A Busy Girl!

I can't believe my blog is official a year old!  It's funny, I still remember the day I started it.  Grace was sleeping in her swing and I decided I would try to do as much as I could while she was sleeping, thinking I might get about half an hour's worth of work in, and she ended up sleeping for 2 hours!  It's amazing to think of the difference between now and then. 

We have been busy the last few weeks, but that's nothing new.  We got to try out our new camper for the first time 3 weeks ago, and we love it!  We camped near Ludington at a church family's "campground".  The have a bunch of land and set up various camper hookups on it and they also built a cabin there.  We go every year and it's always a lot of fun.  This year Grace had 2 playmates, along with her cousins.  Unfortunately, the trip started out a little rough for Grace.  On the way there we stopped for lunch and when Jeff was buckling her back into her seat he somehow got the chest clip for her seat pinched in her cheek.  She cried and cried and it left a big red mark that later turned into a bruise.  Once we got to the campground it only took about an hour for Grace to have her next big accident.  There is a pavilion with a cement pad under it where everyone kind of hangs out together and Grace had found a little chair just right for her and was lounging back in it and enjoying herself (it was actually really funny how she was sitting in it just like an

It was a rough weekend!

 adult relaxing!).  She decided to get out of the chair and kind of lurched forward and fell face-first onto the concrete.  She had a scrape under one nostril, another under her lip, and another big one at the bottom of her chin.  There was blood everywhere, but she recovered faster than I thought she would since this was really her first major fall.  I was afraid to take her anywhere for awhile since it looked like she had been beaten!  Poor little girl!

We went to Lake Michigan while we there and Grace loved it.  The water was FREEZING but she didn't care.  She would be shivering and shaking but would get so mad when we would bring her out of the water to warm her up.  I wish we had more opportunities to go to the beach since she loves it so much.

Lake Michigan 2011

Lake Michigan 2010

We were able to use our camper again two weeks ago when we held the First Annual Cross Country Camp.  We went to Sleepy Hollow State Park, just north of Lansing, and we had 34 people total who attended.  It was an awesome time and I think the kids had a lot of fun too.  Grace was the life of the party with some of the girls and there was even another Grace there who fell in love with her.  It's so neat to watch her interact with the runners and hopefully this will help encourage her to take up running when she's old enough. 

Cheering mom and dad on
while they play putt-putt golf
in Ludington.

Speaking of running, Grace is walking pretty well now.  She still crawls about half the time, but she really took off on her uninitiated walking in the last week.  The other night I was doing dishes and I looked behind me and saw her walking to me from the dining room table.  It took my brain a few minutes to register what I was seeing since we usually have to put her in a standing position and encourage her to walk to us.  She gets so excited when she's walking that she sometimes throws herself off-balance and drops to the ground :)  She has also started babbling a lot lately, but unfortunately it is at full volume all day long.  It's pretty hard to teach a 15 month old volume control.  Yesterday she was in her high chair and I took a phone call and when I got off the phone she was sitting there with her hand to her ear talking into the "phone".  I laughed so hard because of how she was imitating me and even making hand gestures.  She still hasn't said many understandable words, but she understands a lot of them.  She knows where her diaper is and can also point out chickens and sheep in one of her books.  Jeff gives her a big bear hug at night before bed and now she has started hugging back and going "grrr" like he does.  It's so cute! 

At her 15 month checkup she weighed 22 lbs, 6 ozs and was 30 1/4" long, both in the 40th percentile so she's starting to get up to average!  It's funny to watch her facial expressions when she gets her shots - she had to get three at this appt and after the first one she kind of made a pouty face and looked at the nurse like, "why would you hurt me like that?" but then when the nurse gave her the next one she just lost it and it was like she was saying, "OK, one was tolerable but any more than that is MEAN!" 

Last Saturday we visited my friend Jamie and her new addition, baby Kate.  She had triplets in 2007 that were born at 27 weeks and was blessed to have another baby girl.  We grew up next door to each other and have been friends since we were 4.  It was so cute to see all the kids together and Grace was fascinated with the older ones!

Four little miracles!

I think that gets us caught up on the last few weeks.  My sister is coming up from NC this week to stay for about a week.  Thankfully they were very lucky and even though they were only 30 miles from where Hurricane Irene made landfall they didn't sustain much damage and really didn't lose power for too long.  It will be so great to see the girls together, especially since they are both walking now.  I'm sure they will get into trouble!!