A big girl named Grace

We taught Grace how to climb INTO her crib.
And you can guess what she learned after that, right?

(I have a great video of her tiny little self stretching her leg
over the side of the crib, but it won't post.)

What were we THINKING?!! I'm sure I don't know.

Favorite Grace-isms of late:

I'm a big girl named Grace.

My name is Grace. I'm 2.

I love it. It's my favorite!

"high-tights" (or something like that!) = tights

I love you really much.

"tiny girls" = triangles

It's my dream come true!

"oak-a-meal" = oatmeal

Daddy going to BigDonalds and get me a happy oak-a-meal!

Carver/Ellie/Lydia no love me (when they aren't nice to her)

I do it myself.

I need to find a boy.

That last one has a story behind it. A few weeks ago, I went to the temple with the teenagers in our ward. It was one of those nights I met Derek there and swapped cars so he could take the kids home. All the kids were excited to see the beautiful temple spire as we got close. Grace was most excited of all. She started exclaiming, "I'm going to get married in the temple!" and it became apparent that she meant sooner rather than later. As in RIGHT then. I told her she had to grow up some more and wait about 20 years. She insisted she was a BIG GIRL and that she wanted to get married in the temple. I insisted that she could not. She had to find a boy to marry anyway - Carver doesn't count in this situation. (She's always making him be the prince.) It quieted her for a minute, but she was still pretty sure I was wrong - or maybe she was just mad at me for being right.

After all, she is a big girl named Grace. She's 2. And that pretty much explains it all.

Bibbity, bobbity boo!

The kids had Friday off, so we headed to Costco after storytime at the library. I herded all four of them through the parking lot, where Grace picked up a stick and started singing “salaga doola, menchaga doola.” I plopped Carver and Grace in the cart, hoping she wouldn’t whack him with her newly acquired magic wand, and headed towards our free lunch by way of Superbowl samples. Somewhere in electronics, Lydia cries “Grace is putting the metal stick in her mouth!” Huh? What metal stick? Where would she get a metal stick? I finally looked at her and realized that she’s been swinging around something narrow, metal and about 2 feet long. I pulled it out of her mouth in a hurry and inspected the would-be food item. It was an OIL DIPSTICK. She had oil around the corners of her mouth and I was horrified that I didn’t have wipes with me to remove the evidence from her sweet face. I used my hands to hastily clean her mouth and tossed the terrible item in the cart. I tried to cover it with Ellie’s coat and high-tailed it to the nearest garbage can before anyone could wonder what on earth I had collected. I still don’t know how the heck an oil dipstick managed to break loose of life under the hood and find a new start in the parking lot of Costco. But honestly, the rest of the story makes perfect sense.