The Darndest Things

Out of the mouth of my babe…

• Stranger Danger:  She is really into distinguishing between people she knows and strangers. She’s constantly telling me (right in front of people and rather loudly), “Mama, she’s a stranger. I don’t know her.”
• We were sitting at the zoo, eating lunch. HG turns and looks at the little girl sitting across the aisle, and then she turns back to me and says, “Mama, her booty’s hanging out!”
• We were watching Beauty and the Beast and when the “Bonjour” song came on, she turned to me and said, “Bonjour; that means hello.”
• I caught her snuggling with one of her teddy bears, and I asked her, “Did you just give your bear an Eskimo kiss?” She responded, “Yep, that's what mommies do!”
• For the first time, I caught her making two of her dolls (a boy and a girl) kiss. She said, “They love each other!”
• We passed an insurance office as we drove along, and she asked if that’s where Daddy worked. I responded that Daddy worked at a bank, not an insurance agency.  She sassed back at me, “Daddy doesn’t work at a bank. He works at an office, silly!”
• She caught one of her ‘Go Fish’ fish this morning and said, “Holy cow!”

Today couldn’t be beat. We played all morning in our pjs and then met Grandma and Peggy for lunch. We came home for a good, long nap for HG (and blogging for Mommy), and then we spent the afternoon out in the beautiful weather. We walked around the neighborhood, played on the swing set, and practiced on HG’s tricycle. Her legs are finally long enough, but she’s still working on her coordination. We’re making forward progress though! We found a mommy bird sitting on a nest and squawking at us for getting too close, and HG decided she was hungry. She headed straight to her bird feeder and took a handful of seeds back to the mama bird. Later, we met Spiffer, Granddaddy, and Bubba for dinner and rounded out the night with a Target trip. Love fun AND productive days!

 

And finally, an update on our school decision. After MANY family discussions and tears (on my part), we’ve decided to defer sending Helen Grace to ‘big girl school’ at St. Agnes for one more year. We know that this could put us at risk of not getting in next year, but we feel strongly that five days a week would be too much of a stretch right now. The thought of waking her up every morning at the crack of dawn to get her clean, fed, dressed (nicely), and HAPPILY into the car and into Memphis by 8:00 is more than I can process or handle right now. More importantly, Helen Grace is blessed to be surrounded by so many loving (and mostly retired) grandparents and great-grandmother, and we want her to be able to have as much one-on-one time with them as possible. Her learning is coming along quite nicely due to her being surrounded by former educators (Spiffer, Grandma, and Peggy). We’ll look at putting her into a Mothers’ Day Out program at a local church for some socialization this next year and let her continue to flourish with her favorite people for now. I’m mentally and emotionally exhausted after debating that decision for months, but I’m confident that we have made the right one. Time with loved ones is priceless and to be treasured.