Adventures in Gracieland

 

She is our little morning baby.

Even in just a couple of weeks, Gracie went and changed on us again. She is officially the queen of rolling. At first, she could only roll from her back to her stomach and then she was stuck. Now, she can roll from her stomach to her back, but she can only roll in one direction since one of her arms is stronger than the other. It's quite comical. One minute, she's in the middle of the blanket and we look up briefly and then look back down to find her in between my chair and the recliner.

She thinks Daddy is the most hilarious and the most interesting. I love watching her watch him as he gets excited during a football game or when he plays games with her. Her favorite game right now is when he scares her; you would think she would cry, but she just laughs and laughs and she even giggles in anticipation of being scared.

I have really missed Gracie this weekend. Weekends are her time with Daddy because that's when I book the majority of my photo sessions. They just sit together in his chair and he plays video games, watches movies or just plays with her for a long time. He'll even get on the floor with her and play with her and roll and slide her around everywhere. She is definitely his little buddy. He thinks that she will love watching football with him because she'll be excited to see Daddy so worked up over the game. I completely envision them yelling at the TV together. 

I miss living in an actual house, especially the one on Pennsylvania because in that house was where we had our sweet talk about wanting to start trying to have a baby. That's where all of my visions of our children grew. I imagined a child running around the fenced in backyard, playing with bubbles and Bruno. I saw a blond child sitting on the steps of the porch in front of the house, reading a book or watching the cars go by or the sun flicker away. Don't get me wrong, we are incredibly blessed to be in this apartment and to have found it so quickly after the tornado. It's just never where I envisioned raising a child. But, at the same time, it is our home. I have "my" chair and Josh has "his" seat. I created Gracie's room in this apartment and she'll be able to look back on the photographs of her very first bedroom that was Alice in Wonderland themed. We spend all of our mornings cuddling and playing with Gracie in our king sized bed as the light tries to peek through our only bedroom window that we've shielded with a thick blanket. This apartment is where I was in labor for three days, standing in the dining room swaying through the pain or curling over the couch to try to find some relief and try to sleep for just a few minutes. We brought Gracie home to this apartment, scared and worried about our first night home. 

While we have all of these beautiful memories at the apartment, I can't wait to buy a house and make it our own. I want Gracie to have any kind of room she wants; maybe something with a little reading nook or a big chest with costumes and dresses so she can be a princess or anything she wants to be for the day. And I want a big back yard with a pool big enough for Gracie to love and enjoy and swim like a little fish. I also want to be those people that leave Christmas lights up all year. Josh seems to be under the impression that he would never put up Christmas lights on the house, but maybe it'll sound better if Gracie asks him with those eyes so that he can't say no. I also want lots of big windows to let all of the sunlight fill up the house.I know some of these things are not very luxurious; I just want some small simple things for Gracie to look back on when she's older and hopefully say what a fun childhood she had.

It amazes me how much I want for her. I find myself blowing through paychecks and being broke incredibly soon because I want Gracie to have everything. Everyone around me is the same way. Her Nana always brings her new clothes and stuffed animals. Her Grandma Gigi has a house full of toys, including a bouncy house, that she's not even big enough to use yet. If she is crying, Daddy will immediately pick her up, play with her or cuddle with her. He has said before that he knows she'll be able to get anything she wants and all it will take is her huge smile.

Every day has such new meaning to me these days. Gracie and I have what I call our girls days while Daddy is at work and we just hang out together. She watches cartoons long enough for me to eat a quick breakfast. We play and giggle and eat throughout the day. Most days, we do lunch with Grandma Gigi's work or somewhere in town. Sometimes we go shopping at thrift stores or the grocery stores. I love how she is when we are riding around in the car. One minute, she is alert and looking around and the next, she is passed out asleep. Sometimes she'll sleep through Wal Mart or whatever store I'm in and she just completely surprises me by that. As long as she has eaten something and doesn't have a dirty diaper, she loves to be out and about.

{InsMOMnia}

It's 6:30am. I heard Gracie rustling around and talking to herself around 5:30am. We did our usual routine; I said hiiiiiii to her in my soft silly voice, changed her diaper, laid her down with daddy while I prepared her early first breakfast, fed her and then put her back to sleep in her crib. She is developing such a personality in everything, even when she sleeps. Her new thing is to roll on her side immediately after we've put her on her back. For the past week, she has ended up on her stomach in the mornings. I think she might be a stomach sleeper like me. Although right now, she hates it because she doesn't have the arm strength to roll back over, so she gets a little Hulk angry when that happens.

After I put her back in her crib to go to sleep, I laid in bed and played on my phone for a bit, listening for Gracie to make sure she had fallen asleep. I know I shouldn't do this because then all the synapses start firing off in my brain and I can't stop thinking about EVERYTHING. It's like trying to wind down at the end of the night all over again and my brain goes off on all kinds of tangents. Some of those tangents include: what I want to make for breakfast in the morning, is the weather going to be cool enough for a cardigan today, is my truck going to be up and running, my face feels gross because I forgot to wash my makeup off before going to bed, backtracking throughout driving the last few days and trying to think if I saw any new & neat spots for photos, thinking it's been too long since I've had Hackett Hot Wings, wanting an iPhone, needing to get chalkboard paint and frames for Saturday, how ratty my hair feels from having it curled earlier, needing some new pillows and suspicious that Josh took one of my "good pillows," and then the one that got me out of bed this morning, "I haven't written anything in a long time. Why not write at 6:30am while everyone is asleep?"

I like to think my best thoughts usually come to me when I am going to bed late or in the wee hours of the morning around this time. I don't get to write weekly like I did when I was pregnant and I wish I could because I don't want to forget the pretty bitty baby years. I think that's why I take so many pictures because they can convey what I want to express without having to sit for thirty minutes or an hour to write out what going through this mind.

I have been awake to see the sunrise turn from blue to pink to red in the mornings after feeding Gracie, but I've only got to see it through slitted, blurry eyes. Now I am sitting her in "my" chair and watching the sunrise change through the closed blinds in the living room. I remember when I was working this time last year and driving to work into the sunrise. And now, here I sit a year later, enjoying it in the comfort of my own warm home. It's truly amazing how life can be so different in just a year, in nine months, in three and a half months, in three days.

Gracie is ever changing. Just when we think we have her figured out, she goes and changes, and again it takes us quite some time to try to "get" her. Each new stage makes me forget the last one. My favorite is all of the smiles and real reactions to people. I can vaguely remember what it was like when we would get a gassy, not so genuine smile. Now, she reacts with a smile and cooing to voices and faces, especially her daddy. When he gets off work, she is all smiles and he holds her and plays with her the rest of the night. I hear her talk with him more at night than I do the entire day.

Our tiny little 13ish, possibly 14ish pound creature has made us ever changing, too. I have exchanged a non-mom faux tan leather purse for a bulky green and brown diaper bag that has on occasion held clothes soaked in pee, diapers that can't be disposed of till a later moment, spit up covered blankies, teething tablets, tylenol, and hand sanitizer. Gone are the days of carrying anything I wanted in my monster purse, like my old iPod, a book to read if I am bored waiting somewhere, a journal for random thoughts, oodles and oodles of old Christmas/birthday cards, "important" mail or things I needed to keep/remember for later. A lot of these things would be forgotten about and rediscovered later. Now, everything in the diaper bag has a purpose and a need. When we prepare to go somewhere, even the store, it's like preparing for battle. Formula: check. Change of clothes for baby: check. Socks and pants in case it is cold at the house we go to: check. Sunscreen: check. Butt paste if bitty gets a stealthy diaper rash: check. At least TEN diapers: CHECK. That last one is a big one because one day, she went through five diapers in a matter of half an hour to forty five minutes. You learn (okay, I have learned) to get past poop with a quick glance and I move on with my life. Not my husband...poop and spit up still repulse him and get him gagging like a cat dealing with a hairball. Granted, yes, there are some not so great dirty diapers that are literally exploding out the sides, but that's the beauty of wipes: you can use as many as needed. At least Gracie is a lady about it and she crosses her legs when her "business" is happening.

Gracie is utterly beautiful and magnificent to me. Everything she does is fascinating. I cried yesterday morning when she put her hands around her bottle and held it herself. I got weepy about a week ago one morning when we found her sleeping on her stomach. She had rolled from her back to her stomach and we didn't get to see it because we were sleeping. Now, when we're awake and she's lying on one of us, she is always try to roll away. I look back at old pictures, I say old being three and a half months, and I am in awe at how much she has grown. Her skin isn't red and squishy anymore. Now she is porcelain with soft cheeks. Her hair has changed from almost jet black to strawberry curly blonde. And her eyes...wow. So blue. She is so aware of everything around her and if we are someplace new, she is absolutely awake and looking around at all of her unfamiliar surroundings.

I heard Josh's alarm go off about twenty minutes ago. Mornings are Gracie's happiest time and my favorite time. If Josh is still here when she wakes up in the morning, I get Gracie out of the crib and bring her in our bed with us to play. She sits on my stomach and smiles while I nibble on her toes. When she hears daddy's deep voice, she shakes with excitement and puts her hands to her face, hiding her big toothless smile. He'll hold her to his chest or high up in the air and she just coos and laughs at him. Morning are what I live for and what I love. I dream of the time when she can get out of bed herself and crawl into bed with us. Right now when she does occasionally sleep with us, we have her in between us. I bet when she's older and comes to our bed in the mornings, she will go to her daddy's side.