This is what almost 2 looks like

 Pretty cute, huh?



We are approaching the close of Grace's second year and we have a full fledged, independent woman on our hands.  She's becoming so capable and brave, yet still innocent and totally dependent on her people to take care of her sweet spirit.

Her greatest achievement these last few months is talking.  It's still an interesting dialect, but she can nail multiple two syllable words and even string together a few sentences. "I love purple!"  "I love yellow!"  "Ta-oh" (Taco.)  She offers up please and thank you, unprompted, from time to time and it makes my heart so proud!  She sings the ABCs like a boss and can count to 10. I think she even knows what numbers mean, like it's not just rote.  I'm so so hopeful she got her dad's math brain and not her mom's hollow, cobwebby cavern where numbers go to die.

We have had some really awesome adventures this summer, including our favorite family reunion week, and I don't think we've been home for more than a few days at a time.  Grace has been a trooper and thrived on the adventure and attention.  Early in summer we went strawberry picking, to say she liked it would be a mild understatement:

We like to spend the afternoons by the pool (she puts her face in and blows bubbles!), or the beach, or dragging all of our toys outside and playing in the garage like a bunch of hillbillies. 

#modellife

She loves to jump, both feet off the ground, when she gets excited.  It's so endearing and people stop to smile at her, at her unbridled joy of jumping, just because she can.  She still loves to dance--Bad Blood, Uptown Funk, Shake it Off, and Trap Queen top the charts around here...in fact, we were at the library with Mimi a few weeks ago when she asked for Bad Blood after we finished singing the (lame but) age appropriate "Super Hero Super Reader" song...and then the librarian politely pointed out where we could find some age appropriate CDs. #mimifail

She likes to count us off to get things started by saying "read-y go!" and loves to be the center of attention "watch me!" and performs a fancy new dance move, three-legged dog, or sings us a verse of a new song she just made up.  It's usually high pitched and consists of the word "naaaah" over and over again.

"Read-y go!"

She almost exclusively wears dresses, loves to eat hard-boiled eggs for a snack, and is already a master of putting off bedtime; asking for more milk, more water, more songs, and choosing the longest book we own as her bedtime story, a Dora learn to read chapter book that has 105 (short) pages.  Then she demands to hold said book as she falls asleep ("one one more! one one more!").  Cute, but not very comfortable if you're the mom that puts her to bed. Speaking of mom, she still really likes me.

"no, mommy."

Her favorite activities mimic her daily life, putting her animals and dolls to sleep, waking them up, feeding them, chucking them across the room (?), having them go potty. She has 18 thousand cell phones and she loves to carry them around and say, "Hewwww-oooow?"  "Hewww-ooow E?" Heww-ooow, little Elmer Fudd. It's so neat to see her practice the behaviors she's learning and to observe all the little things she picks up just by watching.  (Time to clean up the language, Attorney Nycz.) She's been a really adventurous eater this summer, her favorite things include: mac and cheese (which she chants for, mac and cheese! mac and cheese!), hot dogs (ha-dahs), french fries ('ries) and her favorite, ketchup (guppie).  I know this is the actual list of worst foods to feed your kid, and I want to assure you that she also eats fruit and wo-wo and vegetables and let's just say while she inherited her dad's palate she got her mom's metabolism. For now. Whew.  Also I will forevermore call ketchup guppie.  I encourage you to do the same.  Try it.  No seriously try it it's so fun.

We've spent a lot of time with my family this summer, mostly because my family enjoys doing things that are age appropriate for little children -- picnics, zoos, farms, ice cream-- and Grace gives us an excuse to do these things and not feel weird about it.  Like when Anna stalked a kid at the farm to get her hands on this adorable little kitten, whom Grace named Cupcake, or Cuppy for short. Sometimes we get together and do a group work out, and Grace cranks out pushups and squats and tricep dips with the rest of us.  Then she asks for purple yippies, and we go inside and put on chapstick and have a snack.  Priorities.

 There are so many, many things I want to remember about this precious girl and I know there are already so many endearing things I've forgotten (remember when she used to click her tongue to say yes?) how can I contain it all? Grace, you make life sunny and sweet just by being you.  Cheers!