Painting portraits of Inara Grace

Last week was a rough one for me, for various reasons. It was primarily due to Inara's 5 days of diarrhea and the diaper rash from hell. I swear I've reached my poopy diaper quota for the next few months. This week was a total 180 in that she and I had a great week together. Every day she does something new, which are the positive things I need to keep focused on to get me through the rough days. So let me paint a few portraits for you to imagine and hopefully get a chuckle out of.

I've been going to a morning exercise class two days a week with my shadow in tow. She does well in the stroller for the first 30 minutes as long as I keep her snacks coming. You see Inara's new rule is whenever she's sitting in the stroller or a shopping cart for an extended period of time, she must be compensated with snacks. Her snack of choice this week was graham cracker sticks. For the second half of the exercise class, it's time for the kids to get out and play. However, Inara can be found glued to my side. She loves to watch the other kids playing, but rarely ventures out to join them. Instead, she uses mom as a human jungle gym. She loves to jump on me when I'm doing ab workouts, which makes for a very difficult exercise routine. I do my best and try to maneuver around her. I know this is partly due to the get mommy game we play where I lay on my back and she jumps on my tummy. So it's only natural that when she sees me laying down, she thinks it's play time. When we leave, she always says bye to the other moms and kids, and she loves to give her friend Owen a hug. She will even take the binky out of her mouth to give him kisses if he's accepting them that day.

Since Monday was a holiday, Shawn joined us girls at My Gym. It's been awhile since he's gone, so it was a surprise for him to see all that she can do now. She loves to walk up the slide. Yes, walk up the slide. Then go down. Then walk back up. Then go down again. She also loves playing on the trampoline. She hasn't quite figured out how to bounce yet, but she bends her knees really really fast, which makes her think she's bouncing up and down. Inara has figured out how fun climbing on anything and everything is. The funny thing is she really doesn't do much climbing at home. I'd like to think that she rationalizes climbing with My Gym and not at home. Only time will tell on that theory.

One of our nightly rituals after dinner is play time with Daddy and bath. She loves to hide in the tent from Daddy. She will direct me to hide with her. Once inside the tent, she says "Shhh. Hide." Then Daddy has to come find us. She loves doing this and has even on occasion asked me to hide with her during the day. The only problem is Daddy doesn't ever seem to come find us. Perhaps it's because he's working. After playtime, it's time to move upstairs and get ready for bed. She has grown to love taking a bath and even asked to do this during the day now as well. She has figured out splashing in the water is lots of fun. She recently learned how to pick up the cup with water and pour it on her face. She gets a big giggle out of doing this too. While most nights Shawn gives Inara her bath, I at least get to watch from my office chair while I try to get some work done, which is usually short lived because watching Inara is much more fun than reading joke emails.

Besides being my shadow, Inara also loves to be my helper. She's becoming quite the mimic of mommy. For instance, today as I was vacuuming she was walking around dusting. She gets such a thrill out of helping me, and of course, I encourage it. For awhile now, she's loved helping me empty the dishwasher by putting her cups away. I think she'll be a big helper as she gets older. I know she watches me clean up all day long, so it's only natural that she starts doing the same. The other day she even went as far as cleaning up her own crumbs. She was eating a snack in the living room and spilled a few crumbs on the ottoman. She went to the drawer and got a dish towel, wiped the crumbs off (which of course meant they went onto the carpet but so what), and put the towel back in the drawer. I was so impressed with this that I praised her and even made sure to tell Daddy about it when he got home. I love watching her in action doing such things. It truly shows just how much she is growing and learning too. This age may have its challenges, but I must remember to focus on all the amazing leaps she's made as well.