Catching Up

So I am REALLY behind on my blog, it's official.  Sigh - oh, well.  My to-do list is about 10 pages long these days and it seems like all I do is keep adding to it instead of crossing things off!  I guess I have a lot to cover in this post, but that also means lots of pictures! 
We celebrated Easter (wow, that seems like a long time ago) by driving to Ohio and visiting my cousin at her new house in Toledo.  They live right on the Maumee River so they have an awesome view.  Grace got to spend some time with her cousin Eliana - they were both so cute in their Easter dresses. 

Cake pop "chicks" I made for Easter

We celebrated my 31st birthday on May 3rd - Grace was so proud to give me the Gerber daisy plant that she and Jeff had picked out for me.  It was so cute!!  We went to dinner at Mac's in Saline with my mom, my sister, and her family and then came back and had homemade brownie ice cream sandwiches that Jeff had made.  They were AWESOME!

I wanted to take a picture of her
in this outfit, and she decided on
her own to stick her hands in her
pockets.  What a goof!

Track finished up in the middle of May - even though the season was much shorter than high school, it was really packed in there for about 3 weeks.  I think for 3 weeks straight I had a meet every other day so I wasn't getting home until 8 pm or later on those nights.  Overall it was a good season and I enjoyed it more than I did coaching high school, but I learned more than I really wanted to know about 7th and 8th grade boys.  They are NUTS!  So I had a break in coaching, but we're getting ready to start the cross country summer practices next week, so it was only a short one!

Modeling an outfit Grandma
made her for her birthday.

It's so hard to believe that my little girl is now two!  It still seems like yesterday when I was holding her in the hospital wondering how I was going to get through the next few days, let alone two whole years!!  We celebrated her birthday on the 12th, since her real birthday was on Mother's Day this year (I have a feeling that's going to happen to her a lot over the years!) and she had a great time.   It's amazing how much more into it she was this year just compared to last year.  My goal had been to make her a Chica cake (from Sprout) since that is her favorite character, but I didn't get home until 11 pm the night before her party (from a track meet, of course!) so I didn't have enough time/motivation to do it.  I felt guilty, but I don't think she cared!  She had no issues digging into the cake, as the pictures show! 

Getting excited about blowing out the candle
(not sure why she had her arms behind her head!)

Blowing out the candle

Digging in!!

Our birthday girl!

Over Memorial Day weekend we traveled up to Traverse City and Jeff ran in the Bayshore Marathon (I am SO glad that's over!).  We went up on Thursday afternoon and came home Monday evening.  I was little nervous how Grace would do sleeping in the camper since we haven't gone camping since Labor Day but she did great.  We were definitely putting her to bed later than normal but we didn't have any nights where she didn't go to sleep for 2 hours after we tried to put her down like the last time!  Jeff did awesome in his marathon.  It was his first one, so the main goal was just to finish it, but he really wanted to try to do it under 4 hours.  He ended up finishing at 3:41 and he felt great the whole time.  Grace and I were able to cheer him on at the 19 mile mark and at the finish - they had school buses that would drive you out to spectator spots so Grace got to ride on a school bus for the first time :)  We were lucky to get to see him as easily as we did - they have 3 different races that day for a total of 7500 runners so needless to say, it was pretty crazy!

Glamorous beach baby!

Grace LOVED the beach.  I don't know if there's any type of water this kid doesn't love.  Since we didn't get up there on Thursday night until after 6, by the time we had dinner we were just able to walk along the beach while the sun set, but on Friday morning we headed over there and I think she would have stayed all day.  The water was FREEZING but Grace was content to sit at the water's edge and play with her sand toys.  The best part of the trip (and one we still are laughing about) was how she acted that first day as we were walking down to the water.  It's slightly downhill, and it's all sugar-sand, so she was struggling a little bit to walk through it.  She kept saying "whoa, Chi-Chi, whoa" as she was walking (I should clarify that Chi-Chi is how she says Gracie).  We were dying!!  I told Jeff that if he ever started getting tired or discouraged during the marathon he needed to think of her saying that and he said it did help him during the race.  I just wish we could have gotten it on video.  On Sunday night we walked along the beach as the sun set, and Grace kept insisting on walking right along the water's edge.  She wasn't wearing a bathing suit, just normal clothes, and of course, she fell in :)  She handled it really well and it was pretty funny.  She was completely soaked from her waist down. 

Watching a storm roll in - it actually knocked
out power in the campground for over an hour!

Goofing off in the camper

Grace has definitely been going through a lot of changes/developments these last 2 months.  We did have a stretch for about 4 days where she went poo-poo on the potty each time she needed to go, but then she started pooping right before she would wake up from a nap or when we were out somewhere so we haven't had a streak like that since.  To be honest I haven't really forced the issue too much, and part of it is because I haven't had the energy or the patience to try to do a really good job of getting her to go on the potty more.  Plus, it's hard to be 30+ weeks pregnant and out in a restaurant or a store and try to take her into the bathroom and get her to go!  So, hopefully sometime by the end of the year we'll be able to be officially potty trained.

The other big change is that Grace has officially transitioned to a toddler bed.  I went back and forth about whether to just put her in a twin bed, but because of how little she still is and knowing that I would have to help her in and out of it, we decided to go with a toddler bed for now, and she LOVES it!  I'm really glad we got the smaller bed because I think she feels even more independent because she can get in it herself.  I was totally dreading the change, picturing her getting up every night and wandering the house or refusing to go to sleep, but she hasn't gotten out on her own except for one time when my dad was watching her and put her to bed.  I had asked the pediatrician when we went for her 2 year check-up if she had any tips and she told me to sit Grace down and tell her she's not allowed to get out of the bed unless mommy or daddy come to get her and that usually a first-born girl who's eager to please will obey.  I was a little skeptical that it would be that simple, but she was right (thank goodness!).  We just made the transition last Saturday so maybe there's still time for Grace to have issues, but hopefully not.

Grace still continues to amaze me with her developments.  She does not miss ANYTHING that you teach her, and her memory is incredible.  I'm going to have to start asking her to remember things for me :)  She has started to look at books by herself and tell the story to herself - it totally blows my mind.  She has a book of Bible stories that tell some of the "bigger" stories of the Bible in 2-3 pages each with a few sentences on each page, and the other day she had gotten the book out while I was working on the computer and was looking at the story of creation.  I heard her say "moon, stars, sun, earth" and she was looking right at the page where it says God created those very things!  I knew she knew what the sun, moon and stars were, but I had no idea she knew what a picture of the earth was! 
We've been doing a ton of landscaping around our house in the last two months so we've made a lot of trips to Lowe's and on one of our first trips there we saw a worker running a forklift.  Grace asked what it was and I told her it was a hi-lo.  Probably a month later we were there again and she heard the back-up beeping sound that one of them makes and started saying "hi-lo, hi-lo".  I couldn't believe it - I know for a fact that we hadn't brought up the hi-lo since we had been there and she completely remembered it!  Of course, whenever we hear a back-up beep from ANY vehicle she thinks it's a hi-lo :)  Another random development that just happened in the last 2 weeks is that Jeff and I have changed from "mama" and "dada" to "mommy" and "daddy".  I love hearing her call me mommy, but it's so sad to know that she probably won't ever call me mama again.  I wish she would give some warning before she does these things!!
I am now down to less than 5 weeks to go of this pregnancy (at least I hope so!!).  I had been doing pretty good with feeling okay and not having too many issues until we started getting the upper 80's and 90 degree days.  Heat is definitely not my friend!  It seems like any issues I had with my pregnancy with Grace I don't have this time around, but things that didn't happen to me when I was pregnant with Grace are happening now.  For example, my feet didn't grow or swell hardly at all when I was pregnant with Grace, and I had actually bought a pair of cute black sandals within a month of Grace's birth.  Well, those sandals can hardly be wedged onto my fat feet now!!  Even when it's not really hot I can tell that my feet are wider than they were a few months ago.  Sleeping has becoming increasingly uncomfortable too.  It seems like no matter how I lay, something is hurting.  I joked with Jeff that pregnancy wouldn't be so bad if I could just take my stomach off at night while I slept :)  It's hard to say that I'm ready to be done though, because now I know exactly how much work a newborn is, so I'm not as excited for this baby to come out.  Lugging around a bowling ball in my stomach isn't fun, but at least the work of keeping the baby fed and healthy is no real effort on my part!

28 weeks pregnant.  I forgot to take one
at 32 weeks so I'll have to wait until 36 weeks.

I'm sure I'm forgetting a ton of cute Grace-isms that have happened since April - I know I have some videos that I want to post on here, but I have to figure out how first :)  Hopefully I can get in at least 2 more posts before baby #2 arrives!