A Baby Book Confession

I have a confession to make. Grace has two beautiful baby books. One I bought before she was even born and the other I bought when she was six months old. I never got past filling out the family tree portion in the first one and I thought maybe it was because I didn't like the format, so I searched for another one that I liked better. Despite the easier to use layout, the second one remains nearly blank as well. I guess it wasn't the format, it's just me. I'm a horrible record keeper.

The problem is I have too much faith in my ability to remember. When little milestones happened like her first smile or her first laugh, it was such a special moment for me and I thought I would remember the exact date and time forever. I thought that when I finally found the time to pull out the baby book to record the event, I would easily be able to recall it. But time moved too quickly and my memory couldn't keep up. Although I can recall each milestone with clarity in my mind's eye, the exact dates are fuzzy.

The best I can do now is play catch up in her baby book as best as I can and hope that one day when she looks back in it, she isn't too disappointed that I don't have an exact date for when her lower left incisor came in.

In the spirit of recording memories, here are a few moments I don't want to forget:

The other night the uncles and I were watching a movie while Grace walked around the living room. Whenever she got caught doing something she wasn't supposed to- opening a cabinet, trying to turn off the TV, messing with the dog- Uncle Carl would call her name using the tone. Grace would stop what she was doing, smile sweetly at him, and then do a little dance. My little charmer knows how to dance her way out of trouble!

She can fake a laugh. We were sitting around eating lunch yesterday and all the adults were having a conversation, laughing, and pretty much not paying attention to Grace for about thirty seconds. After another bout of laughter, we hear a tiny little forced laugh. She figured out a way to get all the focus on her again because after that, we were all so tickled with her copycat laughter that we spent the rest of lunch getting her to fake laugh.

I was wearing a Hokie sweatshirt and as I held her, she looked at the Hokie Bird on the shirt, pointed to it, and said, "Dada!" Her Daddy would've been so proud of her for making the connection. Ninety-five percent of Mike's wardrobe is Virginia Tech gear.

Grace has several words in her vocabulary now. Of course, I might be the only one who understands what she's saying, but I'm still counting them- Mama, Dada, Uncle (Uh-ka), Lucky (Luck, sometimes Uck), teeth (just the -th sound), juice (just the -ce sound so it sounds like 'sue'), banana (nana), quack, moo, and Jesus (susus).


Grace knows how to fold her hands in prayer when we say, "Amen." There's also a Filipino tradition where as a sign of respect to your elders, you take their hand and press it to your forehead, and in return they 'bless' you. She learned how to do this today. Lola would say, "Bless," and Grace would take Lola's hand and press it to her forehead. (For non-Filipinos who might be confused, picture a gentleman kissing a lady's hand, but instead of pressing her hand to his lips, he brings it up to his forehead.)