All growed up...

Lately Grace has been bound and determined to stay up past her bedtime. We have a pretty good routine: snuggle a bit on the couch in our jammies, go in to her bedtime, read 3 or 4 stories - depending on the size of the book! Then we (I) sing a song and pray. We've been leaving the lamp on for her for about a month now, and she reads herself to sleep. Grace has always been very good about bedtime - a parent's dream since she was 6 weeks old and sleeping from 7-7!

But she is going through some sort of phase lately - she is bound and determined to stay up as late as she can. She has figured out how to go to the bathroom and then come to me and say "I peed, Mama" this is the ONLY time she ever tells me that -so I know she's using it as an avoidance tactic - she does the same thing at daycare. She saves all her poops for naptime and let's go...I feel so bad for her DCP! Apparently it's quite the mess. So I KNOW she knows what she's doing. Darn her.

Last week Friday her babysitter finally got her to nap around 3pm and I picked her up at 4:15 - I almost had to pry her eyes open she was so tired and was in such a deep sleep. So I knew she was tired and was anticipating an early bedtime. We even rented a movie and everything! Well, it's Monday and we still have not watched that movie...

Friday night she was so funny! She was bopping all over the place - just bouncing off the walls. Smacking herself in the forehead, making funny faces, dancing, jumping on the furniture, spinning in circles, making nonsensical noises and just generally trying to be funny and make us laugh. I told Clint - I'm getting my first glimpses of what junior high life is going to be like with Gracie. She reminded me so much of a hyper junior higher saying "I'm hyper! I'm hyper!" You know how we used to be. Then it hit me - Gracie's not a toddler anymore. Nothing about her suggests "toddling" - Nope - she's a KID.

It was a sort of bittersweet realization, you know? But I have my sweet Annie coming right up behind her and I wonder what she's going to be like learning to walk and talk. It just came upon me all of a sudden that she needs to be starting to eat baby food this month. Wasn't she just born???

Pretty soon I'm going to have to start thinking about preschool and number 3..

Maybe just preschool~