Another Week Gone...

This week Gracie mastered how to open doors that have round doorknobs. She also learned how to turn on the water spigot outside. More on that later.

Mark is learning to sit up. He still crashes and burns sometimes, and has done his fair share of face plants this week. I've been working with him to try and help develop the muscles and balance needed to sit up on his own. Once he masters that feat, we'll be able to go on bike rides. (I'm ignoring the fact that it's almost winter and the rainy season is coming. Everyone needs a  goal to get motivated... Mark doesn't know we won't actually go on bike rides until after his first birthday, because he can't tell time. We'll work on that next week.)

Saturday we visited some good friends and celebrated FOUR birthdays that we'd missed since we last saw one another. That meant Gracie got birthday cake... again.

She was really upset about having to re-do the whole Birthday thing:

We had a terrible time convincing her to eat cake just once more...

And she was particularly relieved when it was all over:

How am I going to lick my fingers,
tray AND belly? I can do this...



Something tells me she will be a champion shopper
when she grows up. Just look at that face!

She really appreciated the puzzle, but I think the
bow she put on her head threw her off:

Just call me "trendsetter".

My friend Kimmer took pictures too, and FINALLY captured the reason there are so few pictures of mommy on this blog:

Behind the camera once again!



Mid-week, I looked up from feeding Mark to see Gracie doing this -
except the wry smile only appeared when the camera came out.
Prior to that she was almost asleep.
Woof-woof makes a nice pillow:

We've been having beautiful fall weather! So Gracie and I headed outside during Mark's morning nap:



Dad has no idea I found the car keys!



I told you she learned to turn on the water faucet!

The stroller on the right was to help "hide"
the spigot. Fat lot of good that did.

Yes, that is the bottom of her foot.
She is wearing WHITE socks.
(Well, used to be white.)

Later we played with stickers, and
Gracie decided to make an impromptu necklace:

I know it's a terrible picture, but we're
talking about a two year old with
stickers here. Cut me some slack.

The photo below was taken just before she ripped the stickers off.

Then cried.
(At least I gave her a hug instead of taking pictures as her neck turned into a giant red splotch. See, even blogger mommies can restrain themselves sometimes.)

She has NO idea what's about
to hit her. She'll learn.

Naturally, I saved the most adorable part of the week for last. I was cooking in the kitchen when Mark woke up and began to cry. Gracie said "Baby!" and ran to his room. She opened the door (yes, turning the round knob, which had served as a pretty good lock until this week).

I looked over from the kitchen and saw this:

How stinkin' cute are they?
He stopped crying, and even laughed as she talked to him.

After Gracie tired of playing with Mark (approximately 1.27 minutes) she
went back to playing in the other room.

This was Mark's reaction:

Hey! Where did that little red headed girl go?

And then he started crying again.

All in all, it was a great week. Wednesday we had rain, thunder and lightning! That is not a common event here, so we enjoyed it by sitting on the back porch and sipping hot chocolate. Gracie wasn't too interested in the rain (she would NOT go out in it, even when daddy stood there getting soaked trying to coax her out to play). She was very interested in the hot chocolate though. (That's my girl!)

Yesterday we visited Auntie Bonnie, but mommy was too busy blabbing off her mouth to take any pictures. Which means mommy had a really great visit. Hope you get to blab to some adults this week too.

We plan on heading to the pumpkin patch tomorrow. I'm excited, and will probably end up with some kind of eye injury from holding a camera up to my face for three hours. Can't wait!