Beauty Queen

Grace and I both got haircuts at the beauty shop yesterday. I've been cutting her bangs and doing a poor job so I decided it was time for a professional. Nana had taken her to the beauty shop in Bolivar once before for a trim of her bangs but she had never had the back cut yet. Yesterday was the day! I only had them trim the bottom fuzziness off but it really shaped it up! She was so proud of her haircut and the girl asked her if she wanted her hair curled, well yeah! Grace was so proud of her curls I told her I'd take a picture of them when we got home. We may have created a monster though, she's going to want those curls a lot more I'm afraid, ha! She said it looked like Mama's now :)

Speech Therapy Begins

Well after much deliberation we've opted to pay for private speech therapy for Grace. She had her first visit from her "special teacher" on Monday. Cammie Hefflin is a licensed therapist and works for Marshfield schools AND goes to our church so I called her up and she agreed to meet with Grace on her own time. The best part is she'll go to First Kids and meet with her there so no travel is involved for Grace and she's in an environment where she's comfortable. Cammie said she did great and was a riot. Well of course! :) I asked Grace about it and asked if Cammie showed her any pictures and she said no. I asked if she talked to her and Grace said, "A LOT!" Pretty funny.

The whole school system thing was not working out to my satisfaction. They wanted her enrolled in their preschool (understandable) but it's only a 3 hour program from 8:30-11:30 am. How was that going to happen? If I was a stay at home Mom or just unemployeed then sure, but not the case for us. They had agreed to allow their resource officer to transport Grace to daycare after the little preschool program was over, but I wasn't too keen on that. Too much possibility for stuff to happen. It made me very uncomfortable. Another problem was I can drop off Grace from 6 am - 6 pm at First Kids but usually get her there around 7:30-7:45. They were going to have the cooks at the school watch her at Niangua for an hour before school started...what? I don't think so. To their credit, they did "try" to come up with a solution, but I'm not leaving my 3 year old in the care of the cooks and the resource officer. Crazy. Of course all that would have been FREE and now it's going to cost about $50 a week for her therapy but I'm thinking that it is money well spent.

I don't know what I'm going to do when she actually starts school in Niangua. They are just now getting a grant for the first time for an afterschool program. They previously haven't had any afterschool care. What are working parents supposed to do? These are problems I had never considered before having a child.

I'm looking forward to seeing some results for Grace because she gets so frustrated when I don't understand what she's saying. This morning she said SOMETHING I could just NOT make out and I asked her two more times and finally she just said, "I'm not talking to you anymore, cause you don't know!" I understood that! I'm sure it won't be fast, but the sooner the better for us all :)

Sick, Tired and Tornadoes

Well I'm finally back to work. Saturday I started feeling achy and then by the time we finished dinner at Nakato's with Bryon's work friends I was toast. I couldn't wait to get home and get to bed! I had a fever for four days and missed two days of work but finally went back yesterday. I went to the doctor on Monday and they said I had a virus and I'd get better or worse in 5-10 days. That was helpful. Thankfully I'm finally getting better. No more fever, but lots of congestion. Bless his heart, Bryon has been great. He's been taking care of Grace completely and taking her to school and picking her up and fixing meals. It's a good thing because things would have gone to hell in a handbasket quick if it had been left up to me!

In the middle of all that, Monday it was 70 degrees and that meant storms in January. They started around 3 pm and didn't end until 5 am Tuesday. Niangua was right on the track for wave after wave of them. We were in and out of the closet all night. Our power went out at 9 pm and blessedly came back on ten minutes before Bryon had to get up and get ready for work. At least it wasn't cold too. January has not been a good month the past two years! Ice last year and tornadoes this year! Thankfully we had no damage. Just some tree limbs down. The WIND was really scary about 3 am. I thought we were in for it then, but thankfully no. We have several acquaintences who suffered total losses and others with all kinds of damage. Bryon is going out on Saturday to help where he can. One of Grace's cooks at school lost everything. Their less than a year old house is totalled.

It's crazy. I'm sure glad we were spared. You can see some of the damage in our area at http://www.ky3.com/home/video/13530042.html?video=pop&t=a

Binging and Purging

The Binging:

Despite my good pre-Thanksgiving intentions to pare down this Christmas it turned out to be the most expensive and excessive Christmas ever. Best laid plans and all... We had our immediate family (Mom, Dad, Mike, Susan, Mawmaw Rice, Bryon, Grace and myself) at our house Christmas Eve. Mike didn't get off until 6 from the Evil Empire (Wal-Mart) and got to our place around 8:30. Grace was VERY patient. I don't think she really knew the carnage and excitement that was about to occur. She did, however, know that there were presents under the tree for her. When Mike arrived she launched into this dance. It was pretty cute :) She had sooooo many gifts it was insane. I didn't think Bryon and I had bought too many "Santa gifts" until Christmas morning and she had so much stuff she didn't even want to open them anymore. Next year we are vowing to do better and not get so much...best laid plans and all.

The Purging:

On another note, I took the whole week off, which was WONDERFUL and took Grace to daycare a few days so I could get some stuff around the house done. I moved her room from the blue room to the green room (much bigger) and turned her old room into an official guest room. It's really great now for her and Nana! It took me 5 hours to move all that stuff by myself. It was exhausting but worth it. We are going to look for a used bedroom set for the guest room. I cleaned out cabinets and drawers and all sorts of nooks and crannies throwing stuff away and collecting it for the spring garage sale. It felt good to get rid of that stuff especially after our excessive Christmas. I'll keep plugging away at the purging until I get it all done. I do love a project :)

Baking Sugar Cookies

This was Grace "helping" with our sugar cookie baking for church. It was a pretty messy endeavour and she ate more than she cut out (of course so did I). We had the Grinch on while we were working. They sure were good!

Bryon's Doe

Bryon hunted harder and more this year than he ever has. Of course he was on a trophy hunt this year. He saw plenty of decent ones but just never got the right opportunity. Our redneck poaching neighbor (Dudley, no kidding) has ruined so many of his hunts this year it wasn't even funny. Bryon would do the whole scent free shower and clothes thing and sit out in the woods for hours at a time and then Dudley would come driving up, guns hanging out the windows and ruin his whole setup. This happened time and time again. Finally in the extended season he shot a doe to give to a girl at work (we still have quite a bit of venison from his last deer). Thankfully, the coveted monster deer still hasn't fallen prey to the Dudley poaching team, but it's probably just a matter of time.

The last gift!

I bought the last Christmas gift today for Bryon. I really thought maybe we could tone things down this year and not spend as much but I think we have spent more than ever. It's fun but a guilty pleasure at best. Bryon worries Grace won't appreciate her toys and belongings because she has EVERYTHING without even asking for it.

As parents we WANT to give her everything we can, but it's a fine line to travel. I don't want to create a monster. Right now she doesn't know the difference and isn't demanding and I would like to keep it that way. I can't stand those kids screaming for stuff in Wal-Mart and I think I'll just croak if she does that.

I think it's time for a fiscal fast at our house. I'm hopeful that after the holidays we (I) can stop spending so much. It's hard in an age of instant gratification and me with little patience, but that's my goal. I think I'll make it my New Years Resolution. It's good to have goals I suppose. Let's see how long it lasts.

Enough with the pictures already...

December 2007 020
Originally uploaded by trlrover

First Kids Christmas Program

This is Grace's Christmas Program at First Kids on Thursday. Their verse they memorized was "Joseph went to Bethlehem with Mary who was expecting a baby". They did a pretty good job! Grace had it down pat :) She did however pick her nose on stage for several minutes! Whose kid is that?

Santa Claus is coming to town!

Friday night we took Grace to Bass Pro to see Santa Claus. I took her the first Christmas (she was only 6 weeks old) to the Mall to get the requisite Santa picture taken but I didn't manage to get her anywhere last year. She didn't really know the difference but this year I knew she'd be into it. We actually tried last year to go to BPS but the line was sooooo long there was no way that was going to happen and after that my ambition for it waned.

This time we got there at 5:30 and NO ONE was in line. Bryon got a call and lagged behind but Grace and I went right on up and got the ball rolling. She kept peeking around the corner to see him and it seemed like she was going to just go right up there with no coaxing. When Bryon got there she said she was going to do this to Santa and popped her wet finger out of her mouth in preparation for a wet willy. (I taught her that, but it was her idea to do it to Santa!) Pretty funny but we said she probably shouldn't do that to Santa :)

When it was finally time to go up and sit on his lap and tell him what she wanted for Christmas she got a case of stage fright and wouldn't do it. So Bryon and I got on either side of Santa and she finally reluctantly stood in front of him for this pic. Then Santa bribed her with lolly pops and she cozied right on up to him and told him she wanted a BOW and a GUN for Christmas so she could go with Daddy and shoot deer. (not however, reindeer :) She actually came up with that on her own even though no one will believe us. Bryon had gone out hunting a lot this season and everytime he went out she wanted to go. I told her she could go someday because Daddy really wanted to take her and she said she needed a bow and a gun. I said yes, you should ask Santa for those and she did. She'll be getting both of course :)

Finally they got a picture of just her and Santa and the deal was done.