Pigtails!

Pretty self-explanatory!  Since G-bear's hair is getting longer and longer (and almost gets in her eyes if it's flat enough) I thought we'd try some piggy tails today!

And this is Gabrielle closing her eyes.  On command.  Yes, she makes this exact face every time. 

And this is her pulling the cat's tail.  Ok....bad. 

Grandma Joanne bought Gabrielle magnet letters and she loves them!

She knows exactly where her crayons are and points at the cabinet until I get them out......

I love that her coloring book is as big as she is......and that she has to look through all the pages to find JUST the right Strawberry Shortcake picture to scribble on.

She loves to take off her clothes (or insist that they be taken off) and then immediately try and put them back on again herself.....

I just love her little spiky pigtails and then her signature curly Q's on the back of her neck :)

And tomorrow might be my last day of work with my current job!!!! YAYYY!!!  I have to confirm with my boss, but it's a possibility.  Cross your fingers!

A great start to the day

Yesterday morning when we were all getting ready to part ways I set Gabi down and she started walking towards the door. She took a few steps toward the door, turned around, walked back to me and gave me a BIG hug. Then she walked back to the door again to Nick so he could walk her to daycare. This was all unprompted and tantrum free. It was just such a sweet big-girl moment....so sweet.

Color me.....not surprised

Coloring and scribbling is something little G has shown pretty much zero interest in so far.  I have offered her different types of crayons and paper regularly and she couldn't care less about any of it.  She didn't seem to really "get it" or think it was worth her energy to try....until today.  Like many other things in her little life, she did it when she was ready.  She eagerly pointed to her coloring book at the back of her toy box so I got it and gave her some crayons (the same as many times before....expecting her to quickly look at them and then ignore them).  Nope!  She picked the crayons right up and started drawing all over the paper!  She was quite entertained by this for some time and had a ball coloring her first picture.  Here are a few pictures of her working on her art. 

Yes, I know I may have fallen victim to the "she learned how to color at daycare two weeks ago.....you didn't know she did this?" scenario.  Haha, I'm not going to ask.  I'll just assume this was her first picture!

Making "dots" was another favorite.  Our crayons don't have tips anymore....but we have dots on our picture :)

"Here!  If you're that interested then you color too!"

And getting slightly annoyed with me taking pictures while she is working on her master piece.  Ok, I'll stop.

And of course we needed a video too, right??  She doesn't do much coloring in the video....she's much to preoccupied with looking at herself in the video camera.  For those of you who don't live nearby though, it might be worth watching until the end (it's not too long) because she says her "all done" phrase at the end :) 

Sgetti Good!

In the words of Gabrielle "ahhhhh dah!!" (all done).  And in the words of mommy "bath time!"

Gabrielle has developed a love for play doh....not so much functionally playing with it.....but carrying it around and tearing it tiny pieces.  I helped her put all of her pieces in a cup here, which she wasn't thrilled with.

Even though she is making her "poopy face" in this picture....it still needed to be included because of her awesome Superman sweatshirt. 

A household task she was VERY good at - helping dad put the empty cans in a garbage bag to return!

I put her nanner in the fridge and she wasn't pleased at how cold it was....she gave it back to me.

Gabrielle has been very interested in picking up and wearing our shoes lately.  We'll tell her it's time to go bye-bye's and she will pick out her shoes and then bring us our shoes too.  Handy :)

And now to off to the weekend!

Little Ms. Houdini

We had such a fun family day on Saturday!  Fun, and eventful.  Gabrielle took a nap in the morning and then we took off once she woke up.

-Ate burgers, fries, and hot dogs at Five Guys Burgers & Fries

-Went to Kohls to buy Nick new jeans.  Gabi has no walking etiquette and ran like a mad woman through the store.  She saw a little girl (maybe 5 yo) wearing a sparkly skirt and a shirt with bubble writing on it, and G proceeding to feel the girls clothes until I finally got her away.  Luckily the girl (and the mom) didn't mind.  Then Gabi took a header in Kohl's (1 of 3 for the day).  She runs and her big head gets ahead of her feet and she face-plants.  We left then.

-Went to the mall to get a phone case for my iPhone.  Gabrielle played in the playplace.

-Went to Foods For Living - health food store.  I thought it would be a bit like Trader Joe's, but it was way more "granola".  There weren't prices on anything and I didn't feel like looking around too much.  Gabbers was getting pretty tired at this point.

-Found another park in Mason and stopped to play for a bit.  There was a pond right next to the play area and G wanted swim real bad.  We didn't stay too long because Gab's diaper had had it and she needed (I determined) another nap. 

-Got home, gave Gabi a snack, and then put her down for a nap.  She tossed and turned a bit, but eventually feel asleep.

-She woke up and we headed back outside to walk around a play.  Nick had left about an hour before to go for a run (which usually doesn't last long) but he was still gone.  He had run to the park and played basketball with some guys down there, and we met up with him walking back.  When we were back in our driveway Gabrielle fell on her face again (2 of 3) and scraped her head on the cement a bit this time.  Now she has a red mark in the middle of her forehead from Kohl's and a black mark on the side of her forehead from the driveway.

-Everyone was doing ok and we decided to go up to Pizza Hut to grab a pizza for dinner.  We turned Gabrielle frontwards in her car seat a couple of weeks ago, so now we can glance back and see her while we're driving.  Once when we were talking to her on our drive up to dinner her chest buckle was undone on her car seat!  Nick strapped her in so I thought part of her sweatshirt got caught and it didn't clip all the way.  Nope - we watched as she repeatedly unbuckled herself from her car seat (after I would rebuckle her obviously).  She did this about six or seven times before we finally had to kind of yell at her to stop it.  She did, but she wasn't happy about it.  Poor thing.

-We made it to Pizza Hut in one piece.  We were sitting in a booth and Gabi was in a high chair in the isle.  The waitress was bringing us our pizza and more water, and as she set one of the glasses of water in the table another glass of water fell off of her tray onto Gabi's head.  A giant glass of ice water fell on top of my baby's head.  We were all dazed for a couple of seconds and then Gabi started crying, I grabbed her out of the high chair, and the waitress freaked out.  We were saying "it's ok, it's ok" but in my head all I was thinking is we have to get out of here - get out now.  Before these words actually came out of my mouth, Gabi was calming down slightly (though still drenched in ice water) and Nick said "Gabi, you want some pizza?"  She paused for a second and then nodded yes.  I guess we were staying!  I took her wet sweatshirt off so she was just chilling in a onesie and some wet hair, but she was ok.  That has always been one of my biggest fears is some dizzy waitress dropping something on my kid.  I'm just so thankful she wasn't hurt.  Later I told Nick I was ready to run out of the restaurant with Gabi right after the incident happened until he said something, and he said "I didn't know what to do either....asking Gabi if she wanted pizza just kind of seemed natural so I went with it".  Haha!

Hmmm....and then today Gabi figured out how to to unlock the baby locks on our cabinets.  Those didn't last long!  I'm sure glad we didn't spend the time to install all of those - the people who owned the house before us had kids (no surprise there) so the locks were all in when we got here.  Score!

Gabi got a hot dog, but she was a bit more interested in the bun

Until she grabbed the whole hot dog and started chewing on it.  Then the hot dog was more exciting.

Tomorrow's Thursday....which means Saturday will get here soon.  NOT soon enough!!!

It's Springggg!!!!

Or at least it has been for the past couple of days, haha.  Gotta love Michigan!  Yesterday was quite nice and today was even warmer...probably hitting a high of mid to high sixties!  G is a true outdoor girl.  Oh my goodness.  Today I got home from work at about 1:00 (woot!) because I didn't have any patients, so I got to spend the beautiful afternoon with my girl. 

We literally spent the whole afternoon outside.  I was able to bribe her inside once for her reading movie and a snack, but that was it!  However, she is not loving all of the rules that come with playing outside in the nice weather such as not running into the road, not climbing up on other people's porches, not joining the neighborhood boys in their game of football, not running with the dogs through our currently muddy/poopy backyard, etc.......etc. 

She thinks all of the neighborhood kids want to play with her, but the last thing they want is a baby running in the middle of their fun.  Haha, no really most of the kids are very nice and they all yell out "watch out for baby Gabi!" if she sprints in the middle of things and she loves it :)  Her name isn't Gabi or Gabrielle....it's "Baby Gabi".  The poor kid is going to have an identity crisis when she grows up because she has so many nicknames!

Yesterday we grilled out - or attempted to grill out.  Our grill isn't working so ended up George Foreman-ing it inside.  Gabs had fun crawling on our deck furniture though.....

Yes, she got up there herself.  I'm not that big of a dork to pose her up there. 

But I am a big enough dork to take a picture of it! 

And then back down on the boring chair....that didn't last long.

And then today on St. Patrick's day I took G-bear to the park for the first time this year.  I wasn't planning on it, but she was driving a little crazy so I took her here to run free!

She climbed up this slide super quick...and then I realized I had to run and

catch her so we ended up going down the slide together!

Nick's quote for this picture is "Gabrielle for Congress". 

I told him we'd have to crop out the diaper before any ads ran :)

About to go down the slide by herself!

Weeeeee!!!! The look on her face is priceless!

And then she wanted to go right back down again, but insisted on trying to climb up the slide to get there.

Carefree!

Gabrielle spotted another tot who wasn't wearing green on St. Patty's day and was ready to get a pinchin'

She thought she was super BA.....

....Until her antics about landed her on her rump.  Nick sees this differently - it's her fist pump picture because she didn't fall!

I'm such a mean mom....I left her water in the car so when she got thirsty I told her we had to go get her cup.  I got her in her car seat without any fights :)