Gracen has so much fun at Play Gym that we had been looking forward to it all week. It was kind of one of those mornings, and by the time I had breakfast made and cleaned up, the house tidied, Grae’s lunch packed, and both of us dressed and ready to go, we were running 20 minutes behind. I quickly loaded up the vehicle, got Gracen strapped into her car seat, and jumped into the driver’s seat, only to realize that we had no power at the back of the house and the electronic gate couldn’t be opened without it. Ugh. Knowing that the breaker box was probably downstairs and not wanting to deal with all that comes with having 7 people living down there, I unloaded the car, loaded up the stroller and we hustled our way up the hill to the community centre.

This morning we woke up to snow on the ground and like a small child who’d been waiting for snow all year, I squealed with delight and immediately set about bundling Gracen up to go outside.

This afternoon I was in the living room folding laundry and Gracen was happily playing in her bedroom. All was quiet until she marched into the room without so much as a glance in my direction and headed straight towards her high chair. She bent down and I realized that she had a washcloth in her hand. She very purposefully went about wiping the floor with animated strokes. When she was done, she marched out of the room like it was all in a hard day’s work. Not a minute later, she was back at it, but this time with a different coloured cloth. Four cloths later, I asked her where she was getting these cloths from. She led me down the hallway to this. Mama had left the bathroom door open. Rookie mistake…

Despite our efforts, I think we may have a girly girl on our hands. I swear she came out of the womb loving shoes, purses, scarves, earrings, necklaces, and all beauty products (a.k.a. “pretty pretties”). And now she’s started this…

This afternoon after Gracen’s GIANT nap, we all headed back to Hillcrest Centre. We’ve been a couple of times recently for the pool and loved it, so we thought we’d check out the new library this time around.

‘Mama, what crazy thing have you done now???’

I have a confession to make.

These darn molars have gotten the best of us and I’ve been letting Gracen watch a few minutes of TV in the evenings while I make dinner and scurry around the house picking up in between stirs. I am really not a fan of television for kids (especially when used as a babysitter) and we normally do not have the TV on at all during the day (well, except when Papa is home…he’s somehow semi-convinced me that sports highlights are essential for proper father daughter bonding, but that’s another story). The problem is that these giant teeth ripping their way through her little gums have stripped her of all independence and I no longer have a moment to pee alone, much less cook a proper meal without a miserable little monkey tugging at my legs and begging to be picked up. In my defence, I cook at lightening speed and Baby TV, the channel I put on, consists mostly of nursery rhymes and songs, which I hate less than other kids’ shows. The good news is that her fourth molar started making it’s way through her gums a couple of days ago, so we should be in the clear here very soon. Fingers crossed that she gets a break in between her molars and the canines that are supposed to come in next!

Someone was pretty excited to head back to the pool today. What I didn’t really realize was that our last visit took place mid-week (Brad’s days off always feel like weekends). Imagine my surprise when we arrived and the parking lot was crawling with other vehicles also in search of a parking spot… Inside, it was a little bit of a zoo to say the least. There were few moments when there was not a kid bowling into us, water being splashed in our faces, or a random foot jutting into my ribs. Of course, Gracen loved it anyways. I’ll think we’ll probably stick to weekday visits from now on though. :)

We were so excited to visit the Winter Farmer’s Market for the first time today, and even more excited when the sun was shining bright this morning as we were preparing to leave. Just our luck though, we walked out of the house, locked the door, and the rain started falling the second we stepped onto the sidewalk. And it didn’t let up either. As we browsed briskly through the vendors, the rain was coming down so hard that it formed pools on our stroller and bounced back up off the pavement at us. All of this was unbeknownst to Gracen though. She had fallen asleep on the way to the market and was successfully transferred into her cozy and dry chariot and did not wake until she was back in the vehicle afterwards. Here’s hoping that next week will be a little dryer so that we can take our time while browsing and not have to fight our way through a sea of dripping black umbrellas…

I really wanted to take Gracen to a Remembrance Day ceremony of some sort today, but completely dropped the ball on finding one nearby. So with nothing planned and Bradley at work for the day, we put on our poppies and headed up to Sunset Community Centre for their Play Gym drop-in program.