Oh, My Margaret, Little Margaret Grace

This girl is sweet as pie.  She loves to kiss and cuddle, particularly her Daddy.  She talks ALL the time.  Sometimes she even uses words.  If she is really emphatic, she'll use words and her entire body. 
Say, perhaps, she wants more milk.  First, she'll bring me her empty sippy cup.  To which I'll say, "Oh, Grace, you have an empty sippy cup."  Then she'll start signing "more".  I'll say, "Oh,  you want more.  More of what?"  Then it is full body signing, jumping up and down, saying "Mo, mo, mo!!!"  Were I to ask if she wanted more juice, she would throw the back of her hand up to her forehead and say, "No, no, no!"  and then she would once again start jumping, chanting "Mo mo mo!"  So I say, "Oh, you want more milk?" at which point, she chips "Yes" and gently tosses me her cup.
She also says the following words (yes, it's a long list): Momma, Dadda, Budder (brother), Aimee, more, up, down, dog, monkey, duck, NO!, yes, hi! (and dang it you better wave at her when she waves at you!), poopy, diaper, jump, ball, moo, woof, quack, shoe, truck, choo choo, baby, share, mine, juice (although, to be clear, she says "Jews" and I really hope no one is offended by that), cracker, cookie, book, chair, hug, kiss, thank you, please, and done.

I've taken to changing the tune of the folk song "Eliza Jane" and changing the words to Margaret Grace.  We like to hold hands and dance around the family room as I sing, "Come my love and go with me, Little Margaret Grace, come my love and go with me, little Margaret Grace!"  Henry is more of a willing dancer, holding hands and sashaying around the room with me, while Grace prefers to freestyle.  And sometimes she just wants to hold Henry's hands and not mine, which makes for dancing in a cirlce kinda hard.  So we just promenade in a wonky line.
She also is a fan of just jumping up and down.  And has been for awhile.  In fact, she can get more air than her brother.  And I'm not talking that whole body seizure that is most toddlers jumping a piddly quarter inch off of the ground: my baby gets hang time.  

 She likes to put things away.  If she sees shoes laying out around the house, she will quickly take them and put them in the shoe cabinet in the foyer.  She also, without being asked, is quick to put her empty sippy cup in the sink.  When she finishes her meal, she lets you know by waving at you (one half of the all done sign) and then handing you her plate.  It doesn't matter if you are still eating or if she still has a pile of untouched green beans on her plate, if she hands you her plate--you should take it.  If you don't take it, she will slowly and carefully, one by one, take each and every item off of her plate.  But not to worry, because then, just as methodically, she will neatly rearrange it back on her plate.
She prefers to simply carb load.  Gone are the days when she would eat any and everything I feed her.  Now that she is self-feeding and eating everything we eat, she is more picky.  It used to be that if we were having steak of fish or something chewy, I'd also serve her sliced turkey.  At one lunch, because I was multi-tasking and not really paying attention, and just handing her more turkey to keep her quiet while I  Facebooked cleaned the kitchen, she ate a half pound of sliced turkey.  Now she has gone on turkey strike. (Hmm, wonder why?)  But she loves rice (brown, curry, Mexican, white, fried), yogurt, Cheerios, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Oatmeal squares, peanut butter, apples, pears, bananas, french fries, strawberries, cheese, spinach pizza, chips and salsa, quesadillas, pasta (both with and without sauce), taco meat, McDonald's chicken nuggets (don't even think about getting her to eat a Chick-fil-A nugget--it looks far too much like actual chicken!), quinoa, bacon, any and all types of Girl Scout cookies, macaroni and cheese, avacado, and crackers.  I promise she gets served vegetables at every dinner and most lunches.  I got really excited the other night when we were having steak, potatoes, and sauteed zuchini and squash.  But no, she was just dipping her zuchinni in the A1 sauce and then sucking it off.  And she is too young to enforce the same rules as Henry.  For Henry, we have the "No, thank you" bite rule.  He has to take one bite of everything on his plate before he can say "No, thank  you".  Last night, I tried to tell Grace that a green bean was like a green french fry and she saw right through it.  So yeah, a lot of nights she just eats rice at dinner and then cries as she sees Henry eating his dessert. 

 And while she is super extra sweet when she is sweet, if you tell her no, she jumps up and down and beats her chest while screaming "No! No! No!"  It is not unlike a gorilla.  No idea where she gets this willful streak from.  (Though my mother tells me she's seen this move before in a little girl...) 
Sometimes she'll even laugh at me when I tell her no.  So I try not to poke the bear. 
And should you be her older brother and kindly ask to take a turn at a toy (to which she will respond, "NO! NO! NO!), and then you take the toy anyways, prepare for total meltdown that you'd swear he poked her with a steak knife.  But she can stop the meltdown on a dime which tells me she is almost as good as her Momma at manipulation.  So Grace, be warned, challenge accepted.

She is loyal.  She will go easily into nurseries and play well with others, but upon seeing me to come get her, she jumps and leaps into my arms and snuggles her curls into my neck.  She adores her Daddy most of all and loves to smother him with kisses.  And sometimes while playing, she'll just randomly go up to Henry and give him kisses.  She'll kiss his arm, his knee, his toes.  This makes Henry fall on the floor with laughter and then they are both lost to giggling for at least ten minutes.
She is also a big fan of blowing kisses.  Big fan. 
And I am her biggest fan.

Oh, my darling, Margaret Grace, you make our lives extraordinary.  Thanks be to God for your sweet life!