Christmas time again & 15 months old

There have been some wonderful memories made with Gracie this year that I want to focus on. December 19th we finally put the Christmas tree up. With a little help from Gracie, the tree got decorated and now has to be lit at all times when Gracie is awake, at her request. She knows how to turn the tree lights on and off and makes sure they get turned on first thing in the morning. Here she is decorating the tree, and a photo of the ladies with my new haircut. This is the first time I have had bangs since "Mall bangs" were popular. It really is like relearning how to do you hair and is nothing like riding a bicycle because I don't want to remember how to tease my bangs so much they can stand straight-up with a slight curl to them. Our next adventure that weekend was to celebration Abigail's 4th birthday and Gracie's first big girl party. Now she did her best to keep up with the other kids she adores, though she still needs help keeping steady on her little feet.The Christmas celebrations started after church at the Peters. Gracie was blessed with so many gifts from the family and spent a lot of her time playing with her Cousin Alex's toys the most. The kids and adults enjoyed another Christmas together and hope that next year could be even better. My mother found our old copy of The Little Drummer Boy by Ezra Jack Keats, here is Gracie's imitation of the book with her cousin Andrew trying to join. Below that is a photo of her asking Grandpa to read it again. She knows where the book is kept and will always go to the drawer to make you sing it to her. The girl loves books that are songs. We need more suggestions since she only has two. On Christmas day we celebrate with my family which was a special and quiet day for all of us. We were thankful for so many things this year that really were highlighted on the day. The big hit of the day was a baby doll set she received, not to mention plenty of other items again. The girl is blessed to have such giving Grandparents. Gracie gets so concerned when her doll starts to cry and she does her best to pat and love the baby to give her comfort. Too Cute!Big highlights for 15 months:

• Finally 20lbs. She is 25% for weight and 75% for height.
• She loves to say "Dank do" Thank you often now
• Goldfish and Mac & cheese are some new favorites
• She is a little trouper who can brighten your day as she comes running at you with the biggest hugs that are lasting a lot longer some times.
• When she thinks something is funny or she is trying to be funny, she almost closes her eyes and scrunches her nose.
• When asked she can point to her nose, mouth, eyes, and ears.
• New words: Hawk (jayhawk), Hot, HoHoHo, Dog (before it sounded like da), Thank you, Please is often used as well.
• As stated before, any book that you sing with is wonderful.
• She also loves to "put on make-up" and "brush her teeth" while mommy does.
• The little helper's face beams with pride when she brings my towel to the shower door when I am done showering.
• Ms. Independent wants to walk more in stores, stomps her feet when she wants something, and has learned to throw her head down in frustration. Oh the fun starts.

Gracie is the light of my life everyday and the compass for which I make decisions. All I can do is hope that those decisions bring her the happiness that she deserves, that we all deserve. Here is a photo from her Christmas photo shoot. The top two teeth will be here eventually.

You are all such wonderful family and friends. We wish you a blessed 2010!

Special Men in her life

This week was fun for me to really see what a big influence the men in Gracie's live have on her. Here are a couple examples of how much she already is influenced.

Earlier this week when she saw my dad, Grandpa, she just couldn't get enough of him and hugged him for over a min. She knows he is as huggable as a teddy bear and couldn't help herself. This morning we were looking at photos that included the Peters family photo form last year.
Gracie looked right at Neil, aka Papa, and screamed PaPa. She was so excited to see him that she just kept pointing and screaming Papa. Then she noticed Daddy in the photo and would take turns screaming Papa or Dada while pointing at the photo.

She is loved unconditionally by so many really great men in her life and we are so blessed that they can watch her grow while helping to show her how she should be treated by men in the future. As a woman myself, if you didn't know that already, I can tell you that a healthy relationship with male role models is so important for a girl as she matures. There are so many women that are not so lucky. Thank you all for your wonderful support.

C is for Cookie & Claus

Previously I forgot to post this photo of two favorite ladies playing Ring Around the Rosie.

Well Gracie and I have had some good times together over the past couple weeks. The first week in December we were able to enjoy an impromptu night at the Peters after weather kept us from making the trip into the mountains. The time together was so relaxing and Gracie just loved spending more time with her grandparents. She was even able to surprise Neil by calling him Papa. There were lots of fun and kisses for all. Gracie just loves her Monkey PJs and trying to get the remote control to work.

This past week I traveled to Atlanta for just a quick 36 hour trip, though that provided Gracie with additional time with the Grandmas. Gracie loved it and has learned to say GiGi (JiJi?) for Grandma Jeanne.

Saturday was the annual cookie day with my mom, Julianne, Violet, and about 10 other people. This was Gracie's first year to enjoy the fun that was had by all. Here are a couple photos from the day to see all of our hard work surrounded by fun!

Today was the first Christmas celebration day. Nicole had a holiday party for her play group that included a traveling music class. Gracie just adored the music that was played and signing while I was able to take the morning off and enjoy her reaction. Her love for music leads to more and more dancing everyday. We were lucky and visited with Santa at the Parker library tonight with Adam for the first time. As you can see from the photos, Gracie wasn't excited about the idea. She thought he was very interesting when I was her support, especially his beard.

Here is the perfect photo of Gracie because she is wearing a fun outfit and talking on the phone aka DaDa. Her obsession with phones is almost as strong as her obsession with Bananas.

Gracie is the light of our life that we can't wait to celebrate Christmas with. Wishing everyone a blessed Christmas season.

All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth

Two Thanksgivings and tons of family time. We were able to enjoy Thanksgiving day with the Adam's side of the family and then the weekend up at the farm with the mine. Gracie decided she wasn't really a fan of much of the normal food fare. The stuffing, and cranberry salad were hits the day of the event. As you can imagine, the pie was the highlight of the meal and something she could have at any time.

Highlights in her world...
She can now say Please and Papa.
She is moving everywhere and just showed her climbing capabilities by getting "hiking" our ottoman. It was a huge surprise to mama.
After learning to use a straw she is enjoying all the fun things she can do with her mouth including duck calls. Here is a video to show proof.

There is nothing more to love that seeing this little lady cracking herself up in the back seat while we drive.

We are so thankful this year for such wonderful family and friends. You continue to be there for us for all of our ups and downs, what would we do without you!

Good Times with Gracie

It has been a crazy couple of weeks of fun and travel. There is nothing like 6 flights in 6 days. At least all flights were on-time or early. After a quick trip to Atlanta for work, I came back to go to the musical Wicked with Adam and his folks. This is the first musical I have seen three times and I will probably see it again. I can't wait for Gracie to see it as she gets older. Speaking of musicals, my mom and I headed to NYC Saturday for a long weekend of musical fun. We had such an wonderful time seeing Bye Bye Birdie with John Stamos, The Rockettes Christmas Spectacular, and Wishful Drinking Carrie Fisher's one woman show. Around all the shows we were able to see the usual sights: Central Park, FAO Schwartz, 5th Ave, Grand Central, 30 Rock, Today show, NBC studio tour, China Town, Ground Zero, Times Square, and....we got some great advice from Sarah, our friend who was a chef in NYC, about a restaurant that was amazing! That night was fun since we went to a hole-in-the-wall bar my friend recommended that was actually an old opium house, then to another great bar that we had to be approved to enter and then to the Little Owl Restaurant that is in the building used as a reference for Monica's apartment in friends. Oh the fun! Here is a photo of us before the Rockette's show. It was good to get back and see my girlie though.

Gracie updates: We went to the zoo on Saturday and she is now really enjoying the animals though still prefers to watch the other kids. Here is a photo with her and the ducks that she loved to enjoy.

• Gracie calls any electronic item: remote, phone, etc. Dada. It is so funny.



• She is eating us out of house and home. Today she had a whole ham and cheese sandwich, 1/4c apple sauce, veggies, and juice. She is so hungry.



• Her favorite position to play in is squatting like in the photo below.

Today I was actually able to get a bow to finally stay in her hair. At least it stayed in long enough to get a great photo of her. You can barely see it here.

Here is the close-up that you can see her tooth, the lower left, with the second coming in now, the lower right:

Now we are getting ready for a weekend of family Thanksgiving fun. Wishing everyone a wonderful blessing Thanksgiving holiday.

You Have My Heart, But Wonka Has My Belly

This was an interesting and exciting week for The Peters' clan.

Our typically sunny and dry Denver autumn weather threw us a bit of a curve ball by bringing snow flurries to the front range on Tuesday. That was not a huge surprise as we've experienced more than one Halloween 'dusting' in the past. What was surprising is that it did not stop snowing till Thursday evening. All in all we got around 24 inches at our house in Parker. Grandma Jeanne (aka "Gigi") was nice enough to come over early on Wednesday evening to help watch Gracie so mama and dada could try to work from home on Thursday.

For a girl who requests to go "out" a lot, she sure didn't like being "out" in the snow! You may be able to infer that from the photos...just doesn't know quite what to make of it yet. (It's early in the season so she'll have plenty of chances to decide if she likes snow or not)

Our normally happy child picked up on the sudden drop in barometric pressure and decided to channel that into her mood for the better part of the week. She was a cranky mama's girl due to her one and only tooth coming in! Thankfully she has slept through most nights and only showed her cranky side during daylight:)

One of the benefits of Grandma Jeanne being dropped off at the house was that she was without car, and therefore, a captive of ours during this pre-winter storm. We took full advantage of this by taking our little monkey (and yes, Gracie was dressed as a monkey) to a Halloween party at our friend's house in Parker. After a brief appearance we dropped her off at home for Grandma to watch her while we went back to the festivities.

Grace enjoyed her second Halloween much more than her first. This year she helped make a jack 0' lantern which seemed to intrigue her. But she finally said "please mom, no more pictures!"

That night she wanted to go trick or treating with all of the neighborhood kids. However, we stayed in so we could deal out all the sugary snacks for the nearly 80 children who ended up stopping by. Gracie hated to see them leaving our house after just a few minutes! What a social butterfly!!! Even though she was really cute in her costume, Brandy was, yet again, the hit for Halloween kids. This year we subjected her to dressing like a cat which consisted of a bow tie and fake ears.

Outside of those major events we had a good week with a lot of family time. After church on Sunday, Karla and Gracie visited Papa J. Great-grandpa lights up every time he gets to see Gracie and she apparently loves to see him too based on the big toothless grin she has when they're together. Sunday afternoon was spent exploring the collapsible tunnel system in our family room. After another huge dinner...this kid eats like a champ I tell ya...it was off for bath time and "naked time". The latter is now Gracie's favorite time of day!

13 months & what do you get? Another day older & a tooth

What fun we have been having these past couple weeks. Gracie has been able to spend time with friends, family and the good old folks. With me traveling last week and preparing for the trip, we all know why I am behind on the blog. Where do I start?

The first weekend away from Gracie was hard. Adam and I did enjoy our time together in Breck knowing Gracie has having a great time with the Peters. We also enjoyed some time up at the farm again because the Sanderson household was fighting a bug. No one seemed to mind and we were able to even visit with them. I think the fun time they had in the crib helped her to sleep better that night. Gracie and I were going to cheer on the Rams at homecoming, but the ladies decided to skip the freezing temps for the warm inside!

Next was our friend Graham's 1st birthday party. The most exciting part for Gracie were the "balthoons" She is just adorable when she says balloons, and yes that is her largest and favorite word to say.

This weekend, after I was away during the week, we had a fun time at a family festival that was free. The weather was perfect and Gracie got to play in a house of leaves. We are getting ready for Halloween this weekend where she is planning on being a Monkey without a tail. I am too cheap to buy a $5 tail or make one. We will all survive. She is still cute!

Updates:

• As of about Oct 12, Gracie had decided that she would rather walk. She still continues to learn, though she is determined to get to where she wants to go.



• She will now answer questions or what she thinks are questions with "ah-uh" Even if you ask her if she wants to be a lizard, that is her answer.



• Her favorite place to be is outside or "out" as she says.



• The least favorite place is getting into the car seat. She has moved-up to the larger size now, and boy is it fun to buy 3 car seats, thank goodness for friends and sales!



• The phone is her favorite toy and any time I am on a phone she says dada and thinks that is who I am talking with. Today she even bumped her head, saw the phone, and wanted me to call daddy and let him know what happened. She calmed right down when she heard his voice. What a wonderful bond.


• Her tooth continues to pop through and I wonder how quickly her other ones are coming in.



• These veggie straws from Costco have to have some addictive ingredient because she wants them all the time. It is amazing!! They do work week at distracting her during church though.

Hope you have enjoyed the photos.