Nichols Family Notes: Summersummersummertime

So we haven't been up to much lately. David's still unemployed, staying home with Gracie, working a few contracting hours each week but no word on anything permanent. I've been making sure to work 40 hours per week, and managing to squeeze in a half hour of overtime here and there. I'm making some progress on our very chaotic filing room at work, so that's giving me a sense of accomplishment when I leave every day.

Gracie is just all over the place. So many words and phrases; she is able to communicate really well with us. I do feel that she is not on the same accelerated learning pace that she was on a few months ago, due to her not being in the social environment of her school anymore, but we are working with her and she continues to amaze us. Her daily and night-time routines have relaxed in the last few months, but we are starting to get back into them so we can all get some more sleep. Potty-training has stalled over the last week or so, but we aren't rushing her into anything, just trying to let her set her own pace with it. Everything is available to her, she knows what they are for and how to use them, so we will just let her do her own thing for now.

She can now reach doorknobs. You know, I've been so excited about her being so tall. I love that she's already in 3T size clothes at 19 months old, and that she can climb up and down off of the couches and chairs and beds without our help. But when she reached up and closed the bedroom door on me the other day, I wasn't too excited anymore. She hasn't quite been able to reach her fingers around the knob and turn it to open the doors, but she can shut them. All of them. All of the time.

Then I noticed that she can reach things on the stair banister. We used to put things like our drinks, cell phones, keys, sunglasses, mail, etc. up there where she couldn't reach. Now those things disappear. She's also figured out the buttons on the TV in the living room and the XBOXes downstairs, so those get turned off or on at her will.

"Wonder what would happen if I push this button while Daddy's playing his game...?"

"Uh-oh... Did I do that?" And she has just now discovered that she has the strength to pull hard enough on the cabinet doors in the kitchen to break the locks we have installed on them. *sigh* I thought this was getting easier (I know our parents are laughing right now. Amazing how the respect level for my parents has risen to astronomical levels since my daughter's birth). But she is an amazing child, the most beautiful and intelligent toddler in the whole world. =) Oh yes, and I can now french-braid her hair. Only happened once, during an exceptionally gripping episode of Dora the Explorer, but saw an opportunity and went for it, and it happened.

So there's an update of the last few weeks. I've had so much interest in my diaper cakes lately that I created a web page in blog form just to showcase them. See the link in the right-hand toolbar of this page, or just click here --> http://sarasdiapercakes.blogspot.com/ I will add a new one next Sunday, the 26th (have a shower that day and can't publicly reveal it until then, but it is finished and I've been told it's the best one I've ever made!).