baby animal farm day

gracie's cousins have been on spring break this week, so as one last fun day before they go back next week, we all headed up to logan for baby animal days. tons of baby animals to see and pet and hold! what's cuter than baby animals?! even though i worked late the night before, i knew gracie would have so much fun seeing the animals and playing with her cousins, so we went. i'm so glad we did!

she was a little hesitant and a little anxious about the crowds and crowds of people, but i think she had fun and i know she loved petting the animals!

the horses were definitely her favorite (not even the baby ones, the big huge horses she couldn't get enough of! she wasn't scared at all and they were RIGHT up next to us.) there were also baby chicks, ducks, cows, goats, bears, pigs. oh and a choo choo train to ride. so fun.

(did i mention it was coooold? thank goodness for that sun because otherwise, that wind and chilly cache valley temps were enough to send me back to the car. brrr)

 i don't have all the pictures, since some were taken on my moms camera, but here are a few phone pics.

because, look at her!

my gracie girl is 15 months old!!

i realized it's been awhile since i've written down all the fun and silly and not so fun things she's doing right now. so here it is.

.she finally has 4 teeth! two on top, two on bottom. slow teeth growers, we are 'round here.

.her favorite foods are mac n cheese, blueberries, chicken nuggets, eggs, waffles, pb&j's, graham crackers, & "nanas" (bananas)

.she started really walking around 13.5 months and hasn't stopped since

.she allows headbands and bows to be on her head (she was on strike there for a few months) but if she gets bored enough, she'll rip them off and they usually end up in her mouth at some point

.speaking of hair, she can wear two little piggy tails now and it's just about the cutest thing on the planet

.she LOVES to dance, especially to taylor swift. literally every day, she brings us the remote (we play it through our blue ray player on our tv) and starts moving her arms around cuz she wants to music on so she can dance! we know every song by heart (jae included)

.she can make just about every animal noise, including dog, lion, bee, horse, monkey, bunny (the bunny makes a 'bouncy' noise, thanks to one of her books), pig, and others i can't remember. my favorite is probably elephant. she makes an elephant noise while putting her arm up in the air like the elephants trunk. it's awesome.

.she's still on the small side, so she wears a lot of 12 month stuff still. she actually was the exact same weight at her 15 month appointment as her 12 month. hello 3%ile! and her shoe size is definitely still in the 6-12 month range ;)

.when it's cold or we look outside at the snow, she pulls her arms across her chest and says "brrrr!"

.she is officially an almond milk drinker. and she's actually drinking less and less lately, which i guess is good in a way because it means she's getting more full on actual food.

.most naps/bedtimes lately, she doesn't care much to be rocked and/or drink a bottle. she is just ready to go to bed. it is nice that she can be so independent and go to sleep so well, but i can't help but feel a little sad and rejected when she sits up and just wants me to put her in her bed instead of rock with me :(

.she still sleeps so well at night - roughly 730pm-7am. naps during the day are always a battle, but we take what we can get.

.she is good at playing independently and loves blocks, cars, puzzles, books, anything that plays music or makes noise, finger puppets. and of course, also things like tupperware, zoey food, random clothing items, tampons, and whatever else she can get. ohh and our phones. gosh if she see's the phone, it's all over. game.over. it's a battle, i tell ya.

.she gives the BEST little puckered kisses. like, real kisses. and makes a "muah!" noise. did I mention that it's just the best?

.she has the sweetest, most fun little personality showing more and more. she makes such funny faces and lets you know exactly how she feels about everything.

.she's slightly obsessed with her belly button and you can often find her with her shirt half up her belly and her fingers over her belly button.

.she knows most her body parts and can point them all out when you ask her - nose, ears, eyes, arms, fingers, legs, toes, belly, bum, tongue, teeth, hair.

.zoey and gracie are best little buds, even though most the time gracie is trying to kiss or hug or sit on zo and zoey is growling at her....they wrestle and play and try to share toys (ick) and i completely love that they love each other. gracie has started picking up zo's food bowl and carrying it over to her bag of food to feed her. then we put food in her bowl and she carries it back over and sets it on the ground for her. smart girl!

.she tries to say any word that you say. she repeats almost everything (enter: mom and dad, be careful what you say! phase). it reminds me often of that friends episode where phoebe is trying to teach joey how to speak French. know which one i'm talking about? phoebe says something, and joey repeats it and thinks he's totally saying it the same. except it totally isn't at all what phoebe said. I feel like that's how it is a lot of the time right now - jae or I will say a word, and she'll say it back. only sometimes it sounds absolutely nothing like what we said. but she has no idea. it is the funniest.

it just blows my mind how much her little brain has grown and seeing her little mind just sucking everything in and learning all this new stuff, every single day. it is unreal. she keeps us laughing all the time. she is a weirdo but so smart and so cute and so funny. yes, we're obsessed.

 

and now, some more pictures of our sweet girl because basically she steals the show. and that's that.

life lately.

we're two weeks away from christmas! i'm excited. i've done most our shopping this year online, and i will tell you what - it has been nice. it's a lot more effort to find time and then get gracie in the car and to the store and shop and then get everything and everyone back home. so online it is! and even better - i haven't paid shipping costs on one single thing i've ordered. free shipping all around! that is the best part for sure. i refuse to pay for shipping.

both jae and i had the itch early on to get our christmas decor up. i'm not sure why (we've never been so on top of things like that in the past...maybe because we have a 1yr old this year to make things more exciting??). we had most of our decorations and our tree up before thanksgiving. we finally put ornaments on the tree last week. i've loved having it all up, around the house. makes things special and gracie loves the lights. surprisingly, even with presents under the tree too, she hasn't bothered it much. we'll see if that lasts another couple of weeks.

gracie is all sorts of in the climbing into/onto/over things lately. it's pretty funny and cute, but also really interrupts my dish washing or toilet cleaning cuz i have to run and grab her as she's falling on the floor (from short heights, don't worry!). she's just growing and growing and doesn't seem to ever stop.

work is stressing me out. i've been working two jobs for almost 8 months now and it is seriously starting to wear on me. who's idea was this anyway, to work two jobs?? (pointing at myself.)

it's been 6 weeks since my D&C. can you believe it? it was a rough few weeks for jae and i, but we are finally back in a good, happy, healing place. we know it happened for some reason, although we don't know quite what that is yet. sometimes it's still hard not to think about how far along i would be now, and how we'd be planning everything, etc etc. but we are so blessed and so happy with our little family and know that little babe will be ours forever, even if he couldn't join us now.

on a side note, i ordered the sweetest drawing of Christ holding a newborn. a good high school friend of mine does AMAZING work, and when i saw it, i knew i had to have it. i am in love with it. i am still working on the perfect frame for it, but i love love it. it's beautiful and makes my heart happy.

what is with this weird utah winter spring weather? it really feels like we went through winter and now it's 50-something degrees everyday and things are kind of damp and dead still, waiting for new life. except we haven't even had winter yet. not sure that i'm complaining, but it is just strange.

i feel like we've had family pictures done about 17 times in the last couple of months. with all my family in town for thanksgiving, we had full frederickson family pictures done. plus, we'd already had two sets of pictures done for our little family for gracie's 1st birthday and christmas cards. you'd think jae and i would get more photogenic with all the photos being taken. but we don't seem to. gracie steals the show every time. which is totally fine.

last but certainly not least, gracie girl is walking!!! she started the saturday after thanksgiving, and has gotten better and better. she's still not sure if she'd rather walk or crawl, (whichever is faster at the moment, i guess), but she is getting so good and i'm all sorts of mixed emotions about it. (video below - sorry it's kind of weird quality, but it's so fun, i had to include it)

gracie's 1st birthday.

gracie's birthday was october 17th. the big FIRST birthday!!

we had her party the day after. all our family came, which is what really made her happy. she had no idea what all the presents were about (her dad and i opened most all of them, i think) and she liked the food for a minute, but really she was all about playing with her cousins and showing off for everyone :) it's safe to say she had a great time!

i only got a few pictures, we were just having too much fun celebrating.

the birthday girl, just after she woke up. she had a bit of a cold, so we had to start her day by spraying/suctioning out her nose. she didn't let it get her down!

 

trying to get her to open some presents but....

...all she wanted to do was give cousin ben loves :)

the spread!

happy happy 1st birthday my little love!

you've made this past year the best one yet!!

bff's. they really are.

gracie: oh look at zoey sleeping so nicely. i think i'll grab her ear but look super non-chalant while doing it.

zoey: you let go of my ear!

gracie: hahahaha!
zoey: if you don't let go, i will sniff your face & possibly lick your nose.

gracie: oh no you didn't!
zoey: mom, please get her away from me.

august photo dump.

the last month in (phone) pictures!
{ps - i just scrolled through all of them and realized 99% are of gracie. what can i say, she really is the center of our world}

first time wearing a little clippy! she ended up choking on one of these clippies on the way to church the other week, so i'm not hesitant to use them if i'm not right there to watch her like a hawk.

our new "naptime".....standing up in the crib and crying because she's tired. it's so fun. but i must admit, her little tiny self does look pretty cute standing up in there :)

TONS of pulling up and standing! all day, every day.

first (tiny) ponytail!!! i think i pulled out about 5 hairs just trying to get this ponytail in.

swimming up in park city. finally, she loved the pool! it was nicely warm water so i'm sure that's why.

she's had a really hard time with naps lately (i think because of that darn tooth that finally popped through) so this was at about 6pm one night - just completely zonked out in dad's lap.

of course, as soon as we tried moving her into her crib so she could just go to sleep for the night, she woke up.

as soon as she see's the fridge even cracked open, she is determined to get in there and explore.

SUPER helpful, ALL the time now! (and yes, those are boy jammies with sharks on them. i think they're adorable)

she loves duckies, and she has these little mini duckies. she decided she'd stuff the entire body of the duck into her mouth with the head hanging out to make it easier to crawl around while still having easy access to a duck! genius.

we visited aunt kellie one day, and she had a fun balloon that kept her entertained (and a bit frustrated) for a good 10 minutes.

lots of neighborhood walks with zo. she now demands to hold onto zo's leash when we're out. she can't say much more than dad but she can demand to hold onto zo on our walks. it's magic.

painted our front door yellow!

she loves to stand at the window and watch what's going on outside. and with all the moving and crawling lately, a diaper and some baby leg warmers are the perfect outfit.

and then there's zo. she cozied herself up like this in an effort to get away from people (ie gracie) i think. she loves gracie, but she also really loves her naps.