My Monkey Princess

I promised myself I had to write something about Gracie.

Before this magical place between toddler and schoolie passes al too quickly.

I always thought that as children get older, I would have more time to blog and write and collect my thoughts. But this is sadly not the case. It’s hard to explain why. Probably it has something to do with juggling between my regular mum role and my daycare mum role, plus having a school aged child bringing back homework and getting piano lessons from his mum.

But back to Gracie…

My darling squishilicious, droll little monkey princess.

Here is my attempt to put together some notes to describe you as you are right now.

Nightly bed buddies:
Momo monkey*
Teddy
Bao Bao
Mini hoot-hoot
Mini monkey
(*who has a occasional exasperating habit of getting lost under the covers at night and you have to drag poor mummy out of bed in the middle of the night to go hunt for it)

Favourite foods:
Peaches, plums, apricots, nectarines, fresh prunes
(pretty much ANY kind of stone fruit… one time you even spotted a plumticot and you insisted that I buy one for you to try… you like to pick one straight off the display at the fresh produce section to weigh and eat on the spot)
Noodles
Sultanas
Mushrooms

Foods you dislike:
Eggs
(I  cannot for the life of me figure this one out… especially since you will pretty much eat EVERYTHING else)

Favourite animal:
Monkey
(You are absolutely tickled over the fact that your mama is a born in the year of the monkey)

Things you enjoy drawing:
Rainbows
Jellyfish
Momo monkey

Upcoming fourth birthday cake request:
Monkey cake

Biggest phobia:
Swimming
(I always feel guilty wondering if it has something to do with the near drowning experiences you had last year)

Some of your droll little quirks:
Coming up somewhat crude body part jokes in the shower.
Describing the consistency and shape of your daily bowel movements.
Breaking up your snack into small pieces, assigning each piece a name after a member of the family, and then eating them in a particular order.
Sometimes talking to your food before chomping them down (usually to tell them about their imminent fate)
Specifying what you would like for breakfast the next day every night (it’s always the same thing: toast and cereal with milk).
Your darling way of lisping over certain words (“It’s berry, berry yummy!”, “I want the Lellow cup!”, “I’m feeling a bit gwumpy”).
The way you like to add a extra syllable to some words (“I’m sitting down ni-cerly”, “The witch is very ug-erly”, “I pat him gen-terly”, “I running so quick-erly”, “Don’t talk so loud-erly”, “This feels lover-ly” --that last one always reminds me of this song from ‘My Fair Lady’).

Best things about you
Your mesmerizingly big sparkling chocolate brown eyes (makes my heart skip a beat every single time).
Your throaty, husky voice (you can literally growl at people when you are feeling grumpy or angry).
Your broad rainbow spectrum of dramatic expressions and moods.
Your ‘can do’ attitude toward anything and everything (“tough as nails” as they say).
The way you easily flick back and forth from princess mode to ninja/police officer/fire fighter/ninja mode.
The fact that you happily munch on raw carrot for a snack.
The way you can fall asleep anywhere in five minutes (once you finally calm down and lay still).
How people often remark how much you look just like me when I was your age (maybe that’s why I just cannot get enough of gazing at your adorable little face… it’s like looking at a mirror of three-year-old me).

*****

*****

Love you forever baby girl.