This big girl...

...is going to be a big sister! Little peanut is set to arrive January 9th.

Typical conversation these days:
Justin: "Grayson, do you want a sister or a brother?"
Grayson: "brother"
Justin: "Do you want a brother or a sister?"
Grayson: "sister"

Life expecting #2 is a bit more busy than life expecting #1 where I sat at a desk most of the day, but I've felt much better now that the first trimester is a few weeks past. We still have rough days though, like yesterday. Let's just say it was a bit challenging to train and discipline an almost 2-year-old while feeling exhausted. We did have this brief shining moment:

I threw dirty clothes down on the floor in front of the washing machine (we have stacked front loaders, wash is on the bottom, dry is on the top). Grayson was sitting there and I asked her to help me stuff things in. She picked up two items and put them in. I finished up loading the masses and as I was bent over, she came over, patted me on the back a few times and said "good job mama". I laughed out loud.

Pool Friends

A pool in town ran a ridiculously good deal on membership back in March, so we decided to join along with a few friends. John is missing from this photograph, but I finally got a picture of at least the majority of the crew. Left to right: Ollie, Anna Cate, Mac and Grayson, all one or two years old. It has been so much fun this summer. Grayson frequently says "go pool?", then "cups" soon follows because her favorite activity is to stand by the side of the baby pool and pour water in and out of cups and watering cans.

Here's Grayson and her BFF Anna Cate. Anna is four months older but Grayson is catching up to her on height. These girls love each other in a big way.

4th of July

Still catching up...

4th of July at Riverbank with cousins. It doesn't get much better. Playing in the baby pool on the dock, swimming in the lake, boat rides, eating dinner on the dock, Peeps painting the girls' toenails (Grayson for the first time), wearing red white and blue, staying up late and NOT crying at the fireworks. I lost the bet with Justin on this one because Gray didn't cry at the loud noise. I had to watch him eat a corn dog at the pool the next week without ordering one for myself and without asking for a bite of his. Seriously, our pool has the best corn dogs in town. It was a good betting prize, promise.

Happy Father's Day! (a little late)

Feeding the "duck ducks" at the bog garden. As a side note, Justin has taught Grayson how to blow on the duck call. Its comical.

Back in action...

Our computer is finally restored, so here starts my attempt to catch up on the highlights of the last month.

Grayson had her first tummy bug. To be exact though, for record keeping, she "frew up" on Peeps, as they were walking into the Barnes and Noble, 20 minutes after he picked her up so Justin and I could head out on a date night. Ewe. Let's just say that I about barfed AFTER MayMay 'returned her to sender' pretty well cleaned up and stripped down. She went immediately into the tub and then onto the couch. Thankfully there were no more 'incidents' at home and the slight fever passed on by in a day or two. I did panic a bit when I heard her say "uh oh" in the monitor at 4am, but it was a false alarm.

We went to Raleigh for the high school graduation of a dear friend Kristen (far left, Lauren her older sister is on the right). The girls were my "real life baby dolls" when I was a kid and they moved in next door. Grayson was enthralled by them. She also really liked her first BBQ and hushpuppies experience at the party.

She decided to take over this table in our kitchen as her new favorite playspace. I have since moved out the cookbooks to another shelf because daily she insists on playing in her "fort". Notice the woobi on the floor by her feet. She drags it all around this house and goes into full panic mode when I wash it to try to make it turn back to a normal color.

This picture is fuzzy, but she was admiring her new "high pig tails". Her hair has gotten so long and everyone comments when they see her on how blond she is turning.

She is still talking up a storm. Actually, its fairly non-stop. And she wants audience participation. Because she will repeat a word or phrase over and over and over and over until you acknowledge it and discuss it with her. "I sit down right here" and "mama/daddy sit down right here" are favorites. Equal to her obsession with motorcycles, which she calls "moto-si-kees" (with a long "i" sound).

Sailing

Sailing

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Grayson-isms

Lack of blog posts due to: crashed computer, lots of sewing, spending days at the pool, and chasing and trying to interpret toddler talk. There will be a lack of cute pictures until our computer is restored, but until then, here are some of our favorite words and phrases from this little person we live with. She is talking non-stop. And singing.

She counts 1 to 10, sometimes starting in the middle until you say "what's it start with?" and she goes back to 1.

She says most of her ABCs, but near the end, when she gets to "X", she thinks it sounds like "S", so she starts back over with TUV. So the end goes like this "LMNOP, QRS, TUV, WX...TUV, WX, TUV...". "Next time won't you sing with me" also has some strange paraphrasing, something like "ne ma won u sing me".

She loves to play ring around the rosey, and sings it without prompting like this: "Ro-rose, pockey (for pocket), ro-rose, ashes, ashes, all fall down!".

Maymay and peeps taught her the "little cabin in the woods" song, with some modifications so the hunter doesn't come to shoot the rabbit (eek). She can sing one full line out of it, "saw a rabbit hopping by, knocking at his door".

If she can't reach something herself, or wants help, or is just being resistant to cleaning up, she says "mama doov it" (mama do it) or "dada git it" (daddy get it). All Justin has to do is give her "the look" and she says "peas" (please) with those. The look doesn't work for me, so I have to say, many times throughout the day mind you, "how do you ask?".

"Taste peas" if she wants something off your plate. Especially if its ice cream, or a "foomie" (smoothie).

"Na-ma" is short for "another one". If you tickle one foot, she holds up the other and says "na-ma" until you tickle it as well. For as well as she is speaking and enunciating these days, she must think she's saving time on dropping two syllables.

You know you live in a house in the summer with a furry dog when your child readily says " see da-ha" (see dog hair). Same dog which she now calls "Maggie" instead of "ma-ma" and often calls her "Maggie Moosies" which we call her from time to time.

She calls herself "gra-ba" (Graybear), a nickname Aunt Kiki started when she was a babe. So we also hear "Gra-ba doov it", "Gra-ba hold it", etc etc.

Favorite toy these days is not just a ball, but a "beach ball".

The "th" sounds in words are usually replaced with "f". So we have "rain" and "funder" (thunder). It makes "thank you" a little tricky right now. On a good day it comes out as "fanky".

These are just a few of our favorites that we wanted to get down on record. She says so many new words each day that its just unbelievable. She's turning more and more into a little person instead of a baby and we are loving to watch and listen to it all (except when it turns whiny, fussy, or melts into a temper tantrum on the floor. Just to paint the real picture here. She is precious but she is also a toddler!)

Memorial Day Weekend

We headed to the lake with the Smith/North clan for 3 days of fun in the sun, I mean, rain.

We celebrated Maymay's birthday (or "happy to you" as Grayson sings) with mmmm good coconut cake with lime buttercream icing...

We got to eat a huge breakfast and play at a dear friend's house who had a sand and water table. Grayson pretty much thought it was the best toy she'd ever seen.

We played inside on the big green carpet with the rainy weather. This was a rare moment where all 3 kiddies were playing together, sweetly, without one or all getting distracted. I love how Jackson is right in the baby-doll-paraphernalia mix with the girls, and how Grayson is "feeding" him off of a measuring spoon.

We must have started running out of indoor play ideas because Aunt Ali turned into a jungle gym. Look at Grayson's face. Even though the pictures don't prove it, we DID get down to the dock, and all 3 kids did take dips in the lake. Even in the sprinkling rain on one day. Brrr, there was no way I was getting in. Thank goodness for daddys.

Justin taught Grayson to beatbox the week before this. At dinner one night at the lake, we all started beatboxing, but apparently Grayson thought Aunt Ali did it the best. Because now, if you ask Gray to beatbox, she passionately says "aunt a-y-ee, aunt a-y-ee, aunt a-y-ee" as if I'm going to go next door to Asheville and get Ali to come and beat box for her right at that moment. She also kept talking about "unca John-John" this week, to the point that now she calls our friend John-John, who's one-year-old mind you, "unca John-John". We stopped correcting her because it got so funny.

Stabas

The first time we went strawberry picking, she patiently held the bucket and would kindly wait until I handed her a berry or two to try. The next time, she caught on that she could rip them off the plant on her own. Now she eats her weight and can't be stopped. She roams the isles while I pick. When I check in on her, she's eating stems, green berries, smashed berries, whatever she can get her hands on. She loves it.



Check out her face in the picture below with Anna..mouth wide open wondering which berry she can devour next.

I knew it was coming...

This is Grayson's sleepsack ("seepsa"). It's a wearable blanket for those unfamiliar with the term. She loves it. Its her woobi. I love sleepsacks, but somehow my daughter got seriously attached to this one. A fellow woobi lover can understand this, but I knew we were going to run into a problem. Sleepsacks don't fit forever. So I've had an action plan in place for a while now. Get her a new sleepsack, cut this old one up, sew up the holes, and make it into a woobi. I bet I've had her new one for months now. But I kept putting off the inevitable. I sewed up the holes once already. New holes busted through, but I just kept zipping her up in it each night. She'd say, with a thumb in her mouth, fingers gripping her toes, "holes". I knew the time was coming. The problem is not so much the attachment, but that she holds her feet up in the air and loves on the end of the sleepsack. Hence the holes. So I dreaded making it into a woobi, because I knew she wouldn't have it around her feet anymore. Sounds crazy, but it was what she was used to.

But finally, last night, with much encouragement from Justin, I did it. I cut it up. Sewed it up decently, even keeping the holes "because she'll like that". Bedtime came, we pumped up the new sleepsack, she seemed excited. Then she cried. It was verging on a scream. I zipped her up in the new XL one (because she had to have something on her feet to hold, even if it was a new material), and she panicked. Even with the old-one-turned-blanket in hand. She cried "sleepsa" and through her tears I translated that she was saying "put on". Oh no. I held her and tried to explain. It didn't work. I almost cried myself. If I could, I would have ripped the stitches out and sewn the zipper back in right then and there. I had to leave her in her crib crying. I seriously had to leave the room and sit down for a minute. Of course she cried for about 5 minutes and eventually went on to sleep. And of course we repeated the same scenario at naptime today. She did try to drag the new sleepsack around the house with her old one and her woobi (yes, now she has two) this morning. I promptly took it and put it in the drawer. Because even though this one is giant, it won't last forever. And I don't want to have to sew it up into woobi #3 (um, never say never).