A Day in the Life of Grace

Nothing too exciting going on at the Lochhead Lair...just what is becoming "the usual" in our house of three. Grace loves the whole new world that her high chair has opened up...


...she babbles to her spoon, using syllables da, ya, ga, and ba to comprise her own little language...


...and plays with her bowl, if Mom or Dad are sucker enough to pass it over.


This is a rare moment when she's not in her Robeez. We love these toes. :)


She loves to tap buttons on the laptop with Dad, her captive audience.


She doesn't like to be too far from the action. When I'm in the kitchen doing dishes or, on a rare occasion, cooking, she likes to sit up high where she can keep her eye on things. This is her new favorite perch. She sits and rocks back and forth, grunting through her binky.


"Spin, spin a letter!" This is one of her favorite SINGING toys that traps music in my head. "The animals have something to say...they hoot and holler and chirp away!" She loves to "spin the big wheel"--I wish it beeped like the one in The Price is Right...but I suppose music is more educational.


We still spoil her occasionally and let her nap in our bed. She is the sweetest thing to snuggle up with!


Oh, so sweet.

Our Little Blue Fish

We took Grace to the YMCA on our day off to teach her to swim. Here she is, relaxing with Dad, after she had finished her lap swim. She was quick to ditch her swim cap and goggles.


Believe it or not, she really is quite buoyant. :)


Dad bought her this swimsuit and was a great swim instructor.


She was a little nervous about the water until I put the camera down and got in with her and Jeff. She's still a big MOM fan. Whatever is good for Mom is good for her!


Our friends, the VanSickles, invited us to go with them today. Gracie kept trying to grab the girls' goggles as they swam up to her.


She stayed in the water for about an hour! In the car, on the way home, she fell asleep like her dad and G'ma Colleen sleep best: with her head slumped forward on her chest.

A Scent of Spring

Red tulips...due to arrive on Valentine's Day!

THAT BABY CD...mostly for grown-ups?

I am loving this CD! They've taken songs by Bruce Springsteen, 10,000 Maniacs, The Beatles, Fleetwood Mac, and Joni Mitchell and have re-done them for kids. I like having Grace just so I have permission to listen to this! :) More info--and music samples--at this site. And just know, if you invite me to your baby shower, DON'T BE SURPRISED IF YOU GET THIS FROM ME. Thanks, G'ma Colleen--you've started something!
Addendum: Did I forget to mention NEIL DIAMOND? Yep, he has a song redone on here too! Now I bet you're ITCHING to check it out!

Oh, yeah!

We're back on a regular schedule! We lost a lot of snow with a few inches of rain last week and we're back at school! Jeff and I had a total of FIVE snow days. We'll see when we'll make them up!



Mom and Dad came up to Spokane last Friday to take my G'ma Caroline to her most recent eye appointment. Though the eye doctor visit is never fun, Gracie really likes seeing family, watching us eat at Pizza Hut, and playing peek-a-boo with G'ma Joan and Papa Greg.

Snow Shovels

Jeff is currently on his way to stand in line at a hardware store that just got a load of 400 snow shovels delivered. I called ahead and the clerks said that there are probably 100 people in line already. One shovel per customer.

Our local hardware store said they had 200 shovels arrive this morning and they were sold out in 2 hours. Lowe's said they got some in on Friday and were sold out in less time. THIS IS SO CRAZY!!!

Snow Day #2--S.O.S. (Save our Shed)

Jeff had to go to school today, but my district declared another snow day. I am anxious to see if Jeff had any students show up at school. I really have no idea how walkers are supposed to get to school. There are no sidewalks completely cleared--most are covered with hip-high berms. I think most districts are hoping that the wet snow/rain that we're going to get in the next few days will help somehow--we'll have to wait and see.

We forgot to clear our little woodshed of snow when we shoveled our roof two days ago (and we were busy shoveling Jeff's grandparents roof yesterday), so I decided that as soon as Grace went down for her nap I'd try to go shovel it off. Here's a before pic:


And here's the after pic:


Not completely cleared, but mostly cleared. Jeff can tackle the rest when he gets home. I think I was a little late on the rescue mission, as the back of the shed was already bowing out. I'm pretty sure the wood stacked inside is what is holding it up. I should've taken a picture of the broken shovel that I started with and the even MORE broken shovel that I ended with. If anyone wants to ship a snow shovel to us in Spokane feel free! The stores are out! :)



Yesterday Jeff grabbed the camera in time to catch a couple of pictures of the DEER that wandered into town and strolled down our road. Good thing we're stocked with Macaroni and Cheese in the pantry or we'd be running to grab Ol' Betsy. (That one was for you, Marc.)

REALLY Bouncy Seat

I suppose the bouncy seat is about to be put away. I have been putting Gracie in it while I shower--which has pacified her for months! Today I heard her fussing before I even had the shampoo in, so I let her fuss for a couple of minutes and then suddenly she was fine. I peered out to see what was entertaining her and found her sitting upright like this--bouncing and babbling. When she leaned forward to grab the toys off of the floor, I realized the bouncy seat was seeing its last day with Grace. :)

SCHOOL CANCELLED, AGAIN!!!

Okay, the snow is beautiful, but it's starting to be a SMIDGE inconvenient! Jeff spent the ENTIRE day on the roof (with the help of our wonderful friends!) shoveling off the two feet of snow/ice that had accumulated there. We were starting to get cracks in our walls inside our house due to the weight of the snow on the roof. Tomorrow SHOULD BE our first day back at school, but we just found out that both of our districts are closed tomorrow--mainly because there's so much snow that kids can't walk to school safely. The County Sheriff called that one, overriding the school districts' decision. Tomorrow Jeff is going to shovel off his grandpa's roof...and our neighbor asked him if he'd help her with her roof... I've never seen anything like this!!!

It's times like these that I wished I lived in wet, mild Seattle...

MOBILE!!! (sort of)

I just left her in the living room for two minutes and returned to see what she was doing on her blanket on the floor...and she was gone!



She isn't crawling...just scooting backwards by doing "push-ups." She looks kind of like an inchworm when she does it. Does anyone remember the name of Oscar the Grouch's pet inchworm? We could call her new move by that name...Slinky?

Cousins' Night Out 2008

Each Christmas Break, Jeff and Drew, along with their cousins, Ang and Jen, have an evening where they go play together: Cousins' Night Out. They always plan fun activities and they even make yearly t-shirts for the night. This year Jen and Drew planned a fun evening of LASER QUEST, ICE SKATING, and dinner out at ROCK CITY GRILL. It was SO MUCH FUN!!!

You can't really tell in this picture, but the t-shirts this year have a picture of Grandma Bonnie on them and they read, "Cousins' Nite Out 2008--This one's for you, Grandma!" Too funny.

Miss Hazel...with the Brown Eyes

How fun to have Becky and Hazel come to visit this week! Becky and I were roommates at the Hits House during "The College Years" and have kept in touch as she and Beau have moved to Oregon--thanks to blogging and emailing!!! Thanks for your long-distance care, Becky! Someday we hope to get all of the Hits House BABIES together. What do you think, Hits Ladies?!? Reunion? :)

Three Christmas Gifts

Jeff, Gracie and I have had a FULL, FULL two weeks of Christmas. To try to capture ALL of the great moments with both families would drive me to drink more eggnog, so I think I'll share three gifts that we received this season that we'll never forget.

1. GOLD--aka The Best Birthday EVER


Jeff's birthday was the 17th--on this day, the snow started. We received so much snow on this day that his birthday actually turned out to be the last day of school before break. The next two days were snow days, a fabulous start to our Christmas Break. I don't think we'll soon forget that night as our friends trucked through the snow to meet us for his birthday dinner at Rancho Chico or how we hovered in front of the TV before bed to see if school would be called off the next day.

This is Jeff and Gracie celebrating a snow day the next morning. Snowed in and sporting bed-heads!!!

2. FRANKINCENSE--or perhaps "GRACINCENSE"


Of course, Christmas with Grace this year was a gift. This is the year that she loved the tissue paper and the tags on gifts more than the gifts themselves. She actually raked in more gifts than we got for our wedding--thank heavens she's too young to write the thank you notes! (Thank you for showering her, everyone!) But what we saw her enjoy the most was the attention she got from all of our family members. She is so loved! Seeing her with the people we love is a great gift to us.


Gracie had such a great time with her cousins, Brooke, Abby, and Megan. We couldn't help snapping this picture of Grace in Megan and Abby's doll line-up. Just you wait until she's old enough to HOLD dollies, girls! Won't that be fun?

Gnawing on G'ma Trudy's tablecloth...and in case you're wondering, Santa didn't bring her any teeth for Christmas...soon!

Always a victim of any silly head attire...

Cousin Janie was such a good helper with Grace. I love the modeling she's doing with her own mouth...

Grace learned how to sit up on her own the week before Christmas! We still put some cushion behind her, as she loves to fly back into "recline" on a whim. What a fun new trick!

3. MYHRR--Or should I say, BURRRRRR.
I've got to say that this was the White Christmas I've only dreamt about. As a child, I remember drifts in our backyard as tall as me, and this year we got to see them again. And I was about to buy into the global warming theory...

It was so difficult to capture the VOLUME of the snow...but here are a few attempts...

This was just after DAY ONE of the snowstorm.


Look what Jeff has to shovel through to get to our Honda in the garage!


Gorgeous snow!