Prior to Gracie’s tumble down the porch stairs, she could not be bothered with television in the slightest. She’d watch 5 minutes of Sesame Street and then go about her business. We put Frozen on once or twice as a treat and she was interested for 4.6 seconds and then moved on. However, when we were in the hospital we watched an infinite loop of movies, Gracie lying on me, intermittently napping, sometimes watching. After that she decided, like 99.4% of American children, she was down with Frozen (she still requests Sesame Street, watches 5 minutes, and is done). I don’t want to insinuate she watches the whole thing, but she will watch for 5-10 minutes, play a bit, then watch another 5-10 minutes. She likes the music best and bops along to the singing. This weekend she was watching the coronation ball scene and as Anna got engaged to Some Dude She’d Hardly Met Who Turns Out to Be a Villain, Gracie began yelling “CWAZY, CWAZY” at her. As the fight between Anna and Elsa ensued over the potential nuptials, and Anna accused Elsa of shutting her out, Gracie began finger wagging at her, yelling “NO SHUT OUT, NO SHUT OUT.” There you have it. Life lessons from Frozen.
Gracie’s language continues to explode. She has started stringing together sentences “Dadddy phone hand” (Daddy is holding his phone in his hand), “My nose running” (My nose is running) followed by “Tissue pease”. We’ve begun prompting her to add “please” to her requests, and she knows the answer to the question “What do you say if you want this?” is “pease!” Last night she was playing with her fridge magnets and slowly moved them across the fridge, counting under her breath, all the way to ten (but would not repeat it when asked). When she wants to FaceTime with her grandparents and I know it isn’t a good time, I always tell her “Papa is flying an airplane and Gigi, Grandma and Grandpa are sleeping!” Yesterday a friend of hers from daycare came over to play (and his parents! adult conversation!) and they were playing with a wooden airplane and she said “Papa in airplane. Gigi sleepin” which, haaaa. Oops. She is insistent on which chairs belong to Mommy and Daddy, the remote belongs to Daddy, the MacBook belongs to Mommy and she gets very irritated when we don’t conform to her expectations (Mommy holding the remote, Daddy using the laptop, either of us sitting in the chair she hasn’t deemed ours).
Gracie loves trains, and living in the city we have the opportunity to drive under the El (elevated train aka Chicago’s subway) tracks a lot and she loves when a train goes by as we drive under. She claps and yells “choo choo” and her delight is obvious. Our grocery store is near train tracks for the larger suburban commuter trains, and while we enjoyed doughnuts in their café (two weekends ago) a train went by AND BLEW HER MIND. “MO MO TRAIN! MO MO TRAIN!” FYI, mo mo = more more = more. No idea how that one started.
A photo posted by D (@d.chicago) on Nov 11, 2014 at 7:59am PST
Her eye is doing much better, the swelling has gone down and her lid is only slightly bruised, the under-eye still has some black and blue but is fading daily. I’m glad it is healing so people stop asking about it at the grocery store (yes, thanks, I know she has a black eye) and she seems nonplussed by the entire incident. Our first follow up appointment is this week and I’m hoping for all good news.
Beyond that we spent much of the weekend at home, playing with toys and reading books and preparing for Thanksgiving. My sage butter is in the freezer along with last weekend’s cheesecake and cinnamon roll efforts, groceries have been purchased and I’m making our timeline of events and dishes tonight. I’m so excited for a full house of family and friends, for good food and football and family time. Gracie has an awesome turkey dress she is going to wear and on Friday we will break out the Christmas tree and the stockings and Christmas books….I can’t wait!
