Simon Says

So, Grace does this new thing that just cracks me up. Sometimes she likes to pretend that she is a princess. (What little girl doesn’t?) Or sometimes she’s a baby or a tiger or a kitty cat or whatever she can think up. And it is very important when she is pretending that you go along with it. You have to address her properly each and every time you say anything to her or she won’t respond. So a conversation can go something like this:
“Grace, what do you want to eat for lunch?”
“I’m a princess. Say Gracie Princess.”
“Gracie Princess, what do you want to eat for lunch?”
“The Princess wants noodles.”
“You had noodles for breakfast. I want you to eat something else.”
“Say Gracie Princess.”
“You had noodles for breakfast, Gracie Princess. I want you to eat something else.”
“The Princess wants chocolate milk.”
You get the idea. Sometimes she can’t make up her mind and wants to be multiple things at once, like Gracie Princess Baby Froggy. It can get pretty complex.
She’s also very good at speaking in third person. She uses all the right pronouns and everything. It’s pretty impressive.

Hair

Okay, so Grace’s hair is impossible. It’s super thin, wispy, and tangles if you look at it the wrong way. Also, 75 % or more of it likes to naturally fall right in front of her eyes. For a long time, that 75 % was cut into bangs that started way back on the top of her head. (It created sort of a mullet look. Ugh.) So, I decided to grow some of the bangs out. Next problem: hair in the face. If I ever managed to get Grace to let me pull it up into an elastic or clip, it would last for about three minutes before she decided she didn’t like it an yanked it out. Consequently, she had extremely impaired vision for several months. She also developed something that looked like a nervous twitch. When she wanted her hair out of her face she would just tilt her head back a bit and shake it side-to-side.

Well, I finally got sick of the hair in the face and chopped it all back to bangs again. Now, I’ve cut hair before. I am pretty good at it. But when the subject won’t hold still, it’s an entirely different story. Last summer I tried to give Grace a “trim” and ended up cutting her hair to about her ears. I cried. She had the most beautiful baby curls that got chopped as I kept trying to even out the “trim.” So after I cut Grace’s hair this time, and it looked awful again, I decided it was time to visit the experts.
I took Grace to the hair salon last Saturday, and she did so well! It was awesome. She held still. She was calm. And her hair doesn’t look like a disaster anymore! Hurray!
They thinned out her bangs and added some subtle layers.

This is Grace noticing the suckers at the front desk. “I want purple! Purple’s my faborite!”
I dont think I'll try to cut her hair again myself for several years. It's just so much less stressful to have a pro do it.

Bubbles are like Magic

I found these Giant bubble things at the store. Grace couldn't get enough of it. They are actually pretty cool.
Bubbles are just plain fun. It’s amazing the wonder you see in the eyes of a child playing with bubbles. I wonder what thoughts are racing through their little minds.

Where a Kid Can Be a Kid

Grace’s cousin, Chase turned four recently and had a family party at Chucky Cheese. I hadn’t been to a Chucky Cheese since I was two. (I really don’t think I missed much.) But Grace enjoyed herself. I think she rode the carousel at least 17 times.
She found these ribbons on the ground (leftover from some other party) and made me put them on her. They were actually kind of cute.
She developed a unique riding style, too.
Pizza, cake, rides, tokens, tickets, prizes, exciting gifts, staying until well past bedtime, what more could a kid want?
Bows from Chase's presents. That's what.

Making Faces

Grace enjoys making silly faces. She saw an ad in a magazine once with a girl making the face where you stretch your mouth out and stick out your tongue. So whenever she does it she says, “Remember this face?”

I Want to Ride my Tricycle

Now that the weather is warming up, we can spend more time outside. Here is Grace practicing riding her tricycle. She is very determined, but pedals can be “ree tricky,” especially when the ground isn’t flat.

Sand and Sun

We went to my in-laws cabin in April, and Grace had a ton of fun getting dirty (with her cousin, Chase) in the horseshoe sandpit.
She said they were making “birthdays.” I assumed she meant birthday cakes.
She really gets into it.
Then daddy came out to lather her in sunscreen. She protested, but we use this spray kind, and she got a kick out of when it started to tickle.
Grace loves Grampa Richard. He is very compliant and will carry her just about any time and anywhere.

Sealing and a Sleepover

My younger sister, Molly, was sealed in the temple with her husband, Mike, and their daughter, Brooklyn, back in March. Family drove from both Montana and California to attend. It was really an amazing experience. I've never been to a sealing with a child before. The spirit was incredible.

Here are some of the cousins lounging in Gramma’s living room watching a movie.
Clockwise from 1 o'clock: Hannah (my youngest sister), Boston, Grace, Benjamin, and Jacob.

Swingin' Buddies

Oh! How I love my little girl.

Potty Training 101

Potty training is a very serious matter. It’s important to give a girl sufficient time to do her thing. And reading materials are a must. "Hey! Close the door!"
"Or at least be quiet and let me concentrate."

Halloween 2007

Grace, William, and Brooklyn all dressed up like bumble bees for Halloween. It was pretty cute.
There was a ward Trunk-or-Treat scheduled the day before halloween, so Tasha, Molly, and I got the kids ready and drove to the church. Nobody else was there. I called the Relief Society president and found out it had been rescheduled for the previous week. It was kind of sad.
Halloween day, Emma fixed Grace's hair to look like antennas.
Grace giving William a trick-or-treating pep talk.
This is one of my all time favorite photos of Grace. She is such a beauty. I love those tiny baby teeth, that adorable smile, and her one dimple.

The Benson Grist Mill in the Fall

Every year around Halloween, there’s a little celebration at the Benson Grist Mill that is just by our house. We took the kids, and they had a blast playing in one of those inflatable trampolines.
Can you ever have too much fun?

Molly had to get inside with the kids to keep them from getting injured.

The Willows Camping Disaster

So, it's been forever since I have posted anything to this blog. We went camping in the mountains last September. It was quite the memorable experience. I don’t remember why, but Ricky was in Salt Lake and couldn’t come. It was Grace and me, Daniel, Tasha, and William Robison, Mike, Molly, and Brooklyn Trussell, and Matt Leitch.

These photos look great, but the outing ended up being a nightmare. Everything was going well until I put Grace to bed. The adults were all sitting around the camp fire trying to visit, and Grace kept crying from her tent. I had to keep hiking up to her and calm her down. It was getting kind of frustrating. Then came the really fun part. Grace got sick. Really sick. I hiked up to her to calm her down again and try to get her back to sleep but when I unzipped the tent I discovered that she had puked all over herself and our bedding and the tent. Nasty puke. She’d just eaten a ton of food at dinner, and, well, I won’t go into details. So I had to calm her down, and take everything out of the tent. It was already dark and there was no way to clean our stuff. So, what were we going to do? I tried to make it work. We even considered sleeping in the car. But Grace kept throwing up, and she needed to be home. We left all our things and drove home. Fortunately, Grace slept the whole way and didn’t throw up in the car. But she was up most of the night throwing up. I took her to urgent care the next morning.
Molly and Brooklyn chillin' on the hammock.
William had fun getting messy in the dirt. And eating it too, apparently.