Second Post of 2010, and It's Not Even May!

Do not adjust your monitors. Seeing is believing. Yes, I'm back. Hard to believe, I know. But I have a few days off from work, and all of our SD cards are full, so now's the time to finally download some pictures and catch you all up on the past six months or so of life in the Teigen household.

It's a new year (OK, OK. We're almost five months in, but I like to think of myself as a glass-half-FULL kinda girl...), so I'm trying something new for picture sharing. Instead of posting pictures here, I'm posting them to our Windows Live account. Here's the address: http://cid-52d767639fdc418c.photos.live.com/summary.aspx

You'll have to set up a Hotmail account if you don't already have one. It's super easy. Then create a password and go from there. Once you've established yourself as a user, you can come back and view our online albums any time. I'll still use this blog to keep a record of Grace's developmental milestones, but please go to Windows Live to see photos.

So how does one sum up an entire six+ months of toddler development in a single blog post? I have nobody to blame except myself. My priorities have shifted in recent months and I have only about an hour of down-time each evening. Blogging is not what I want to do after being on the computer at work for 8-10 hours/day, and our weekends are even more full than usual for some reason. It's all about doing more with less these days, it seems. So here goes:

Potty Training: Done. Pretty much. It's rare for Grace to have wetting accidents, but she still struggles at times with pooping in the potty. In a given week, I'd say she chooses to poop in the potty at least 90% of the time. We can't even call the other 10% 'accidents' because after they happen, she usually tells us she didn't want to go on the potty. It's all about control, right? But she's getting there. In fact, most days she wakes up with a dry Pull-Up!

Growth/Health: Although Grace has a bit of a cold right now, she has been remarkably healthy this winter. She's had a couple minor illnesses, but only one especially virulent virus that kept her out of school for almost a week in January. Grace has always been an awesome sleeper and eater, plus she gets lots of fresh air and exercise, so it's no wonder she's so healthy! She's also growing like crazy. She weighs 27 pounds and wears size 3T in clothes. We'll be taking her to the doctor soon for her 3-year check-up, so we'll find out how tall she is then.

Vocabulary: There is no way I could list all the cute/funny/endearing/brilliant things that come out of Gracie's mouth, but here are some especially memorable Gracie-isms I just have to mention:

• Go 'way/Leave me 'lone! (usually spoken in frustration when she doesn't get her way; not that we condone it, but it is awfully cute.)
• Solly, solly. (sorry, sorry)
• Pease picka me up.
• He a mean guy? (Grace loves the villian in every movie she watches. She can identify the 'mean guy' right away but usually asks just to confirm.)
• Her is my friend.
• Us going bye bye?
• I wanna go to Gamma's house.
• Nu not a mean guy. (nu = you)
• Seeping Booty (Grace's favorite Disney princess)
• May I please be excused? (as in, from the dinner table. Yes, my heart beams with pride every time she says it!)

There are so, so, soooo many more but these are just some of our faves.

Interests: You might recall that right around Christmas, Grace was obsessed with all things Pocahontas. Well, after watching the movie approximately 46,982 times and being inundated with Pocahontas-themed Christmas gifts, she moved on to a new fixation: fairy tale princesses. My friends with daughters warned me that, like most little girls, Grace would eventually uncover an innate penchant for princesses regardless of our efforts to redirect her interests, but I figured that Gracie would be the exception. Alas, it's as if the love of 'pinky princesses' is embedded in little girls' DNA. It's not that Chad and I actively discouraged Gracie from playing with/taking interest in princesses, but we certainly did not encourage her in any way. Yet here we are, a few days after Grace's princess-themed third birthday party with a house full of new princess-themed toys, books, room decor, apparel, and even dinnerware (!), and it seems we've only scratched the surface of Grace's new-found fascination. I suppose there are worse things, right? :-)

Well, that's all I have time for tonight. Be sure to check out our pictures at Windows Live. As we add new pics to that site, I'll try to post little reminders here to let you all know. In the meantime, set up your account and bookmark the site so you can access our albums as we create them. Enjoy!

Halloween 2009

As I've mentioned in years past, Halloween is one of our favorite holidays. Each year, we decorate our front porch and yard in anticipation of all the trick-or-treaters who will ring our bell on All Hallows Eve. Of course, we love Halloween even more now that Gracie is part of the celebration!

Since Halloween fell on a Saturday this year, we invited my mom, Noelle, and her family to join us for a day of fun. Grandma Jan arrived first, so Gracie got to spend some 1:1 time with her before everyone else came. For a few weeks, Gracie was really into pretending she was a baby. Here she is, all swaddled up:



After everyone else got there, we went to lunch at Chevy's. Here's Gracie feeding Rubie some chips:



Wow. Apparently they wanted to share that one. Silly girls!



To occupy the little ones while our lunches were being prepared, the server brought out some coloring pages, crayons, and tortilla dough for them to play with.



Gracie was quite pleased with her tortilla-dough cookies:



After lunch, the girlies napped while B and I made gourmet caramel apples:







This is such a great pic of my mom and B:



Here are the guys, hard at work carving pumpkins:







I had to include this shot of Brenden comforting a terrified Rubie after she saw him dressed in his scary costume. It's too precious!



As a pre-cursor to trick-or-treating, we visited a local harvest festival. There were all kinds of fun activities for kiddos and their families to enjoy.

















RuRu doing the chicken dance. It was so funny, she literally drew an audience:



This is Queen Gracie perfecting her bumblebee flying technique:



I thought this was a great family photo:



... and a nice one of Grandma and her grandkids:



Seriously? Have you ever seen a sweeter bumblebee?





I would like to take this opportunity to share some of our spooky Halloween decorations.

Marcus the Carcass:



Squash Face:



Vomitron:



... and some other decorations behind Grandmother Willow and Buzzy on their way out the door:



First stop: Our next-door neighbor Jake's house.



Grandma really is a good sport! She wanted to surprise the kids by wearing a costume of her own, and this is what she came up with. She made it herself! We all got a kick out of it.





The rest of us weren't quite as creative:





I don't think I'd want to run into this guy, alone in a dark alley:



What a haul!



Their candy buckets got so heavy, they couldn't even carry them anymore!



Now for the best part: Taking inventory of the loot. Grace's favorite treats this year? M&Ms



There's nothing like a day of fun to wear out a couple of little ghouls:

PS: I was worried about how to get rid of ALL that Halloween candy without Gracie having a major meltdown, but it turns out it wasn't a big deal. She forgot about her candy after a couple weeks (up to that point, we let her choose a piece after dinner a few times). In fact, I think there's still some up in a cupboard somewhere, but thankfully none of us thinks about it anymore. Crisis averted!

Pumpkin Patch 2009

Before Grace joined our family, I had no idea there were so many pumpkin patches and harvest festivals in our area. Each one offers something unique, so it was quite the decision this year to choose the farm we wanted to visit. Ultimately, we (and the Sages) opted for the Fall Festival at Liepold Farms way out in Boring, OR.

In addition to the standard-issue pumpkin patch and corn maze, there was a whole kids' entertainment area. Here's Chad taking Gracie through the children's mini-maze. Grace loved her glow stick necklace:



... and here she is on a John Deere "triketor" (get it? trike + tractor = triketor):



... riding the merry-go-round:



... and peeking through the playhouse window:



Here we are just being silly:





Both kids really enjoyed riding these ponies. It was great because the ponies got to freely walk around in a field rather than around in a circle while tied to a hitch. We learned that all of the ponies were rescued from abusive/neglectful situations, and the cost of each ride went toward future rescue efforts.





Look what GG found!



Chad with Ben sitting on a GIANT pumpkin:



"Come with me!"



Even Baby Maddox got in on the fun this year:



Shortly after we took this picture, Gracie jumped in a huge mud puddle and got drenched. Luckily, we came prepared with an entire change of clothes (including jacket):



These pumpkins were just her size!



Mama and Gracie on the hayride out to the pumpkin field:



Two little pumpkins hitchin' a ride:



Ummm, would you like some help with that?



I love how she picked one of the only non-orange ones:



What a great day we had! Can't wait to go again next fall!