Christmas Photos (plus Gracie's 4 Year Shots)

I know that I am biased, but she is just so beautiful.

Stinker girl. She has her father's mouth. The girls resemble each other, but Gracie looks more like me and Ruby looks more like Andrew. Lucky Ruby is going to end up with straight hair where as poor Gracie gets stuck with my frizz.

I love this picture. Poor Ruby thought that I was going to leave for some reason when I put her down. She calmed down relatively quickly, but she can be a rather ridiculous baby. Gracie is my photogenic girl who has never been scared of a photographer.

 

Love! I didn't purchase this pose, but this is pure Gracie through and through.

 

Finally warming up to the experience.  She loved the chairs that they had for her to sit on.

Clap Clap.

 

Andrew liked this picture, but I don't think it even looks like Gracie. She looks happy, but her face is way too wide. I also have never had her pictures taken without her hair in pigtails, and I'm still not sure about it.

A perfect four year old picture. She looks so smart, so sweet, so curious, so her.

Are we done yet?

My turn Sister. 

LOVE. Dimple, naughty face, and scrunchy nose smile all in one pic.

 

Ha Ha.

Cheep Cheep

Gracie is incredibly smart but lacks focus. As in she can be talking to you and then get totally distracted in like a second. Sometimes this is good (because I can easily refocus her attention if she is misbehaving) but sometimes it drives me crazy. Surprisingly making bird feeders was an activity she really really got into. I was worried she would make a mess or loss interest, but she was so careful and excited. When we finished with our two feeders she wanted to make more! I do have plans on making feeders with cookie cutters/glycerin sometime this winter, but for now this was a much easier project. All you need is empty toilet paper rolls, peanut butter, and bird seed. When you are done you can just slip the feeder over a branch (you don't need to tie a string to hang it-it's that simple).

Rolling the feeder in bird seed (I did spread the peanut butter on-Gracie isn't quite ready to do that). Such concentration!

 

Gracie with her finished bird feeders!

 

Hanging her bird feeder all by herself.

"Where are the birdies?"

Our plans for later today are to make footprint reindeers to hang for Christmas. Gracie really loves projects and paint so she is thrilled. Hopefully we can keep the paint on our feet and the paper and no where else! Our finished product is supposed to look something like this, but we'll see (and I plan on doing just one of Gracie and Ruby D's feet so our reindeer will be different sizes).

Shake Shake

I have pinned a ton of ideas (my user name is sharingiscaring) to use with the girls. I still haven't decided if I am homeschooling Gracie or not, but even if she does go to kindergarten it won't be for a few years (she will be one of the oldest kids in her class). We are pretty good on numbers, starting to work on basic addition and subtraction, know all the upper case letters and most of the lower case ones, and great with imagination. Most of the things I want to do with her are crafts, basic science experiments, and a few sight word activities. I have been trying to find a program to order for teaching reading, but so far I haven't found what I think is the right fit. Gracie can already recite stories, follow print from left to right, look at pictures for context clues, and recognize a few words so I think if we took reading at a slow pace she could definitely learn. Until I figure out what I'm doing with that I think we'll just do a lot of crafts, baking (like always), and work more on our writing (one thing Gracie really does have problems with-poor thing can't copy letters/numbers except for i, t, 1, and 7). I am really intrigued by the idea of sensory bins, but I thought I would start small and make some sensory bottles and see how much they got used, what kinds of things Gracie liked, and how they used them. There are tons of examples out there if you just Goggle "sensory bottles." So far they are a really big hit. I have made five (four with water, one with shredded paper):

You can use any kind of bottle, but pretty much all I had easily available was water bottles. Make sure to hot glue the lid on once you have filled the bottle.
 First bottle: water, silver fine glitter, beads, mickey mouse buttons, fabric flowers, and two pipe cleaners
Second bottle: water, a few squirts of dish soap, some squishy balls. I might remake this one, because the lid isn't completely tight, and it probably should be full to the brim.
Third bottle: Water, vegetable oil, two drops green food dye. Baby oil is probably prettier, but I didn't have any on hand.
Fourth bottle: Water, glitter, two drops red food dye. 

Gracie's favorite bottle is probably the one with beads (she calls them pinwheels). She likes to look for the Mickey button and watch the beads go up and down. Ruby loves shaking the bottle with "bubbles" in it. The last bottle I made was kind of different. I had an empty vegetable oil container that I just put shredded paper in it (Gracie loved to feed the paper in the shredder) and then dumped a variety of objects. It's kind of like an I Find book in a bottle. Gracie has to shake it, turn it, etc. to find the items. So far Gracie has spent the most time playing with this one. I put in plastic dinosaurs, a plastic lion (for some reason she looks for this the most), a ball, another Mickey Mouse button, some random other buttons, and a shake of star sprinkles.

I really found making this pretty quick, easy, and cheap. The hardest part is gluing the lid on. If you get too much glue or don't line the cap up just right there may be drips. I think it would be nice to have different size bottles, but I used what I had. We've also made bird feeders in the past few days so I will post about that soon.

Family Photo Fail

So we got our pictures taken for the church directory tonight. They did not go well, but I wasn't surprised at all. Andrew scheduled our appointment for 8:20, because he didn't know how late he would get home on Fridays. Gracie and Ruby are usually getting out of the bath or reading stories at that time. Gracie actually was very excited and took great pictures (she is the photogenic one in the family). Ruby was hysterical the entire time I was straightening my hair and never really recovered. She would smile if I was looking at her, but she didn't want to look towards the camera or do anything except cuddle into me. I basically knew going in we were just going to get the free 8x10 (Merry Christmas Mom), but for some reason Andrew was disappointed. Whatever. If he wants to dress up in a few weeks when we go to Portrait Innovations and get Gracie's four year pictures/Christmas pictures of both girls I suppose I could do that. Maybe I would even be able to get a professional to straighten my hair. The girls outfits are adorable. Gracie has a grey sweater dress with a purple flower and Ruby has a purple sweater dress. They both had glitter tights and fancy black shoes. Wanda came over the other day and picked up the Raggedy Ann fabric I've had forever (it was Mary Ann's moms) to turn into pillowcase dresses for the girls. Yeah! That is what I plan on having their pictures taken in. I wonder if I could find red and white stripped tights. That would be cute. I love dressing little girls.

Five Star Day?

I am trying out a behavior chart with Gracie (like on Sid the Science Kid). Her five behaviors to work on are: helping clean the living room at night, being a good listener, going to nap when asked, being a good helper, and not screaming no at Mommy. She is usually pretty good about cleaning the living room if I give her very specific tasks, but a lot of times she just stops helping and starts playing instead. Completely normal behavior-just something that needs a little bit of work. As far as nap she tends to settle right down and go to sleep (except for once every few weeks when she just fools around and flips and talks and won't sleep-I hate those days), but the getting her to nap part is the problem. She is yawning and falling asleep on the living room floor, but she doesn't want to go to the bathroom or find Bun Bun or get her book. I think that her chart will help these two behaviors the most. Unfortunately the other three behaviors all go hand in hand and seem to be the biggest issue. Gracie can be a very good helper when she wants to be (especially with her sister) but sometimes when I ask her to do something she will tell me, "You can do it yourself Mommy." Yes I can, but that isn't the point; the point is that I asked her to. The biggest problem I have with her and the sticker I'm not sure if she can ever get is the screaming no at Mommy. That is just rude nasty behavior, and she doesn't seem to understand that. Politely telling me no thank you is one thing, but this is just flat out refusal, and it is usually when I am telling her to stop doing something that is clearly not allowed. Sigh. We're working on it (and she honestly doesn't do it as much as she used to) but I still get so frustrated. Yesterday we had a particularly bad day where she only got one sticker (cleaning the living room). Today she did a lot better and got every sticker except for one (no surprise which one that was). I wavered on giving her being a good listener, but you can't expect perfection out of a four year old. She just gets so distracted and unfocused and then stops listening, because she is concentrating on someone/something else. She is getting bigger and learning more every day though and for the most part she is a very good little girl. She helped picked out the prizes for getting enough stickers. After twenty five she can get either: jumping at the mall, ice cream, or a new book. After fifty she gets a play date with Mimi (that was entirely her idea). When I was growing up I had a sticker chart for chores. I loved those Dilly bars.

Oh Gracie, you're just too much.

Trick or Treat

I love Halloween. It is one of my favorite holidays. I am so happy that I have two little girls to dress up and take trick or treating. Gracie wanted to be a Gabba this year, but I vetoed that (umm, over thirty dollars for a costume-I don't think so). After a lot of consideration she decided that she wanted to be the tooth fairy and that Ruby D needed to be a tooth. Adorable! Gracie's costumes was pretty easy; I gussied up a cheap princess outfit with teeth I printed out and added glitter too. Ruby D's costume wasn't hard, it was just a pain. I drew a tooth on cardboard, Andrew cut it out, I sanded the edges, glittered it, punched holes in the sides, and then we used ribbon to attach it. I looked everywhere in town and couldn't find white pants (if you sell white sweat shirts you should at least have the option of white sweat pants-I get that kids are messy, but my girls have always ruined their shirts way before their pants.) So Ruby D ended up just wearing white tights, but her tooth mostly covered that up. I glittered their hair and put makeup on Gracie right before we went out. Gracie was so so excited. She kept asking to go to another house immediately after we would leave each doorway. We went around both our neighborhood and Mimis. They both came away with a huge loot! Their pumpkins got quite heavy. Ruby wanted to walk everywhere in our neighborhood so it took a long time to get from house to house. She was so funny picking out her candy, because she would just randomly pull something from the bowl while staring at the person giving out the candy. She was most excited when we walked by a "doggy!!!" After trick or treating we went to a friends house and put the girls in their pjs. Poor Gracie wanted to wear her costume "for the next three days." She woke up this morning and wanted to pick a piece of candy from her bucket for breakfast. Silly girl. I think I have all of the glitter out of their hair, but my bathroom is sure sparkly right now. 

Gracie was not sure she wanted to help scoop seeds out of the pumpkin. Daddy will carve, but he also won't touch the insides. Maybe Ruby D will help me someday. I finished scooping all the seeds out, and Gracie informs me that we need to roast them. Umm, what?! I have never in my life done this and have no idea where she got this idea. So I ask her, and she tells me, "Paula Deen did it on tv the other day Mommy." Oh of course, if Paula Deen did it then I guess we must. I Googled what to do real quick and shoved a baking tray of some in, but they came out pretty tough. Luckily Gracie mostly just wanted to "feed" them to her ponies.

She may not have wanted to touch the "goo" herself, but she sure thought it was funny watching Mommy.

Our finished pumpkins! Gracie picked out square eyes, a square nose, and a heart mouth. She also wanted a pony pumpkin, but we are not that talented in this house. She loved her pumpkin so much that she kept kissing it.

Ruby D is ready to get some candy!

The cutest tooth ever!

 
The beautiful tooth fairy. Although she told me and everyone who asked her what her costume was that she was, "a scary Tooth Fairy." I don't think giving out money makes you scary, but she was rather insistent. 

 
Mommy and her girls. Our neighborhood apparently has a ton of trick or treaters, but my treat bowl must have lasted for awhile. When we came home for the night there were two Whopper packages left in it and one on the ground. So far I have been very good about not stealing the girls candy except for Snickers which Gracie doesn't like and are too chewy for Ruby D. I don't want their candy to go bad though so I may have to help a little more. ;)

My Litty Pony Party

Dessert table. I made sherbet punch, vanilla and chocolate (Smooze) cupcakes, truffles, chocolate dipped and potato chips. We also had a fruit tray. Gracie was most excited about the Smooze cupcakes. She specially requested that I figure out how to make Smooze from the My Little Pony movie.

Close up of a Smooze. Devil's Food cupcake (I also use a mix for cake, and I like frosting in a can better than homemade frosting). I dyed vanilla frosting purple and used marshmallows with candy pieces for the eyes. They look silly and make me smile. I have a cupcake holder (the white one) that only works with the large cupcake liners so I made about sixteen. The vanilla cupcakes were in normal liners so we had twenty four of those.

The birthday girl!

Crazy Lady! She was waiting on her "boyfriends."

Gracie's pinata. Poor thing got pulverized by Uncle Nick and Uncle Joe. 

It wasn't a very big party, but Gracie was happy which was all that mattered. She got pony gifts from everyone and chased all the boys around. After her party we got pizza with Auntie Ann and Uncle Nick and they stayed for her bedtime. Her favorite presents are her My Little Pony storybook and her big pony which came with a hairdryer/hair accessories.

Gracie's Birthday Letter

Dear Gracie,

          How is it possible that my itty bitty tiny baby is four years old? You are still my itty bitty big girl. You have such a huge personality in your little body. You are such a joy to be around, and you make me smile everyday. You are such a people person. You have never met a stranger, and you love to hug and play with other children. For weeks you have been inviting random people that you talk to at the grocery store, Wal-mart, etc. to your party. Silly girl. You just very recently ended your Yo Gabba Gabba obsession (which lasted almost an entire year-you certainly are dedicated to the things you love) and fell in love with My Little Pony. You are such a kind hearted individual. You love your sister so much. You make sure that she is included in everything and always think of her. You share your food, your toys (mostly), and make sure she gets lots of hugs and kisses. Every night when we tuck you in you have to make sure you get your kiss from Ruby D. You are busy busy all the time and always always thinking. You are smart as a whip and have a mind like a trap. You remember everything. I love to watch you "read" your favorite books to your babies or make up stories of your own to the pictures for books you don't know. You know all your numbers (up to twelve), letters, shapes, and are starting to recognize some sight words. You are also a pro at opposites, singing, and helping me cook. You are a very good eater and always willing to try new things. Some of your favorite foods are kiwis, peanut butter crackers, cheese, noodles, lemon yogurt, and "green" ice cream (mint chocolate chip). You love "play dates" with Mimi and Uncle Nick. You would go to Wal-mart every single day if we let you. You are such a good girl at the store. If we tell you you can't have something you have never gotten upset or thrown a fit. You are fine with just looking. You go to bed every night without a fuss after you have two stories, prayers (you have learned most of the Our Father, Glory Be, parts of Hail Mary, and Angel of God), kisses, and we turn your radio on to 105.3. You sleep with Bun Bun, Foofa, Alice, and Strawberry. Your bed is just a little crowded. You still take your nap with Mommy and Sister every afternoon for at least two hours. You love to cuddle and are such a sweetheart. You try so hard to be a good listener. Three was a difficult year at times with you trying to assert your independence, but you have always been such a good girl. You want to be good and do the right thing. Sometimes you get a little mouthy and talk back, but you always apologize and try harder the next day. I'm so proud of the person you are and the person you are becoming. You are such an amazing little girl. So smart, so sweet, so funny, so crazy, so loving, so beautiful, so mine. I love you a bushel and a peck Gracie Lou MaGooGoo.

One year ago at your third birthday party (Yo Gabba Gabba themed)

At your fourth birthday party (My Little Pony themed). You were very involved in picking out your desserts. You told me your favorite part of your party was your Smooze cupcakes.

Some of my favorite pictures of you from the last year:

Your very first haircut.

One of my very favorite pictures of you and your sister together. I did not pose your legs at all-you both put them like that at the same time. :)