February 2012

Well, I’m way behind again!  I actually wrote this post last February and we’re just getting around to putting it up now.

I’ll go all the way back to last Halloween to catch up!  Grace loved Halloween.  She had a party at preschool as well as a party at daycare.  She had two costumes.  One was Cinderella shown in the photo.  This is the one that she picked out.  She wore this to preschool and to go trick-or-treating.  My cousin, her husband, and Baby Wes all came over to our house for trick-or-treating.  I stayed home and passed out the candy.  Everyone else went out for the treats!  Grace got way too many treats!  We kept them around the house for about a week.  Then I took it all into the teacher’s lounge.  It was gone in a flash!  Her second costume was an ice cream cone.  It was so cute!  Jeanne (Grace’s daycare) let us borrow the costume.  Jeanne had made it several years ago for her daughter.  Grace wore this costume when Northville had their trick-or-treating at the store downtown.

For Thanksgiving, we went to my parents.  Grace had fun playing with her cousins.  Lilyana is almost exactly one year older than Grace and Alanna is eight.  They had a great time!  The food was great as always and it was nice to have our family together.

Grace has always loved the Knuffle Bunny books by Mo Willems.  We have all three books.  When I found out the Knuffle Bunny was coming to      Theater, I knew I had to get tickets.  It was a musical and this would be Grace’s first live musical.  She did great!  She sat through the whole thing and barely even moved.  She was so amazed by the music, lights, acting, dancing, everything!  Here she is after the show during the Q&A period with the cast. 

Christmas was amazing!  We had been to the mall several times and Grace always asked to stop and look at Santa.  She never wanted to go sit on his lap or tell him what she wanted for Christmas.  I never pushed it, because I just hate those photos of kids crying and screaming sitting on Santa’s lap!  Well, Santa came to visit Grace’s preschool.  I was shocked to find out that Grace sat on Santa’s lap.  I even have a picture to prove it!

This was a bit difficult for me this year.  We had decided that we wanted Grace to wake up Christmas morning at our home.  I have never had a Christmas when I wasn’t at my parents’ home.  It just didn’t feel right for me to do it any other way.  So my whole family came here.  My mom and dad came Christmas Eve and we went to our church here.  My brother, nephew and cousin came on Christmas morning.  It was nice to have everyone here and together!  It wasn’t the same, but everything went well.

Grace only asked Santa for two things.  She wanted a CD player.  The kid has a MP3 player – why would she want a CD player?  Well, they have one at preschool that they especially use during circle time.  Grace plays circle time constantly at home, so she needed a CD player in order to play circle time correctly!  The second thing that she wanted was a bouncy seat for her babies.  Grace’s babies are very important to her!  She is so good with them.  She rubs their backs and holds them so gently.  Santa was very generous to her and got her both of the things that she asked for, as well as some other wonderful gifts also!

We celebrated Christmas with Greg’s family at Greg’s sister’s house.  We went the night before to stay with my parents, then went to Aunt Diane’s in the early afternoon.  Grace had a ball being spoiled by her cousins Daniel and Thomas!

Grace started swim lessons in January.  She goes once a week.  The first week was difficult.  There were tears.  She didn’t want to go by herself, even though Greg and I were both sitting in chairs watching about six feet away!  She ended up loving Ms. Lindsay and the lesson and was happy to go the next week.  But then we found out that Ms. Lindsay was subbing for the regular teacher!  So…we had to go through it all over again the next week.  Luckily after the initial separation from us, she realized that she liked Ms. Chris!  Grace has done great in swimming lessons.  She has come so far in these six weeks.  We just started up another six week session.  The kid is a fish!

Greg’s nephew was in a musical (Smokey Joe’s Café) at a community theatre in Lansing.  We decided that we would take Grace with us.  She had done great at the Knuffle Bunny musical, but that was only about an hour long.  Smokey Joe’s Café was two hours long.  Grace absolutely loved it!  She sat through the whole thing – except when she was dancing to the music or singing along to the songs! 

Grace continues to be a “60’s-on-6” girl from listening to the satellite radio in my car!  A couple of weeks ago, we had just finished dinner.  I was doing dishes and Grace was still sitting at the table.  All of a sudden, she starts singing ‘Wild Thing.  You make my heart sing.  You make everything groovy.”  Greg and I both just about lost it.  It was so cute!  Some of her other favorites include:  These Boots are Made for Walkin’, I Got You Babe, Barbara Ann, I’m Telling You Now. 

Preschool is going well.  Grace is learning so much!  She’s got the months of the year and days of the week down.  She can write her name.  She can recognize and write almost all of the letters of the alphabet and knows the sounds of several of them.  She wants to spell everything.  Every sign that we see, she has to spell out the letters, i.e. T-A-R-G-E-T.  I’m trying to figure out what to do about preschool next year.  Whether I should keep her where she is and maybe increase days or change to a Young Five’s program?