At the same Mother’s Day moment that he shot the adorable picture of Hazel in the last post, Poppy caught a Bla-Bla-snuggling Grace.

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Though she refuses to perform alone, Hazel has proved (with Mommy’s help here) that she is perfectly capable of belting out a respectable and complete Alphabet song:

and a similarly-tuned Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star:

These are the only two songs she requests every night and then calls for an encore.

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It was during those in between times when we were buried under an avalanche of Grace’s art, that I decided to start a new blog.  This one would be composed entirely of Grace’s own posts.  Since she is currently communicating entirely out loud or by pencil, crayon or pencil-crayon, I decided to use those (plus a little audio and video) to let her describe her life, one day at a time, mixed media-style.

My ultimate journal fantasy is that this process spawns a writing habit that I wish I had and that Grace will keep it when she starts writing “words”.  Option 2 is that Hazel, in a fit of jealousy over all the attention Grace gets from her journal/blog, starts writing beautiful poems.  Of course, with my luck they will be Gothic, angry, dark poems about lost Loveys and life being like a Nuk Nuk dropped in the dirt, and come with the requisite pale makeup and dark lipstick.  I will only be able to blame myself and the wish for self-discipline that I tried to foist upon my innocent offspring.

Anyway, I made this blog password protected because Grace may not want her musings to be public property.  Until she can actually make that choice for herself, though, I can temporarily grant guest access to her loving fan base.  Enjoy it while you can.

If you go here and type in guest/guest you will see the best of her drawings and hear her personal explanations of most of them.

It appears to be a happy thing to be a 4 year old girl.  Teen years can only be 3 times as good (plus one) right?

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Happy Birthday!

Today is your REAL birthday, as we explained this weekend, not your “Birthday Party” day.  Today you are 4.  The day that Princess Belle AND Cinderella came to your house and did a puppet show (plus face painting and balloon animals) for you and your friends while your friends’ parents (and your parents) drank coffee (plus bubbly orange juice) in the kitchen, you were still only 3.  You got presents for yourself and for your yearly donation to the NICU and it seemed like something had changed, but you were still 3.

I had to look back at earlier blog posts to really see how much you have changed.  Watching you gradually change over the course of a year makes it very difficult to notice all differences.  Some you simply can’t see in pictures.

Your love of Princesses has not been replaced by anything specific, but you definitely have expanded your interests.  You still love Dora, bless her little bowl cut head.  I encourage other shows, as I have begun to dislike maps and monkeys in equal proportion and I root for Swiper.

Anyway…you can write your name!  Even though you have some confidence issues about your “R”s, they are a family-favorite.  Your “E”s show an enthusiasm that brings with it horizontal lines WELL beyond the requisite 3.

In addition to your name, you LOVE to draw.  You have moved beyond scribbles (scribble-scrabble, as you call it) and coloring things in, to drawing stuff.  For example…

…this is Hazel…

…and this is you…

You also love to draw hearts, rainbows, rainbow snakes, flowers, dragonflies, clouds, the sky and dirt.  Sometimes rocket ships.  You don’t always agree to draw things I ask, citing your lack of ability.  You still don’t realize that there is no wrong answer.  You are amazing and anything you draw only requires an explanation and you will have NAILED it.

You are also getting good at coloring things in…

Needless to say, you like girlie stuff. Thus, you enjoy the occasional manicure, when Mommy has cause for bribery or justifying her own.

Your food tastes are not quite as colorful as your pencil choices.  Your current favorites are “big chicken nuggets”—these are breaded chicken breasts that your Mommy wants the world to know are NOT chicken nuggets, but we want you to believe that they are—pizza, noodles and peanut butter sandwiches. You have eschewed jam out of what must be sheer stubbornness.  You recently ate a number of grilled shrimp that I insisted were made of chicken.  You also like pumpernickel bagels, but only after I explained that “pumpernickel” is a kind of chocolate.  Before that, you liked “chocolate bagels”.  Strangely, you also prefer your corn straight from the freezer over the recipe that requires a minute or two in the microwave.  We call this dish “frozen corn”.  You always enjoy crushed ice for dessert.

Your Mommy has high expectations for you in the fashion realm, based on your ability to choose interesting and fun color combinations for your dress-able sticker dolls and your experience picking my dress shirt every morning.  Good luck with that.

You have recently discovered the library and proudly signed your own name to the card application.  You quickly discovered that your could get innumerable books AND access to a vast collection of movies starring a scary-looking animated Barbie.  Yay, education!

I could go on and on, but it will be my bedtime soon.  I need my rest, because at 6:15, when your clock glows green, I can expect the thump, thump, thump of little 4-year-old feet ready to start the day.

Happy Birthday, Grace!

Love, Daddy, Mommy, Hazel and Lincoln.

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When Jenn heard that another nursing strike was bringing Debbie back to the Bay Area, she opened her schedule and kept Grace out of school for an impromptu breakfast reunion. I imagine there were a lot of happy and scary-memory tears. Debbie is a great person to remind us of what a miracle baby Grace is, because she was there and she knows how these things CAN end. We know we have a lot to be grateful for, including Debbie herself, of course.

In addition to being an amazing nurse, Debbie is a military wife and therefore mostly-single mother while her husband, Brent, is deployed in Afghanistan. We don’t get to see her often, but we keep up through her prolific Facebook posting and hope he comes home safe and sound and soon! Send a happy thought out to the Cooks when you read this.

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Realizing that at least part of that is up to her, we decided to carry on showing her what happens as you get to be a big girl.  She woke up in the morning in her crib and, after a flurry of activity upstairs all day, she went to bed in a big girl bed!

Not knowing if we could count on her having Grace’s sense of following the rules (she didn’t get out of her bed on her own for 6 months or so) we also reinstalled a camera and started closing the gates again.  So far, so good.  She does seem more interested in the bouncing properties of beds than her sister ever did, though, so we’ll keep an electronic eye on her.

Maybe this will convince her that it is time to move on from the diapers.

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Wow! Two years old!  What a big girl you have become.

While I’m thinking of it, I would like to ask that you take a little breather from growing up since your baby-ness is the only thing keeping your Mommy from insisting on expanding the family further.  Every advance you make toward little-girlhood is another step toward becoming a middle child.  Ask your aunt Christie…no one wins in that scenario.

Your accomplishments, while impressive, pale in comparison to your sense of accomplishment.  To you, every stair on your way to the 2nd floor is cause for celebration as you declare “I did it!” or “I win!” in the race from the previous step.  Good job!  Let’s aim higher.

For your actual accomplishment list…I recently heard you count to 12 and, though you started at 5, I thought it pretty impressive…even when you refused to do an encore.

Honestly, we are still trying to figure you out.  You love to climb and jump but you hate jumpy houses where climbing and jumping are the thing to do. You like what you like and not much else.  Good news when we are serving pizza, lentil soup, breadsticks or bananas.  Just about everything else earns a “Doan wannit!” You don’t have the usual automatic destruct mode when you come upon a tower of blocks, you seem to want to tease the blocks before knocking them across the room (this may be a note for your future therapist(s)).

Grace is still your favorite person who can do little wrong, apart from ripping toys from your hands in a fit of jealous gimme-ness.  Her presence is the essential ingredient for a successful potty time, her cribside rendition of “winkle winkle” is the last thing you want to hear before you are left alone for the night with your Lovey and your Nuk Nuk.  You are her biggest fan and constant foil.  We hope you remain a devoted pair.

I am not allowed to risk jinxing things by recording how easy you are to put to bed and wake up every day.  Let’s just say that other parents would want to rent you for a night and call it “vacation”.

Your fascination for “airfanes” and “choo choo frains” and buses and “frucks” has caused your mommy to forgo the traditional princesses and dolls and dresses this year, instead visiting the “boyish” area of the toy store for your birthday loot.  Watching you open them proved that to be a very good choice.

I can’t draw this letter out, little Hazel because you are starting to wake up from your post birthday party nap.  You were a completely wonderful hostess (though somewhat confused at all the fuss).

Your mommy and I (plus Grace and Lincoln) could not be happier that you landed in our lives.  We love you very much.

Yayu

Daddy (and Mommy and Grace and Lincoln)

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I have finally gotten around to posting Grace’s private Christmas concert.  Despite many distractions, she managed to get out all of one Christmas classic before things turned silly…

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For those of you without an eye for interpreting art, the thing in the middle with green arms is Grace. Everything else is candy. Duh.

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