Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Isn't she lovely?



I wanted to post this sooner, but didn't get the photo scanned in. My dad, on the other hand, came through and scanned the copy that I gave him (Thanks Dad!). So I can now post the photos of Gracie from the 2 year old portraits that we had taken before Christmas.

I was so surprised when I saw these at how grown up Gracie looks. She, of course is absolutely gorgeous, and I knew that, but she doesn't look like a baby at all. I guess I hadn't noticed how much Gracie has grown in the past year until I saw these photos. I know that she's supposed to grow up, change and mature, but she's changing so fast! I guess because we missed the first 10 months of her life, it seems even faster.

Anyway, here's my beautiful little girl at two.

Monday, January 26, 2009

Now Gracie is better, and I'm sick!

After 6 days of running a fever, sneezing and coughing all over mommmy and daddy, Gracie is better. Her fever finally broke on Thursday and went back to normal for good. She was left with a cough, but that hasn't bothered her too much. I did give her Delsym one night so she could sleep, but after that she didn't really need anything else.

She stayed home from daycare all week last week. So today she is back at daycare. There's so much that has happened related to having her home sick for the week. First off, she has become Velcro baby permanently attached to mommy. She ONLY wanted mommy to do everthing for her, and as much as I love her, it has been hard. She still wants only mommy, so it's still hard. We're trying to work on letting others do things for her, but in the meantime she just really wants mommy! The other thing that has happened is related to her only wanting mommy. Remember that all week, she'd been sick, and all week, I was the one doing things for her because that's what she wanted. So I got LOTS of coughs and sneezes right in my face! I tried to get her to cover her mouth and nose when she sneezed and and coughed. Sometimes she remembered, and sometimes she didn't. It was those times that she exposed me to whatever she had, and now of course, I have a version of what she had too!

Thankfully, I have not had the fever, but I do have a stuffy nose and a bad cough. Basically feel like doodoo, and DH has it too!

Unfortunately, this was not a good weekend to be sick. We had a houseful of family in town for DD2's birthday party. Fortunately I didn't feel really bad until most of the weekend was over. Yesterday it hit full force!

The weekend was fun, although I wasn't able to spend as much time with family yesterday as I wanted to. We started out with a quick trip to the grocery store to get the necessary supplies for the party. My sister-in-law and DD1 went with me. DD2 wanted hotdogs for luch on Saturday, birthday cake, and chili for dinner. She also wanted "a few birthday decorations", so that was part of what we got too. I rushed home, just as the guests started to arrive, and with the help of my sister, fixed the hot dogs, baked and decorated the cake and got the party started.

We had to cut back on the extent of the celebration this year because of the economy, but it was still fun. After the girls and family members had hot dogs all the women headed to the mall to shop. We gave each of the girls $10 to spend, and off they went. I have to admit that it was somewhat of a challenge for them to find something for a mere $10, but these girls are super shoppers! We were at the mall for 3 hours! Even Gracie went with us. She snoozed on the way there, and the way back, but besides that she was awake enjoying all the shopping fun right along with all the other girls.

After we were all tired out, we headed back home to chili that was lovingly prepared by DH. I have to give him credit for the great chili dinner with all the fixins' because I was just too tired to much of anything except eat. He handled it all from cooking, setting up, and cleaning up. He's the best husband ever!

Unfortunately, DD2's friends were not able to spend the night, but we still had a full house of family and had a great time. DD1 had her friend spend the night.They spent most of the time in her bedroom, but that's to be expected. DD2 played with her cousins, and the rest of us sat around and caught up. It was my oldest brother, his wife, my youngest brother and his wife, one of my sisters, my twin nieces, my nephew and my father. It was fun to catch up and share memories of time past.

Sunday was pretty laid back. I stayed home while DH, DD1 and her friend went to church. My dad, my two brothers, and my sister went to a college basketball game, while my youngest sister-in-law, her kids and I had luch at home. It was just about then that I started feeling very poorly, and decided not to make the trip to visit my nieces, nephews and their children at my oldest sister-in-laws house. So I stayed home while DD2, my youngest sister-in-law and her kids headed out. Gracie and I took a nap. Everyone came back briefly to our house before heading home. And all was quiet at the house again.

I have a short video that I took when we sang happy birthday to DD2, but that's it. I didn't take anymore photos or video. I'll post the video a little later.

Monday, January 19, 2009

Gracie is sick!

Poor baby. She has been running a fever for the last 2 1/2 days, basically since Friday afternoon. Motrin has been controlling it well, but after 6 hours the fever keeps coming back. The highest we've read is 103 degrees, and she's coughing quite a bit. I decided last night that if she wasn't beeling better that I would call the doctor's office today. I called this morning at around 9, and the nurse told me that usually they say that if a fever is present for 3 days that they have the child come in. I asked what the biggest thing they worry about, and she said pneumonia. I don't think she has pneumonia, but tomorrow I'm going to have DH take her in. That is, unless she wakes up fever free, which at this point I don't think is the case. As a matter of fact, it's 10:30 p.m. and she's coughing right now.

I really just think it's a cold, but to be safe most likely she'll be in the doctor's office tomorrow!

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Happy Birthday to You!

Today my baby turns 12 years old! DD2 is 12, can you believe it?! She's so excited about turning 12, that she can hardly stand it. I'm not sure why she is so excited, but maybe it's because she's one step closer to being able to get a cell phone. She is supposed to be able to get a cell phone when she turns 13, like her big sister, but she's working mighty hard to get mom and dad to give and get her one early. I told her that there were several reasons she wasn't going to get one, not the least of which is that she doesn't need one. So maybe that's why.

She had a pretty quiet birthday. We had a fairly big snow here today, and it's VERY cold, so I left work early to make sure I could get home okay. By the time I got home around 4:30, the girls and DH had left for DD1's and DD2's dance classes. So I was home alone. I decided to surprise DD2 by baking her a birthday cake. I had stopped at Dunham Sports to buy her some pre-wrap. For those of you that aren't in the know (like I as up until a week ago or so), pre-wrap is what all the 6th grade girls are using as headbands!

So she came home at 8:30 or so, and was very surprised to see a birthday cake on table just waiting for her to blowout the lighted candles. I asked DD1 to take video, which she did, but you'll see that she's not the most creative videographer there is, and it's pretty lame. But it does show the cake and DD2 well, so I guess that's what's important, I mean that we capture the moment.



The cake was very good. You can see from the video that Gracie was pretty excited to help her sister out with the task of blowing the candles out.

DD2's birthday party is the 23rd, so tonight was just a small celebration to show her how much she's loved, which she is hugely loved! Birthdays are special, and I love to make the girls feel special on their own birthday. This was my way of showing her that.

Monday, January 12, 2009

Skipping Christmas

Okay. I started this big long post about our Christmas and New Year celebrations. When it became clear that I wasn't going to finish it anytime soon, I decided to skip over it for now and come back to it. Otherwise I will probably never blog again, because it's just too overwhelming.

So the really BIG news over the holidays is that Gracie is now fully potty trained! No more diapers. Yeah!!!! She did all this on her own with just a tad bit of coaxing from us by giving her M&Ms when she was successful. She is doing so well, in fact, that last week we went out and bought her big girl panties. Not training pants, but big girl panties. She calls them her "nonenies" meaning undies. Too cute.

Anyway, that's one of the last remnants of babyhood. All that's left now is for her to move out of a crib into a big girl bed. We're not there yet, and I'm not in any hurry at all to get her there.

It's very nice that we no longer have the expense of formula, baby bottles, baby food, diapers and wipes, but they all seemed to disappear so quickly. She's growing up so fast!