Groverweenies 2013

Per Grover family tradition, we put off making our costumes until October 30, making mad rushes to Hobby Lobby and the hardware store like the class-A procrastinators we are. And, like usual, we had a blast and swore to leave things to the last minute next year, too.

Here's our cast of characters:

After we had gussied ourselves up in the church parking lot, Dave and Charlie manned the trunk and passed out candy, complimenting costumes like the dears they are. Hollie and I meanwhile hit the asphalt and came back with a whopping five pieces of candy because Hollie preferred to see rather than approach the people in costume. (She even saw our awesome neighbor dressed up as Plex from Yo Gabba Gabba! but her enthusiasm turned to terror when Plex started talking to her out of a human mouth in his neck that sounded like just some dude. Sheer terror, you guys. My heart would have broken for her if it hadn't been so funny.) Luckily for her, two of those five pieces of candy were a fun-sized package of M&Ms and some Smarties. It took her an hour to get through the M&Ms, which she asked for one at a time and got excited about each color that came out of the bag. We only got through a quarter of the Smarties by the time we were ready to go home.

Handsome old exterminator; cute little Charlie Brown Bee

Holls mostly sipped her milk and appreciated costumes from a distance. At one point she turned to me and said, "I love it!"

Happy Butterfly caught by a scary Mama Spider

Hollie, Charlie, and I have all been sick this week, so we all went to bed really early except for Dave, who we sent to a friend's house for spooky games. He came home later and said he missed us the whole time, that big old softie.

LET THE HOLIDAYS COMMENCE! *old timey trumpet fanfare, with jingle bells*

Holls: Age 2

Don't worry—her lip is black because she is a thief and managed to sneak some licks from her birthday cupcake when we weren't looking (she will do this with any baked good you leave within her reach)

Hollie had a birthday and now she is two. She is energetic, lively, curious, stubborn, clever, and silly. She still loves lions and the moon. She still loves books, though she tires quickly of frequently read titles, and I think there will be many more library trips from here on out. She loves singing songs, and knows many church songs and Yo Gabba Gabba songs by heart. She also knows "Home on the Range," the song my father always used to sing to me when I was a wee baboo.

Riding her bike with two of her "best friends"

Her "best friends" (as she calls them) always come in pairs, and she picks a new pair each morning. Frequent "best friends" include Grover Mouth (as opposed to Fluffy Grover and Mama Grover—Fluffy Grover has extra curly hair, Mama Grover is my old Grover doll, and Grover Mouth has an exceptionally wide open mouth and he is Hollie's favorite), Big Bunny (the stuffed rabbit formerly known as "Whiskers" from my childhood), and Hopkins (a Signing Time stuffed frog from my Cousin Erin). Recently inducted into the "best friends" circle is her new stuffed Muno doll, who has been a constant best friend since Hollie's birthday on Wednesday.

Going on a walk with her superhero cape.

Holls loves to count (we heard her counting to eleven over and over this morning until Dave got out of bed and let her out of her room, and she surprised us tonight by counting backwards from eight while we were getting her birthday cupcakes ready) and she loves to recite the alphabet (which she commonly calls the "now-I-know-my-ABCs-won't-you-sing-with-me song").

She also loves making funny faces and funny noises.

She loves the Japanese anime Totoro and we let her watch it about once every two weeks or so. She calls the little totoros "bunny balls" and every time it reaches the part where the family is taking a bath in the dark, she freaks out for some unknown reason and runs out of the room until we skip the DVD ahead to the next scene. It is weird and oddly endearing? And a little sad because Dave and I both fantasize about having a Japanese-style bath in our house someday, but maybe Holls is deathly afraid of them? We don't know?

Hollie ranges between "picky" and "adventurous" eater and I can really only describe her as "unpredictable." If you ask her what she wants for dinner, she will always say pizza. We had Papa John's for her birthday, and I sort of felt like a slacker mom. Sort of. She also loves bacon, pickles, and chips (even though we have bought potato chips maybe once ever since she's been born and it was on the fourth of July). But she also loves avocados, "straw-babies" (as she calls them), apples, bananas, grapes, noodles (any kind), red peppers, yellow peppers, white peppers (onions), rice, salsa, mashed potatoes (if she can eat them on her fingers), and fish sticks (if she can dip them in "cat-syrup," or ketchup). She'll eat Indian curry and Mexican food but she won't eat hamburgers. Like I said, "unpredictable."

She likes broccoli 2 out of every 5 times she considers it.

Hollie loves to laugh and dance and jump and slide and shout. She can jump high. She will run and slide on her knees across our wooden floors for hours at a time. She practices pushing herself around on her new tricycle all day long. I've never seen such athletic stock in a kid before, and I am completely alien to the attribute. As soon as she is old enough, I'm sending her off to ballet class and soccer camp so somebody who actually has coordination will help her hone these talents! I literally stress out sometimes that the only person she ever has to dance with is my sorry self who still thinks the Cabbage Patch is advanced choreography! (Fortunately David is quite a bit more suave and sportsy than I am.)

Jumping!

Sliding!

Running!

Holls sometimes get into trouble, and she has her very own time-out chair (a green fold-up chair we keep behind her bookshelf). When she knows she has done something wrong, she will ask, "I'm going to time out?" When she received Muno on her birthday, she was feeding him milk and some of it spilled on the floor. She held Muno over the small puddle and said, "Muno, do you see what you did? Let's clean it up?" So I suppose she is "getting" it.

She's also a lounger. She can lounge on anything.

We had a whole birthday party planned for her this morning: finger painting and cupcakes (homemade pumpkin cupcakes and snickerdoodle cupcakes, our Grover family specialty) with all her little kid friends. Yesterday she came down with a 102-degree fever, so we had to cancel everything at the last minute, tragically. She didn't mind. But I'm still a little sad. (We're planning to reschedule in a couple of weeks and just call it a finger-painting and cupcake-eating party.) So since we didn't have cake on her birthday, we bought three mediocre grocery store cupcakes and celebrated over them. Hollie picked out her ghost cupcake by herself (but we all three ended up eating from all three).

The morning Hollie was sick, she fell asleep sitting up. I didn't know what a mom should do in this scenario, so I just propped up a pillow next to her and put a blanket on her. 

Our little girl is a sweetheart and we love her like crazy. She still tends to prefer David, but I don't mind. I wouldn't change a thing. Happy Birthday, you old Hollie-wallie-doodah. You old Babaloo. You crazy old coot. We can't wait to see what you become this year.

Coloring with Dad.

Feeding Grover Mouth (just like her mom used to feed her Grover doll)

Wearing Mom's socks and slippers (a favorite pastime)

Sleeping in her "purple backpack"

She gets jealous when I take pictures of Charlie on the Boppy, so sometimes we follow up Charlie's monthly photo-op with some of his big sister in the same pose.

And sometimes we end up taking pictures of Hollie's "best friends," too.

Holls, you are an imp and a clown and we love you!

Here's a quick video of the birthday song for our family who want to see it!

Charlie's Baby Blessing

In Latter-day Saint churches, we like to give babies special blessings in church about a month or so after they are born. It's sort of like a christening, but we just call them "blessings." They are performed by a church member who holds the priesthood, usually the baby's father or another family member or sometimes another male member of the congregation that the family knows and loves. A circle of invited priesthood-holders stand in a circle and all help to cradle the baby in the middle. The person giving the blessing listens for inspiration from God as he speaks, so he knows what to say. It's very special. Hollie was blessed by David when she was a baby, and last Sunday Charlie got to be blessed by his Grandpa Sam (Dave's dad). 

Smiley Charlie

I love baby blessings. It's tradition to dress babies in white, and we dressed Charlie in this hysterical little white tux with short sleeves and short pants that my brother William had been blessed in when he was a baby, 21 years ago. (Hollie was blessed in the white dress that I had been blessed in as a baby. My mom is the complete opposite of a hoarder, but she does keep really good care of a few select things, and blessing outfits are one of those things.) It was really neat that Dave's dad gave Charlie his blessing, too (even though David waited until church had begun to ask his dad if he would be willing to do it! We're so grateful he said yes!). My favorite part, I think, was when Charlie was blessed that he would grow up to be "kind, obedient, and fun." It was a blessing full of love, and I am excited to see our fun little boy's personality grow in the coming year.

Charlie's Grandma and Grandpa Grover, his Aunt Liz, Mary, Sarah, and Uncle Angelo all got to come visit for the weekend, and our house was momentarily filled with way more stories, jokes, laughter, and Texas sheet cake than Dave or I could ever create with just the two of us, and, consequently, Hollie was SUPREMELY happy. Dave and I are far from boring, unless you are an almost-two-year-old, in which case I'm afraid we get to be desperately boring. So for three happy days, Hollie had a handful of people who were completely interested in everything she had to say, followed her from room to room, chased her around the backyard, and smothered her in tickles and kisses. Her Aunt Sarah gave her an enormous pink-and-white striped pig that is taller than she is, and Hollie fell immediately in love (pictures pending). It was a glorious weekend.

Hollie and her Aunt Mary having way too much fun.

Anyway, here are a million gazillion pictures of taking the family to the South Plains Fair (a last minute decision that meant leaving for the fair at 5:20 p.m., coming home at almost 8 p.m., making dinner and then eating it at 9 p.m. and putting Hollie to sleep at almost 10 p.m. AND IT WAS ALL WORTH IT!) After the fair pictures are a variety of family pictures taken outside of our church that will be interesting to nobody but our family, so feel free to skip all those if you want to! Or feel free to look closely at how my hair was clearly wet when I slept on it the night before and I'm pretty sure it didn't even get brushed out that morning. I blame 9:00 a.m. church. 

Appreciating prize-winning produce

We're so grateful for Sarah being willing to take Hollie into the petting zoo. Such a fabulous aunt!

Petting sort of sad-looking goats. We mean you no harm, little goat!

Hollie woke up Sunday morning asking to see the bunnies again.

First carousel ride! She *almost* liked it!

First carnival game! I sort of can't believe I let Holls stick her hand in that nasty butt water and touch those rubber ducks. I'm pretty sure if you looked at gonorrhea under a microscope, you would see something like these nasty old rubber ducks.

But it was worth it for this awesome PURPLE MONKEY! She looks apathetic here, but she was gaga about that monkey for the next 48 hours.

What could be better than grandparents and a fair? NOTHING! (Except maybe being old enough for the rides.)

Oh yeah, Charlie was there, too, wearing blue jeans for the first time in his life.

And now, without further ado, a selection of several family pictures in various combinations of church-clothed people:

Come back and visit soon, Grover fam!!