Eleven months of Grace

We all have our New Year's resolutions. Even Grace. I'm convinced that she decided after spending the majority of 2015 as an unusually serious baby with furrowed brows that she would try her best in 2016 to charm us with her newly discovered laugh and smile. As though we're not already charmed. She is the light of our lives and every month gets better.

Showing off her baby Nikes. Thanks, Tyler and Mandy :)

This is after she ate half my plate of spaghetti.

What? Sometimes/all times they're more entertained by things that aren't toys. Don't judge.

At Grandma and Grandpa McKean's house she turns into Gracezilla and devours all the townspeople.

Here are some pineappley tidbits about what miss Grace Elizabeth is up to these days:

• As mentioned, she has just started this scrunchy-nosed, squinty-eyed smile, often accompanied by an almost forced laugh. She practices all the time.
• She is dancing and it is hysterical. It normally involves wide eyes, jutting out her (three) lower teeth, bouncing on her knees until she loses her balance, and flailing her arms.
• She is also totally into nodding her head. Don't know where she picked it up, if she has any idea what it means, or if it's just a constant dance move. Whatever it is, it is also hysterical.
• She is the master eater of things that I wouldn't expect a baby to eat. And by that I mean SPICES!. She gobbles up my fajitas, spanish rice, seasoned potatoes, spaghetti, pizza, cajun chicken, you name it. The more cumin and chili powder the better! She is also currently in love with canned peaches and chocolate.....not that we've given her much...just sometimes chocolate ice cream when she wakes up at midnight and we welcome her to our late-night party.
• She is standing against everything, walking along furniture, and finding herself accidentally standing on her own for a second or two until she panics and cautiously lowers herself to the ground.
• Her favorite toys are my phone and the remotes.
• She is all sorts of defiant and knows what she's doing when she lifts her bites of food high up in the air, reaches her hand over her tray, and drops it to the ground. Or she stuffs it in her bib pocket or on the side of her pants in her chair. I usually get frustrated or I laugh. Both of which are reactions she likes, neither of which will stop her.
• She is cutting her 5th and 6th teeth currently, both up top. Joy of joys.
• She can pull her headbands off and she does. And that makes me sad.
• She can pull her socks and shoes off and she does. And that also makes me sad.
• Grandma McKean taught her to raise both hands in the air when we say "Sooo big."
• She gets the biggest smile on her face whenever she hears the theme song for Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood.
• We've heard several people say this past month that they're seeing more of James in her. Whether that's because her hair is lightening up or because she's still got those beautiful blue (gray?) eyes I'm not sure. But she's the cutest.

Ten months of Grace

Grace had her golden-month birthday (that's probably not a thing) yesterday, Jan 10! I know I say this every month, but she is at her funnest stage yet. She is a crazy hoot as evidenced by this smorgasbord of pictures. That's right, no official 10-mo "photo shoot," if you can even call my monthly updates such a thing. She's just too busy, so I collected a few goodies from recent days:

I wish you all could fully appreciate all the ruffles that make up this outfit. Mm mm mm.....

James LOVES Grace's sleepy face. Grace LOVES standing herself up precariously next to the sharp-edged corner of the TV stand.

She is totally digging the big girl food.

Yes, I just posted this on instagram, but let's be honest, seeing this expression is good for your soul.

Some (pineapply tidbits) about our little lady:

• Like I said, she is standing up on EVERYTHING: couches, chairs, TV stands, drawers, cupboards, the dishwasher, the trash can (muy precarioso), changing table, our legs, her crib, you name it.
• And she crawls everywhere. I'm talking weaving in and out of chair legs, around the end tables into the corners, and she tries to get between the wall and the washer but luckily she doesn't fit.
• She's ticklish, if you couldn't tell. And I'm in heaven tickling her to my heart's desire since James is strong enough to stop me from tickling him. Yeah, he's way ticklish. No, this isn't an update on James.
• She's has tried/is trying lots of new foods. A few include: avocadoes, tomatoes, pasta, bananas, bread, raisins, mixed veggies, cucumbers, yogurt, cheddar puffs, Ritz crackers, yogurt melts, and ICE CREAM. She loves ice cream. We'll keep her.
• I can't forget to mention that she ALWAYS wants our food too, even after she's just eaten herself sick. Last week she shared pizza, fajitas, greek cous cous, and cold cereal with me Rather, I shared all that with her. 
• She is giving kisses. Mostly to James. Mostly open-mouthed, slobbery, and noisy, but 100% adorable.
• She laughs, smiles, and screetches SO much. She laughs for no reason except that she likes laughing. She smiles and cruises toward us when we come home. And she screetches to hear herself and when she is demanding more food. And most of the time she is in her hyper state when she's alone with James and I. Everyone else still thinks she's Little Miss Serious.
• She is thoroughly enjoying getting into everything now that she is crazy fast, mobile, and surprisingly coordinated. She has a fascination with doors and hinges, but she's also captivated by the trash can, the dishwasher, my rack of shoes, James' mandolin, pulling books off the all shelves, the toilet, scale, plunger, fingernail clippers, and her thermometer. Ya know, basically anything that doesn't come out of her basket of toys. Haha. I am expending many more calories as of late just chasing her around. 
• She is enjoying TV which is kind of fun (should I be excited about that?) so we watch Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood every morning and then I sing it all day erry day because that song never gets out of your head.
• She grinds her four baby teeth. Most terrible sound in the world.
• That's right-two more teeth. Up top. She luhs them.
• It has become nearly impossible to change her diaper and get her in pajamas. We call it wrestling an alligator. I'm sure that would be easier than wrestling Grace.
• While she still loves me, she doesn't favor me quite as much. She'll reach for James and Grandma and others...which is nice and a little sad.

I go back to clinicals tomorrow and writing this makes me realize how much I'll miss her. So grateful we had a few weeks off to enjoy all these new and exciting changes. We love Gracie!

Nine months of Grace

Grace is officially nine months old (on Dec.10) and I am officially done trying to take pictures of her sitting in our glider or laying still on a blanket, because she keeps trying to dive off or roll over.

Aka...Gracezilla has entered her crazy mobile stage, which I hear ends......never. Now you understand why all of the best pictures of her are when she is somehow restrained (car seat, high chair, shopping cart, etc) Also, I couldn't limit myself to three, so enjoy.

This has been a favorite toy of late. Until it exploded into a million tiny Reeses Pieces (see how I did that?) all over the floor.

This picture epitomizes Grace right now. Constantly hyper and showing off her bottom teeth.

Baby attitude. Showing off her teeth again.

A tad blurry, but is that not the cutest face?

My little shopping pal

I held off on posting this until today because I wanted to wait until after her 9-month well check. The numbers are in, so here's Gracie Facie's update:

• At 18 lbs 11 oz Grace is in the 50th+ percentile for weight
• Coming in at 27.5 in, she lands in the 45th percentile for height/length/whatevs they say
• And still ranking among the larger brains (haha), she is in the 90th percentile for head circumference
• She is crawling everywhere. And FAST. In fact, today while in the kitchen I turned around to check on her in the living room, but she had quietly and rapidly crawled over and was perched right behind me. Scared me to death. 
• Speaking of crawling, she follows me around from room to room and usually props her hands on my legs meaning she wants me to hold her.
• She sits back on her heels like she's made of rubber. 
• Since she usually wants to be by me, she plays with the spice containers in the kitchen, the scale in the bathroom, everything breakable in the living room....
• She is standing herself up against our magazine basket, the couch, our rocking footstool/glider ottoman (this is hazardous to her and nerve-wracking to us), the balcony door, errythang.
• As mentioned above, she loves her two bottom teeth, although she loves them mostly for chewing on books and tags, and has little interest in actually using them to chew food.
• She is cutting at least two more teeth currently and has seriously been a gem. We didn't even notice until yesterday because she is just so pleasant most of the time.
• She babbles, jabbers, spits, blows bubbles, and constantly crawls around muttering "mama," and even though she doesn't know what she's saying, it's music to my ears.
• She scratches like a cat.
• She has learned to spit and spray her baby food. Oh the joy.
• She makes this hilarious underbite face where she shows off her bottom teeth and just shakes her head back and forth like a wild child.
• She has lost interest in her binky except when it's time to sleep.
• She isn't too stoked about table food. Sometimes she likes bites of banana and bread, but mostly she doesn't. We'll work on that.
• She is more giggly and playful with us and people she's comfortable with, although others still think she's just a serious, observant baby.
• She loves using her pointer finger to feel things.
• She is giving lots of open-mouthed, slobbery kisses these days.
• She is making it impossible to get anything out of church.
• She is curious, intelligent, coordinated, and beautiful. 

I've decided that 9 months is the best age..... just like 8 months was the best age, and so was 7 months and 6 months and basically every month except the first two weeks. Haha. But even those are pretty good too.

 We can't wait for baby Grace's first Christmas, and she can't wait to watch the Vegas Bowl game in her Y onesie. ;) She's the sweetest little spitting, babbling, stinky ray of sunshine and we love her the most.

Octoberness

Time is passing much too quickly. I feel like yesterday was Halloween and today my pumpkins have rotted.

Well, we had a rip-roaring month of October here in the McKean apartamento, and even though we are rapidly approaching December, I thought I'd clue you in on some of our Halloween/October festivities. Mostly because Grace is adorable and I have to post these pictures....

The orange balloon

Whilst shopping for Halloween party items (details forthcoming) one of the kind workers at Smith's (best Smith's EVER EVER EVER btdubs....Draper's where it's at) offered to give cute Grace face a banana. I said she's not really eating bananas yet. So he got her a balloon. And she about died. And so did we just watching her face and her reaction. And so will you because I'm about to post a bazillion pictures of her with this orange balloon:

Okay, so I limited myself to seven. Only.

 Our Halloween party

James and I decided to throw our own Halloween party because there are just so many great couples our age in our ward and I wanted an excuse to buy lots of decorations and lots of candy. (So much candy, in fact, that after trying to resist it yet caving EVERY DAY I threw it away yesterday. It only took me three weeks...)

We had great fun shopping for all of it and then I loved decorating and making food while James preoccupied himself with dry-ice pumpkins and a battery-operated ghost that slid back and forth across a rope in the living room. And thus we see, girls and guys care about different things.

Black bean dip, cauldron of candy, olives and carrots, jack-o-lantern rice krispy treat, pumpkin dip with apples and cinnamon graham crackers, double stuffed oreos (of course), and chocolate cupcakes. This does not include all the other deliciousness our guests brought.

Yes, there's dry ice in those punkins. Unfortunately I didn't take a picture of the booing ghost.

Anyway, despite our abysmal track record with inviting people to game nights/movie nights/etc and having few (if anyone show up) we had a GREAT turnout. We told people to RSVP and all 8 couples who said they could come made it!! We're cool! We totally should have taken a group pic.

Our party consisted of:
-Costume contest (the couple who won came as Bob Ross and the Happy Tree)
-Candy jar contest (guess how much candy in the jar...a school teacher won both of them)
-Best treat contest (a new couple in the ward who brought no-bake cookies won that, although there were also muddy buddies and rolo/pretzel creations that won me over)
-A Utah football game (can't remember which one, and yes, we're BYU fans but we also watch Utah games...cuz they're good...and some of our guests are Utah fans and we didn't want them to have an excuse to not come)
-A gripload of food, mostly named sugar. Or synonyms thereof.
-Everyone staring at Grace. She was the cutest lil bumble bee.

Speaking of costumes, I should mention (should I though?) that one hour before the party James and I hadn't made our costumes let alone FOUND the stuff we'd bought the night before to make the costumes. We were stressed and in a huff (mostly me) and I thought I was losing my mind because we'd bought the stuff literally like 22 hours ago and I hadn't even taken it out of the bag so WHERE WAS IT??

Moral of the story: make your bed. Our roll of yellow duct tape and my bee antennae and our black panty hose to make bee wings that would later bump into everyone at the party in our cramped apartment were just sitting on the floor underneath the pillows from our unkempt bed. Good grief.

So we transformed into Worker Bee and Queen Bee very quickly just in time for our guests to arrive...and for us to spend the next few hours suffocating and tucking our fat rolls back in between the yellow duct-taped stripes that we'd wrapped a little too tightly around each others' bodies.

I think this was 5 minutes after the party started. She woke up later though and partied hard.

Bat baby and Bee baby, same color costumes, same lack of cooperation with pictures

TAC shindig
There was an awesome little Halloween shindig at James' office. Trick or treating for Grace resulted in chapstick and soap for me. And I colored a picture of a pumpkin. And ate treats. And interacted with all the fantastic people James works with and took a few pictures.

Introducing costume numero dos: the sad owl

James and I really went all-out on our costumes for this party. Oops.

Koala baby and owl baby, both looking adorable and super ticked

Do you recognize this balloon......? It's a new one, actually.

Ward Trunk-or-Treat/Chili cook-off

Cold, lots of kids excited that we had Milk Duds in our cauldron of candy, tons and tons of chili (mine won no awards) and desserts (my apple crisp with vanilla ice cream was a crowd fav...at least with the two friends and husband sitting by me). Lots of cool costumes and and a backdrop for a bee family to take more pictures.

My friend Kelly and her husband her Sadness and Anger from Inside Out. Their costumes were perfect!

So good.

Grace as an owl
Grace was just so cute as a sad owl the day before Halloween that before boxing up her owl costume to never wear again, I thought I'd do another photo shoot. Pretty casual-like, as I'm not even remotely a photographer.

She didn't warm up to the idea right away. Still a sad owl...

Note my foot. Feet. Such a profesh photog.

 Almost done...

Haha. This pose.

Okay I'll stop.

The classics
Oh yes, and we spent minimal effort carving pumpkins for one FHE and watched The Sixth Sense for a date night because we thought that was a pretty mild Halloween movie. Turns out we gots no tolerance for scary.

First time trying a carving kit. We went with the professional $4 version. And did it the wrong way. And I gave up after one bat. We're hard core.

Halloween photo shoot
I bought this outfit so I could take pictures of her. So...

She loved the rocking chair idea.

Halloween evening stroll and Pirate O's
Halloween day was nothing too noteworthy, but the evening was lovely. We took a walk to a place nearby called The Wetlands. It was beautiful. And cold. Also, there's this amazing little place also nearby called Pirate O's that sells food and candy from all over the world. They just have a bunch of weird stuff there too, so we thought we'd stop by on our way home. I looked like a troll, so you won't spy me in any of the following:

Can you spy Grace in the shadows?

They always have different salsas and humus out for test-tasting. Or taste-testing. Whichever you prefer.

Who wants one?

International candieeees....

 

We finished Halloween night off with some diabetes in the form of chocolate chip double stuffed-Oreo pumpkin pancakes. Other than forgetting the three tablespoons of brown sugar until half the batter was cooked and then adding the full three tablespoons of brown sugar to the other half of the batter upon realizing it....they were pretty decent panqueques.

And that sums up October just in time for me to start decorating for Grace's first Christmas!!!!!!!!