some things she is doing these days:

When both Rob and I are home, she calls both of us "Momdy" :) I guess it's covering all her bases by mixing the names. Now I won't feel badly when someday I mix her name up with her siblings.

She calls towels "dry drys." Probably our fault because after her bath we tell her she needs to be wrapped up in her "dry dry" so we can snuggle.

Grace has been really good for at least a year now on what to do during prayers. At church (or anytime that is like church) after every song she immediately stops what she is doing and folds her arms and closes her eyes, since prayer is what happens right after songs. Recently she has decided that it's Gracie's turn to pray. We ask her who she wants to pray, Daddy, Mommy or Gracie. Most often she'll choose one of us and when we start, she'll say "NO! Gracie turn!" We're working on prayer reverence :) When she does pray, she uses this little high pitched voice and just makes some repetitive noises and then says "Amen!" I'm hoping that someday soon she'll start allowing us to help her with what words to say again, but for now I'm grateful that she wants to pray and is learning step by step how to.

This is how we found her sleeping the other night. Covered in pillows...funny girl!

Grace has a funny little routine when Dad leaves for school in the morning. She has to stand on the porch of the house, outside, and wave and yell bye bye to Daddy as he drives down the street. We have the heaviest screen door ever though that she can get out of but can't get back in, so I have to be sure to be nearby to let her back in. I just hope that the neighbors aren't watching too closely because I am not-so-presentable in my jammies at those times.

Grace loves to sing, as I've mentioned before. She'll sing anything. And she sings it loudly and proudly. She often makes us sing while we drive around. She makes up songs and tunes, but she's fairly good at the words of the songs. I got the name of the song Twinkle Twinkle Little Star in my last post wrong though, she calls it "Twinkle How I Twinkle." Last week at church she was "singing" the hymn so loud that she got a thumbs up from the pew across the aisle for her awesome effort. This morning Grace was looking at a little flip book I made for her two Christmases ago with pictures of each of the family members and singing "I am a child of God", but not to the right tune, so it took us a while to figure out what she was singing. She'd sing some jibberish then "kind and dear!!!" really loudly. Good thing she got the best part down ("with parents kind and dear")! She often gets her animals and babies out and asks them if they want her to sing to them or read them a story...what a sweet, thoughtful little girl!

Snuggling with Bunny and hiding from the camera. She has a funny shy streak these days where she doesn't want anyone to look at her or she'll try to hide.

She loves kids and our ward here in Nashville is great because there are so many. It's been a change though, coming from the Avenues where there were no kids, to our ward here where there are tons of them. She's learning how to play with them and isn't so nervous around so many of them anymore. Our favorite time of the weeks is Thursdays when playgroup meets at different parks throughout the ward to play while the Mommy's get to socialize.

Princesses are Grace's new obsessions (about equal to Barney - what is it about that purple dinosaur?!?!). She wants to watch princess sing a long songs all. the. time. I must admit that I've gotten pretty good at belting out a few of those songs myself. Rob and I will often turn to the other and start singing whichever one is in our head at the time to share the love with the other :) I am going to try to make her a princess dress for Halloween and dress up...wish me luck on my first time using a pattern and without any of my sewing expertise that I had in family and friends back in Utah!

Grace also loves to draw. Not so much on our furniture or walls anymore (thank goodness!!!), but more on paper and mostly on herself when I'm not watching closely. Thanks to our sweet (and funny...) friends, the Holley's who gave Grace some washable markers after our permanent marker fiasco, we can easily clean up those messes. And can I just say how impressed I am with the washable-ness of the markers? Much better than I ever expected!

Our little tattoo artist even got the bottoms of her feet!

She is a sweet little girl and we're so happy to have her in our family. She really brings a lot of love and laughter to us! She's getting excited to become a big sister soon, and I can't wait to see her blossom and be able to show her nurturing side to her little sister and to teach her all the cool things that there are about being a little girl!