Finally getting outside!

St. Patty's day green

We are finally getting outside! Although today snow, so weird!

Moira is really getting into Grady lately. They play pretend, although he doesn't know it... She said the other day "Mommy, I really love him, can we keep him?" She also said she wants to marry him so they'll never be apart! I told her so sweet but she can't marry her brother. She said "how about I marry you and we go to the shopping mall all day and Grady marries daddy and they sit at home and watch NASCAR?" Not a bad plan! She also said funny the other day "It's easy to tell that I am a girl b/c I have long hair, but it's more tricky to tell if I have a penis or not". True... very true....

Grady is talking a lot. New words are popsicles, duck, juice, chair, ow, some others, I forget. He said his first sentence- "there's a kitty!" He walks around going "tickle tickle tickle" and loves tickles and hugs. He is switched from formula to milk but he won't take it out of a sippy. I've tried them all. Shrug.

friends

First Newborn Photo Shoot

I asked my friend how many pics she might like of her newborn baby. She said just one for a frame. I took 385.... I think I might have a problem.... I got 78 pretty good ones. Here are a few.

Outside!

So we've been outside some this week! Grady loves it, cries to go outside, cries when we have to go in. I need to think of ways to be outside more. I feel like Moira tried to make up for the outside time by doing double duty trashing the house when we were inside. It was actually impressive how messy she made her room in like 5 minutes. Although in her defense, she claimed a monster came in and did it while we were outside. Grady likes the trampoline and is trying to jump. It's funny. He also likes trying to eat very rotten apples. He also likes trying to run into Moi while she is swinging... Oh busy summer!

Making Art & sickness

So we had kind of a rough weekend. Started really on Friday. I left early to pick Moi up from school (thankfully) b/c I wanted to walk Grady in a stroller around the neighborhood. I came down on my ankle wrong crossing the street and sprained my ankle. It was really bad. I had to find a guy to help me to Moira's school limping all the way. I went to urgent care saturday morning, it's just a sprain, but I've been moving pretty slow. Moira developed some horrible cough. She actually threw up saturday morning she was coughign so hard. Grady has a cold. I guess about a week is as long as we can go w/o illness here. Chris had a migraine sunday morning. Good times! Saturday Grady and I napped, Chris was working on the computer and Moira decided to "make art" on herself. See above. What is most impressive is that she wrote "art" on her leg. Chris said he didn't tell her how to write it. She said she just "knew herself". She had to miss school yesterday b/c of the cough. I have a cold now, gonna be a long week!

I realized something yesterday that is very obvious. Moira takes after me in the giving department. I think most of you who know me know how much I love to give presents. My whole life, I have been giving and making. I think that's why I love photography so much, especially kid photography, it's like giving a gift to the kid and to the parent (and hey, doens't even cost anything). Well, Moira is just like that, I am calling it now. On the way to school, she picks up acorns or leaves to give to the teachers. She was too shy until the last few weeks to give it to them herself, she has asked me to do it. But lately she just goes "here you go! I got you an acorn!" Her teacher was proud of her b/c she asked if she knew what it would turn into if she planted it and Moira said "An Oak Tree!" Speaking of exclamation marks, Moi has been super into them when I read her books. She knows they mean excitedly and has been adding them in when she writes her made up words. But back to the presents, yesterday we were going to visit Allie and Abby and she wanted to make them cards. Then she thought that wasn't good enough and went looking around the house of things of her own to give them. She took a plastic cylindrical holder and put some of her little animals in it to give to Abby and gave Allie a plastic princess kaleidoscope, taped it to the cards she made and was just soooooo excited to give it to them. She is cute. Then before bed, she wanted to take things out of the shoebox that she sleeps with (with all her little stocking stuffers in it that Grady can't get to) and give it to Chris and I. She gave me a box of hair bows and Chris some letter M post it notes. She was going on and on about what we could do with them "You can put them in your hair anytime you want!" and "You can turn them upside down into a W if you want". Very sweet.

Kiss

Proud

More friend pics

Grady likes bubble, he calls them "balls"

daniela

So this might not seem like a big deal, but if you know Moira, you would know that it is. When she arrived at school her teacher was in the hall doing something and said "Hi Moira, how are you?" and Moira looked her in the eye, waved and said "Hi! I'm good!" She is really coming out of her shell. Also proud of Grady as he has slept through the night for 6 nights in a row. And he's been really into books lately. He looks at his books by himself for like 15 minutes or so. I'll say "Grady where are your books" and he'll go look at them. He's also started asking for juice. I give him water with just a bit of juice. He says "shuush". He also says "bottle" instead of "ba ba". HE says "dottle" We are off of formula, he is drinking whole milk. Moira refused to do this until she was 18 months old and I put chocolate in it! He will take the milk in a sippy but I still give him a bottle before bed and when he gets up.

Some pics from Grady's b-day photo shoot (by me) at the Conservatory

Some stories I want to remember & pics of friends

I told my friend Cheryl that I would get some pics of her little guy for his 2nd b-day present (and promised if I didn't get any good ones I'd buy him a real present). But I think it went really really well! Could not have asked for a better subject, really! They spoiled me for all future photo shoots.

I literally had about 75 images I was pretty pleased with! I know Cheryl was happy too, this makes me happy!

Amy & Davis came for a visit. I took their picture.

Moira dressed Grady up for a "hula party". Ha ha!

My college friend Susan and her little guy Andrew. I got to visit with them Saturday night b/c they are in Ohio from NY visiting Family

Moira's school BFF Carly. She came over for a play date and I took her pic

We HAD to get outside!

I didnt' feel like taking my new camera into the snow, this is my old point and shoot. Grady's first "walk" in our back yard!

Before bed just now, I spend about 10 minutes talking Moira through her anxiety about having bad dreams. I have lots of bad dreams so I understand. Chris never remembers his dreams so I guess she gets it from me. Tonight I told her we'd make her a dream catcher tomorrow to help catch all her bad dreams. She didn't exactly understand but seemed to like the idea. Hopefully it will help. The other day, she got up around 8 am and since Grady had eaten around 4 am, he was still sleeping. Moi came downstairs to our bedroom and was standing over the bed. She said "Mommy, I don't want to bother you, but can you just turn the tv on? Actually, it looks really cozy in here, can I get in bed with you?" She never ever comes down in the middle of the night or gets in bed with us at night, so this was kind of nice. She was telling me about her dreams, mostly about new episodes for Max & Ruby (note to self to call the producers with some ideas...). She also told me that she dreamed of easter and that she and Daniela were looking for easter eggs and the easter bunny brought them 2 chocolate chickens that they could have and didn't have to share. Tonight she told me all her dreams were bad and I said, what about the one about you and Daniela and the chocolate chickens and she said "I just didn't want you to be sad, all of my dreams are really bad". Only once in awhile does she call for us in the middle of the night though, knock on wood. We hardly ever hear her fussing at night. Also speaking of dreams Moira told me that she had a dream she and Grandma were playing and a real witch appeared. And she and Grandma were scared but then they put on hamburger costumes and danced around. The witch thought that was silly and danced away. End of dream.

Today I was putting Moi's shoes on and she said "Mommy you beautiful" with a big nice smile on her face. Then after thinking for a minute she said "But you aren't THAT beautiful. If you were a human you would be more beautiful, but you are much smaller than them". ???? Also, the other morning she came downstairs for the morning completely dressed (I usually have to prod her out of her jammies). She even had her glasses on. She announced to me "I am traveling to Far Far Away Land (from Shrek), maybe it will be Spring there." We are all so ready to go outside. We finally ventured outside in the backyard to the snow. Grady doesn't have boots and he wouldn't keep his mittens on so we didn't stay out for long.

Tonight before bed Moira said she wanted to kiss me all over from head to toe. I said "I wonder if you will still want to kiss me before bed when you are 13". I shouldn't have said this b/c she is very worried about growing up and not being with me. She said "I will always want to kiss you. When I grow up and get married and leave your house, I will still kiss you right before I leave". Then she started crying and said "Actually, can I just marry you? And Daddy can marry Grady. They can watch NASCAR and look at airplanes and you and I can go to the shopping mall and bake cookies". Not a horrible plan...

Can't remember if I told this on here, but the other day Grady was eating his bottle and he sat up and started looking around saying "ought oh, ought oh". I said "I wonder what is wrong" and Moira said "Maybe he wishes the house were more cleaner". Indeed.

For my reference, Grady has one molar in, top left.

Not much new with G-man. Walkin, working on talkin, etc. He has slept through the night for 2 nights in a row! We've had a bad couple of months with him being sick, seems like every other night at least he is up once. We'll see.

I have started practicing photography on my friends. Eventually I'd like to make it a bussiness,but no hurry, just doing it for fun. I uploaded some of my favorite friend pics so far.