So what do you do when you don’t leave the house all day? You get a little more creative than usual, that’s all. Miss G was pretty thrilled when I pulled out our winter bin for her to sort through. She cleared out the top half of the bin, asked for help with getting into the bin, and then proceeded to put on a hat and chew on Bubba’s toes. Entertainment at its finest.

This morning we took Gracen to the Smile to Smile Program at a local community centre. It was the first time she’s ever had a dentist clean and check her teeth and she pretty much hated every moment. I don’t blame the little doodle. I wouldn’t like having someone’s big fingers prying open my little mouth one bit either. But sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do… And her next appointment is in just 6 months!

Like I mentioned in the previous post, today we broke my wait-for-all-things-Christmas-until-December-1st rule and took Gracen to visit Santa. And you know what? I’m so happy we did. There were no giant line-ups, cranky kids, or fed-up photographer’s assistants involved. In fact, it was just the opposite. Things were quiet, calm, and leisurely. Not to mention that Santa was FABULOUS. Before we made our way over to his chair, he came over to see how Gracen would react to him. This was, after all, her first time ever meeting the Canadian Santa. Right away, he knew that we’d be better off starting her off on a little rocking horse rather than on his lap. Let me tell you, this Santa was sneaky! We got her happily sitting on the horse and he snuck right in behind her for a few shots. Before we knew it, she was in his arms… No tears shed! I’d say that our visit was a success. Here are a few of my favourite shots:

We had to go out to Richmond Centre today, so we decided to make an afternoon of it (once Gracen finally woke up from her giant 3 hour nap!) Our first stop was the customer service desk to sign out one of the cool car strollers Grae’s been eyeing up in recent mall visits. (She was much more impressed than she appears in this photo, I promise.)

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…