18 months of Grace

My mom is the best. Whenever my siblings and I would comment on us growing up like "isn't it SO WEIRD that you have kids that can drive?" and "isn't it SO WEIRD that your youngest is in high school?" and "isn't it SO WEIRD that you and dad are about to be empty nesters?" her reply was always something along the lines of "No, that's not weird. That's just life." I kinda loved that response.

Despite the fact that it was often me asking those questions to her, I have found it is a slight pet peeve of mine when the whole world marvels that their children grow up so fast. Because actually, everybody just grows one day at a time. Wouldn't it be more marvel-worthy if 18 months later your newborn was still a newborn? After 18 months it really shouldn't be SO WEIRD that I have a child that can run and talk and sport a sassy attitude. It took her 18 months to get there and yeah, it feels like she's been with us for 18 months. So I get my mom's response. But who knows, maybe 16 years from now it will be SO WEIRD that my baby is driving a car?!

All of that nonsense aside, Grace has hit the notable 18-month mark (notable probably only because she can now officially attend nursery and not because 18 months makes her eligible for baby voting or anything). As with all my other update posts, time has only made her better and made us love her more. I foolishly quit doing monthly updates when she hit 12 months either because I was lazy or because I ignorantly assumed she wouldn't change from 12-18 months. Well, it WAS lazy of me and she did change. A LOT. I can't go back and give you her progression but I'll tell you what she's up to these days. And it is mucho.

Let's begin with her words. She has recently-like within the last few weeks-greatly expanded her vocabulary. She has taken a keen interest in reading books with me and trying to say new things. She's bright and very teachable. This explains her 96th percentile head.

She says all the following (although a few of the words are really only understood by us)

• mama
• dada
• papa
• grandma (kinda)
• baby
• baba
• Elmo
• stroller
• shoes
• doggy
• meow
• please (sounds like "deeeee")
• thank you (only recognizable in the context of the situation, like when you hand her something or she hands you something)
• cracker
• blueberry (it's a stretch but I'll give it to her. Sounds more like "buoy be")
• more
• night night
• bye bye
• hi
• ooh ooh ah ah (monkey....or when you say Uncle Mikey and that sounds close enough to monkey)
• quack quack
• bird
• bus
• car
• nose
• hot
• cold
• tree
• ball
• no
• all gone
• calculator (okay, not really, but she makes a strange conglomeration of sounds that we do actually know means she wants her orange calculator)

She recognizes and can point to:

• nose
• mouth
• teeth (she chomps her teeth together)
• tongue
• ears
• eyes
• hair
• belly
• toes
• fingers

She will also do her impressions of:

• laughing
• crying
• silly
• mom sneezing (seriously, every time I sneeze-which is a lot if you know me-she mimics me)

Specific Grace-isms

• She is OBSESSED with stairs and chairs. Everywhere we go-the museum, the library, the park-she always wants to be walking up stairs or steps or curbs or onto the bases of lampposts or anything that goes up and down OR she is sitting on little chairs, wanting to sit on big chairs or benches, sitting on steps or curbs or the bases of lampposts or anything that can be used as a chair.
• She thinks hiding in corners keeps her safe. Whenever we say we're going to change her diaper or it's time for night night and she doesn't agree, she runs herself over to a corner and backs into it.....as though this is a game of tag and she's reached "base" so she's safe and we can't touch her.
• She chatters nonstop. Because she does say so many words, when she jabbers people look at us like she's speaking coherently and they just didn't catch that last bit. But we don't know what she's saying either 90% of the time. She just likes to talk. And sometimes when James gets home from school she'll just follow him in and out of rooms jabbering constantly. She's probably telling him all about her day with me. Who knows.
• As mentioned above, she says please....kind of. We have really been working with her on this one, because when she wants something she immediately gets so exasperated and screeches or moans or cries or flops or whatever. So we stop and ask her to say "please." She almost always does. And recently she's gotten better about saying it without prompting. This may come after she screams for several seconds and then looks at us all impatient-like and says "deeee! deee!" And sometimes.....SOMETIMES she will just start with please ("deee") before she screams. Unfortunately, it is so cute to hear her say it and her face is so cute when she says it that we're having a really hard time not giving her whatever she wants just because she says please. So, we'll have to work on that.
• She has turned into a TV girl. Maybe I shouldn't be proud of or excited about this but I am. Because it means I can get her to sit still when I need to do her hair or just chillax. Her absolute favorite is Sesame Street and we actually didn't purposely teach her to say "Elmo," but she watched enough TV I guess that one morning James went to go grab her out of her crib and she just pointed at her stuffed Elmo and said it! Many of you have probably seen her dancing to Elmo singing "Letter of the Day" on my instagram. She gets very excited and often dances along. She also likes Daniel Tiger and Super Why.
• She also loves shoes, her stuffed "bebe" and real babies, cereal, eating on her own/trying to stab with a fork and scoop with a spoon,  mama (I actually don't like this when moms put this down, but she really has become quite partial to me because she is now with me ALL the time. Yay!), doggies, climbing on the couch, being outside, pushing her doll stroller, drinking from big water bottles, cups, and drinking fountains, talking to herself in the mirror, and lots of attention. She's the best.

And even though it's not SO WEIRD to me that after 18 months Grace is 18 months old and does things an 18-month old does, she herself is a pretty cute weirdy. So here are a few of her weirder pictures that didn't make it to my instagram:

Practicing a speech

Photo cred to Uncle Stevie

Copying dad's stretches

Sweet ride, sweet shades, and a cat in each hand

Okay, I'm responsible for this one. I made her hair do that.

You know Subway's slogan: Eat feet fresh

Dress-ups in blankets

Dress-ups in hats and headbands

Dress-ups in...nothing

Towel head

This picture really isn't that weird but it makes me laugh so hard

Just eating raisins in her crib

Just...yeah.

There is no caption.

James asked if she was about to sneeze. No, she was not. I cannot remember what was happening in this picture and I took it this morning.

Europe Part 1: London and Wales

Once upon a May 1st (has it really been a month!) we went to Europe. What occasioned our trip?

Desire.

AND we wanted to spend money while we still make money since James is headed back to school in the fall and you know what that means? Negative money.

AND in early celebration of me finishing my two-year ultrasound program this July.

AND because going to Europe won't get any easier in the future with more childrens...whether we take them with us or try to find someone to watch them.

But MOSTLY, mostly we went because we desired too. And that is awesome.

Initially we thought we'd hit up Spain, England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Italy, and a few other places. Obviously we didn't think that for very long. So we narrowed it down to:

• England/Wales
• Switzerland
• Italy 
• France

Still people said we were cramming in too many places for a 16-day trip. To those people, I say it was perfect. Exhausting, yes. But perfect.

For anyone who followed my instagram/Facebook feed during the trip, #sorrynotsorry if some of this is a repeat.

I would first like to take this opportunity to say that while I have done my fair share of complaining about all the traveling James did while working for McKinsey & Company, the fact that all those miles reduced our tickets to Europe to a mere $216 (that's together, not each, mind you) was A.M.A.Z.I.N.G

ENGLAND

London

After sleeping 8 hours on our 10-hour direct flight (yay Delta!) we landed in London and promptly took our first of many selfies.

We found it only fitting to begin our fortnight of foreign feasting with fish and chips. And for as nasty as fried fish and fries with salt and vinegar may sound to some of you, it was actually quite good. But as James has said many a time, "there's a reason you don't see a lot of English restaurants in the U.S." 

We walked along the Thames and had a staring contest with the London Eye.

  Our first full day of the trip (and only full day in London) began with a free Sandeman's tour (highly recommend it, especially if you get our tour guide) of the city. Rachel said she was from Shropshire, England and asked if anyone had been there. I don't think anyone else had been there much less heard of it, but of course Elder McKean had been there. She immediately loved James and used him throughout the tour to teach all of us about the Battle of Trafalgar and Henry VIII's wives. And no, James wasn't King Henry in that role play; he was one of the wives.

In Trafalgar Square. Rachel is an actress who does odd jobs like leading tours to pay for her acting. She made the tour wildly entertaining. 

Just being a wife.

This is where Henry tells Anne of Cleves (James) that she can marry whomever she pleases because he just doesn't really "like like" her like that.

National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. Aka art museum. Aka we walk in and all of the sudden our feet are killing us and we're about to fall asleep. Not the most exhilarating part of the day. But I liked Monet's impressionistic art.

"The gift horse" statue with the stock market feed streaming around the ribbons of the bow. Rachel says they're going to put a statue of the queen there when she dies and this is just a place holder.

Clubhouse for one of the most exclusive clubs in the world. You have to be an expert in your field, pay ridiculous amounts of money I think just to be on the waiting list, be unanimously voted into the club by all current members, and if even one club member doesn't want you in, it's called being "black balled" and you can never reapply for membership. What the?! So ridiculous.

The Queen's Guard. Aka The Marching Band.

St. James' Palace I believe? Rachel made fun of the architecture of this building saying is was built during a transition period from castles to palaces, so it has the appearance of both. It is currently in use.

Prince Charles is in the back seat. Not a planned part of the tour as you can imagine.

Buckingham Palace. If I remember correctly, it was built for the Duke of Buckingham with money he owed the monarchy. It was also bigger than the palace where the royalty lived. So they done took it away from him.

Cool gates leading into a park we walked through whose name I can't recall.

View of the London Eye during daytime from the park we walked through.

There's that clock everyone associates with London! It's name isn't Big Ben, but the little bell inside it is named Ben.

 

Westminster Abbey

Gotta get in some pictures of them double-decker buses.

Houses of Parliament and random helicopter landing.

Post free tour we went to lunch, the London Tower, dinner, and Les Mis. Pretty rocking one day in London, I'd say.

You don't see this in Salt Lake very often.

Eye spy a ferris wheel and a blue double-decker.

Nando's for lunch. Afro-portuguese food....because that's a thing (?!) and because the best English food is not English food.

Tower Bridge

London Tower from across the river.

This is where they keep the Crown Jewels such as crowns of course and scepters and other things drenched in diamonds and rubies. Pretty cool, but they don't let you take pictures.

Castle toilet.

First ice cream of the trip. I believe we made a goal this day to eat ice cream/gelato EVERY DAY of the trip. We failed, but once we get to Italy you'll see how on other days we made up for those days sans ice cream.

Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square. The platform where he stands once held a dinner party of 40 guests. That's how big it is. 

Classic.

Dinner in London was Mediterranean. Hummus with chicken, guac, pita, and a falafel salad. Mm. mm. mm.

Third row seats right in the middle. Woot woot!

I basically cried every time Javert sang.

The square just outside our hotel.

I shouldn't point this out, but it will become painfully obvious to you that nearly every morning of this trip we ate some sort of bread and chocolate.

Still in England.......

Second full day was our 3-year anniversary. We left London and unfortunately spent most of the day driving a rental car with the steering wheel on the wrong side of the car and us driving on the wrong side of the road! Welcome to England! Luckily James took care of the driving since he has an English license. We stopped at Stonehenge, in Telford (James' first area on his mission) and then had dinner with some of James' converts Rachel and Alex.

Can't get any closer than this.

It's amazing how long these big boys have been around.

                                                                          Two days and two ice creams. Success.

                                                                                  His first home in the field. 

A church in Telford. No, not an LDS chapel. 

Let's be honest...I took this picture of James so I could show you that their trash can says "litter." How cute is that?

The wickedly delicious dinner made for us by Rachel and Alex. The salad dressing bottle was simply labeled "Salad Cream." I liked that. And it. And them. And Wrexham where they live.

Dessert to match. That cake tho...

A picture of a picture of lovely Rachel and the greatest American Rachel and I know....besides Bruce Willis. Because apparently Rachel loves Bruce Willis.

L to R: Alex, hubby, Rachel, Rachel's hubby Chris. Such genuinely nice people with awesome accents that I felt privileged to meet and really enjoyed talking with....even if I was nodding off because I was still so wimpy and jet-lagged. 

WALES

After late-night driving on windy winding roads and a deep sleep in our cute little Bed and Breakfast, we awoke to a traditional English breakfast and this adorable little place called Llanberis, Wales (Double ll is pronounced like a c?). All the signs were in English and Welsh and everything about it was quaint.

Our little B&B behind us.

Just across the road was this lovely lake. 

We hiked Mt. Snowdon, the tallest mountain in Wales, or so the hubby tells me so. It was scenic and the weather was comfortable and cooperative. We picnicked at the top on a strange assortment of gummies, cooked carrots, rhubarb granola bars, and leftover rolls. Not our tastiest picnic.

                    

                             People stuck all sorts of currency in this tree trunk. Cool and random.

At the summit! Looks like my biceps and sheer grit got me up this mountain. And in case you hadn't noticed, James is really good at taking selfies of us.....

Kebabs in Manchester.

 And ice cream, of course. 3 for 3.

This street where we got dinner is called the "Curry Mile" because of all the South Asian and Middle Eastern restaurants that line it.

Our trusty rental car and its handsome driver.

No Dollar Tree in England, but they do have Poundland. Haha.

And on that anticlimactic note, we headed to our hotel and called it a night, because early the next morning we had adventures awaiting us in Switzerland.....