Day 5

Bear with me, I know my post is long but we had an eventful day! 


Whew, tough day! I think switching classrooms threw Grace off a bit but we had fun painting and getting to know Terri and Jennifer. When it came time to paint, the intended lesson was that kids would use different colors of primary paint and mix them to make new colors. You know, red + yellow = orange, etc. Grace was all for it but when I painted her hand, the paint went everywhere except her paper. At one point during our little wrestling match, I looked down and noticed that both my arms were almost totally coated in paint up to my forearms, there was paint on both of my legs and Grace was sporting some lovely blue lipliner. It was almost comical to watch as I futilely tried to keep the paint off of Grace's pretty pink dress and ended up with it everywhere on both of us. Eventually we managed to get some of the paint on the paper and we even ended up with a yellow handprint. 
At recess, the sunlight was hurting Grace's eyes so I found a pair of orange sunglasses for her to wear. Grace was the talk of the playground, the teachers noticed her shades and all of the other kids were jealous. 
Grace had lots of fun in gym where we got to run around with Corbin and Kate. It was so sweet, Kate came over and said "Katlin, can you come babysit me??" and Corbin chimed in to ask if I could come to play at his house and Grace nodded vigorously in agreement. Later when I was telling the story to Terri with Grace sitting at my feet, she again nodded and laughed. Personally, I think she likes me a whole lot better when there aren't any rules and she gets to watch Elmo. 
Lunch time went decently well until Grace flung a bite of sandwich onto a boy sitting nearby. I like to think that Grace was biding her time until I leaned forward to pull the mush off of his shirt and she pounced on me and put a generous amount of grape jelly in my hair. 

"She looks like a...cool girl!" -Katie
"She looks like a rockstar!" -Gabriel

Wiggling around and getting paint everywhere

Look at the camera, Grace, look at the camera!

Finished product, we got one handprint on it

On a Side Note...

 I was babysitting Grace and Corbin on Saturday night. Ginna asked me to take Grace's pigtails out before she went to bed and after biding my time and acting while Grace wasn't paying attention, I finally got them out. But as soon as I tried to put her hair into some semblance of a half up-half down 'do, she was not having it. So she ran around with this crazy hair all night and I can only imagine how it looked in the morning. 

Model shot

There's that look again

Day 3 & Day 4

I missed Grace's 3rd day of school while I was at orientation but I heard she did well with her sweet speech teacher, Faith. I'm glad Faith knew Grace because as I'm texting her some helpful hints for school, I realize I'm saying slightly ominous things like "if she pulls your hair" or "if she runs away..." But all's well that ends well, Grace got to use her Dynavox at school and it was supposed to be pretty cool to see her communicate through it. 

I think this is the same model that Grace uses?

My 4th day with Grace was largely uneventful. There was a little bit of casual hair pulling, more like Grace was thinking "I'm bored so let's yank some hair" but thankfully, my high buns and tight braids have served me well. She did extremely well in chapel, where Mrs. Jane read Rainbow Fish and the Big Blue Whale. Grace, who usually sits next to me or on my lap, alternated between sitting and laying on the floor listening to the book all by herself.

In class, we read the original Rainbow Fish book and Grace got to play with Mrs. Jones' rainbow fish puppet and make a fish of her own. 

While working with Faith the previous day, Mrs. Nancy and Mrs. Valerie figured out that a great way to keep Grace occupied was to play music and give her some of the instruments. So we gave Grace tambourines and jingle bells and let the fun ensue. 

2 lunchboxes and an elmo book, it doesn't get much better than that!

Laying on the floor at gym

Every time she catches me taking a picture of her,
I get this slightly dirty look

Jammin' in class, she wouldn't let me have anything to play with