Sound of Silence

Gracie and Jay have taken a trip to Elk River to visit Grandma Patti and I’ve stayed behind to work on my dissertation. For those that don’t know, the labor and delivery of this 200-some page paper has been drawn out and painful. Giving birth to Grace was a snap compared to this task. I need to be disciplined because I know Jay will not be pleased if he comes home to a pug that knows 5 new tricks.

I have been so excited to have this 36 hours alone (well, with pug : ) to focus on my work, but I’m missing my little girl. It's so quiet and calm! Grace has so much going on these days with substantial changes in her mobility, vocality and size. She’s officially crawling. It took a few trial runs, but she’s got it down now. She especially likes to follow Ella’s tail. Good thing the dog’s still quicker than the baby : ) Since I can no longer trust that she’ll stay where I put her down, I take Grace around from room to room with me when I need to get things done. One place she’s come to like a lot is our walk-in closet. I bring her in there when I’m trying to get ready to leave the house in the morning. While I’m figuring out what to wear, Grace rearranges my shoes and sometimes pulls down a shirt or two. It's almost as if she's trying to tell me what I should put on. I never thought about wearing strappy, sparkly high heels with my pink "Got Milk?" sweatshirt. Might just have to give that a try.

Chatting, “singing” and clapping are now common sounds around the house. The clapping is awfully cute, the "singing," not as cute. ("Singing” is what I like to call her shrieks.) Now her chatting, on the other hand, is indeed cute. She's much more expressive these days. She really puts some emotion into her “words.” When she’s upset, I swear I hear some four-letter words in her babbles.

A big change lately is the transition to a bigger car seat. She was starting to look like a giant in the infant seat and seems a lot more comfy in this new one. No more infant seat means that when we go shopping she actually has to sit in the cart like a big girl as you can see in the photo. (Yes, when I went to Kmart last week I was the goofy mom snapping pictures of my daughter in a shopping cart.) She loved grabbing at things as we weaved through racks of clothes.

Speaking of clothes, I keep getting asked what Grace is going to be for Halloween. My answer: “Whatever costume is cheapest when I go shopping next Friday.” I keep looking for clever, easy baby costumes (any suggestions?). We’ll see how ambitious I get. Tune in next week.