My Gracie

I feel like in the past, I’ve written a little more detailed stuff about Chloe and Julia, and not as much about Gracie, so I thought I’d make a list of some of the things I love about Gracie, as well as some of her quirks

• Gracie is a very loving child…she’s always saying “Mommy, I love you” or “Daddy, I love you”, which we thought was pretty special and sweet, until we overheard her telling our 12-year old neighbor “Billy, I love you”, or saying it to the slide at the park. It’s still very sweet when she tells us, even if it’s not just strictly reserved for us.
• She loves her sisters, but can also be mean. She’ll lie on top of Julia, or hit Chloe for no reason, or push Julia down the moment she gets to standing. I guess that’s typical kid stuff, but it sometimes seems so out of the blue that it surprises me.
• She LOVES milk. It’s the first thing she wants when she gets up in the morning, and would drink it all day long if we let her.
• She is VERY observant. When we’re in the car, she’ll notice if we make a different turn than normal, and ask where we’re going now.
• She is a mini-vegetarian. She hates eating any type of meat, and when we force her to take a bite, she will hold it in her mouth, chewing it and swishing it around for as long as possible, until we make her swallow it. She’s picky about some other foods too, but any kind of meat is the worst. If it’s fruit or a snack food, she’s all over that, but is pretty picky about other things.
• She loves to sing, especially Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, and the Itsy-Bitsy Spider.


• She is convinced that there really is a giant that lives up in the clouds and if only we had a beanstalk tall enough, we could climb up and see him (she was very disappointed when our snow pea vines only grew about 4 feet tall)
• She’s very sensitive. The slightest look of disapproval or a little bit too strong of a tone, and she gets very upset. The upside is she hasn’t needed near as much disciplining as Chloe, who is very strong-willed.
• She loves hopping around the house on her hop ball or skating on her roller-skates. Who wants to walk to the bathroom when there are so many more interesting ways to get there??
• She loves Dora…the tv show, her Dora doll, and Dora books. When we sit down to read, she always brings me at least 1 Dora book in the pile. She had a Dora party for her 2nd birthday and really wanted to have another for her 3rd birthday, but I made her pick something else… although, lately she’s starting to grow out of her Dora phase, I think.
• She is very curious and always wants to know who is that, what are they doing, why did you do that, what is that, etc, etc. She’s always full of questions and ready to learn about the world.
• She loves to talk to people and will share all sorts of interesting things with complete strangers, but
• She hates to be the focus of attention. As soon as the stranger pays attention to her and starts to talk back, she clams up and won’t speak another word.
  
• She was a very late talker, but once she started, she loves to talk. She likes to narrate her day and fill me in on everything she’s doing.
• She loves to climb…the couch, the ladder for the slide, but mostly, she loves to climb on mommy & daddy whenever she can.
• She’s always been very easy-going and go-with-the-flow. For a long time, she’d go along with whatever Chloe wanted her to do, and only recently has she started wanting to do her own thing and protesting some of Chloe’s plans
• She loves sharing a room with Chloe…they’ll talk and sing and tell stories at night for as long as they can.
  
• She loves to slide. She’ll often spend her whole time at the park, climbing the ladder, sliding and then run to do it again.
• Her favorite color is yellow (although I’m not sure if that’s because she really likes it or if it’s because pink, red, and purple were already “taken” by Chloe.
• At least so far, she’s the one who looks most like Ben (he had blond, curly hair when he was young), but we’re not really sure who the blue eyes come from…apparently they’re in there on both sides somewhere down the line, but not in our immediate families.
• She loves to call Chloe a poo-poo head. I’m not sure where she heard it, but if she’s angry at Chloe, this is her name of choice.
• She loves to wash her hands and play in the bathroom sink (I’m always having to go in there and pull her out of the bathroom), but then other times, she’ll forget to wash her hands or flush the potty or do any of that after going to the bathroom
• She’s a screamer. If she doesn’t get what she wants, gets frustrated, or can’t find the words to get her point across, she’ll just scream. Maybe she’ll get over this soon???
  
• She loves to help, especially in the kitchen. If she sees me getting out a bowl, she’s quick to pull a chair over and hop up to “help” She really is a good mixer and loves to pour ingredients in, but we’re still working on the “not licking the spoon and then putting it back in” part.
• She likes to paint with watercolors, but she dips the brush in every color every time so the paints all end up mixed together and her pictures always end up in shades of brown & black
• She loves bananas and often will eat one every day
• She loves to play outside, running around, playing with the neighbor kids, catching fireflies, chasing after the bunnies and squirrels that are often in our yard.
• She absolutely loves her daddy and is almost always the first one to run greet him when he gets home from work.
• At her 2nd & 3rd birthday parties, she cried and got really embarrassed when we all sang happy birthday to her. She didn’t like the attention being on her. We’ll see if she appreciates “Happy Birthday” a little more by the time she turns 4.
• She is a klutz. She falls a lot and always seems to have a bruise on her forehead and scrapes on her knees.
• She loves to eat Lucky Charms, but will only eat the marshmallows and refuses to touch any of the actual cereal.
• She loves to wear her flip-flops on the wrong feet. At first, it was accidental and we’d have her switch them to the right way before we’d leave the house. But now, whenever we tell her to switch them, she tries to argue “but I like them on the wrong feet”
• She used to say a lot of things really funny ways, but she’s already starting to grow out of a lot of them. Here are some of the examples (some of these, she grew out of a long time ago) peter jelly = peanut butter & jelly, money = banana, lalow = water…therefore lalowmelon = watermelon, jewa = Julia, doee = Chloe, Dadoe = Dora, tail-tails = ponytails. Hmm those are all I can think of at the moment, but I know there were more. It’s a little sad to hear her start talking correctly.
• She has to go potty sometimes every 5 minutes (or when she sees a bathroom) and I’ll think “how can you possibly need to go potty again”, but sure enough, she really does
• She hates to clean up, and she’ll often tell me “Chloe will just clean up” to try to get out of it.
  
• She’s growing up way too fast! It seems like just yesterday, she was learning to walk and all that, and suddenly, here’s this 3 ½ year old who is pretty good at figuring things out for her self and seems like such a big kid all of a sudden.She’s a really fun, silly girl and we love to watch her reactions to things. She’s at a fun age right now, and it makes me sad to see some of her cute quirks slipping away. So, that’s why I thought I’d make a list…so that when she’s older, we can remember some of these silly little things that she’s doing right now.