Cars, Cows, Forks, Oh My!

The "Hide Inside The Onesie Or Sleeper" Game continues! Since my last post, I have found: play cars, EVERY animal from her Little People Farm (all at once :), remote, cookie and toothbrush! Maybe one of these times, I'll find some cash!

Grace has been doing much better lately with listening. It seems as soon as I post a complaint, she changes. As long we don't fool around with a wimpy "no", she will stop. She has spent quite a bit of time in time-out, mostly for hitting. That is the one thing that is not improving. She will have good days, which means Mama doesn't get hit at all. Or we will have bad days where Grace enjoys some quality time on the hallway floor about 5 different times. She really only hits now when she is not getting her way and she immediately regrets it. You can see it on her face as she smiles, waves and says "hi" or "tickle, tickle". That doesn't get her off the hook though :)

*I started typing this post this morning. Big mistake! Grace's behavior has been pretty stinky today. From now on, I will only post bad things in hopes of changing it :)

The biggest improvement has been with her answering to her name. So much better! We have been going to OT and I've been doing a lot at home. I'm not sure if that is what has helped or not. My thought is that she is handling stimulation better and is able to focus more on other things around her. I have no idea if that is a bunch of bologna or what.

We have put Grace back on the bottle once a day to help with eye contact. In the beginning, she didn't care about the bottle and I thought doing the sippy cup would be the same thing. I was wrong. Unfortunately, not being a first time mom doesn't always help. I was worried about having trouble getting her off the bottle so we didn't push it when we first got her. After two weeks of her being given a bottle of milk after her nap, she does so much better in the cradle position and looking at me. She still tends to want to look at my mouth when we are that close, but I've seen a great improvement. It is even carrying over throughout the rest of the day. Not perfect, but we are moving in the right direction. I did pick a time of day that would be easy to get rid of the bottle though :)

The best news to report is that I'm consistently called "Mama"!!!!! I love it!

I need to brag a little bit, too! Our little smarty pants knows almost all her colors and we just realized that she can identify about 10 letters of the alphabet! She learned them from her LeapTop I posted about before. And it's not just on the laptop that she can point to them. She has a blanket with a "z" on the corner. One morning she was very excitedly telling me "z, z,z" (only she was making the sound of the letter). Amazing little girl!!!

I have been trying so hard to get some nice pictures of Grace (looking at the camera and smiling). I'm convinced it may never happen again. For the past 2 months, she has been sooooo difficult. I need some good pictures for her homestudy update we are doing next month. She better start to smile or Russia is going to think the kid is miserable here!

We went outside today and had a little success with some happiness captured on camera.

Loving the swing!


Dragging herself up the ramp to go on the slide.

Trying her best to swing on the rope!


Nate had Colonial Day at school today. His report was on Colonial Laws and Punishments. His teacher let him use her pillary to show the class. I want one of those for home! Could be an effective Time-Out spot. Kidding!!!