Mardi Gras Molly

Of course that isn't for a couple weeks, but Jonny was in New Orleans this past week and so he came home with lots of fun "pretty necklaces" for Molly to play with. In case you were wondering, he got them all the hard way...that is of course if you understand that to mean that they gave them out at the meetings that he had to sit through all week.

The game for the night was put them on, take them off.

Even Dink and Riley got in on the fun.

I'm relieved that Jonny is now home for at least a month before he has another trip for work. He says his schedule is about the same and maybe it was just the three consecutive weeks that have thrown me off, but I swear he's going to be traveling more than usual this year. Hopefully after August he'll be able to keep close to home for awhile.

The other day Molly insisted that she have her bear with her for her snack.

Some for me,

some for you.

She's really into pretending with her animals and babies, it's really kind of cute. I just hope she doesn't think she can treat her new sibling like she treats them. She's been known to put her baby in the microwave.

She actually let me put pigtails in her hair and she even left them in for a few hours. they were so cute. Hopefully she'll get into them soon.

Today it's raining, so we bought Molly some rain boots and I chased her around while she went puddle crazy. In the end, we were both really wet and pretty muddy. It's of course already sunny out.

Probably won't get much use out of those boots.

I realized I haven't written about one of my favorite "Mollyspeaks". It's one of those things that's so inventive and cute, we haven't bothered to teach her the real words to use. When eating, she loves dipping her food in any sort of sauce, condiment, yogurt, whatever is handy. When asking for it, she asks for "near". It started because she would point out places on her plate where she wanted the stuff while exclaiming "near!" (here). She's been doing this for several months now, but I do think that she's starting to outgrow it since she asked for ketchup the other day by name. She did however point out the places she wanted it on her plate. I suppose it's for the best that she doesn't talk like a two year old forever.

Bubbles

Since we've been staying close to home the past week or so I've had to try and come up with things for us to do around here. Of course she loves being outside and I do too, but I get tired of chasing her around our hazardous areas trying to prevent injuries. She likes sidewalk chalk (In case you didn't already know, Crayola is far superior to Rose Art) but the other day I remembered we had a bubble gun. She LOVED it. She loves for us to blow bubbles while she's in the bathtub so I don't know why I forgot we had such an awesome toy. I will say that trying to take her picture while operating the bubble gun was a little difficult. I gave up trying to get her with her eyes open since the bubbles popping all around her were making her blink so much.

Keeping with the bubble theme, backstroke in her bubble bath.

Today I decided to try making her some play dough. For Christmas she got some of pre-packaged stuff, but when we were at the Morris' and she was first introduced to the stuff, she had a hard time remembering not to eat it. It probably isn't too bad, but even their commercials on T.V. have the disclaimer "fun to play with! not to eat!". Since I really don't want to call poison control for the 3rd time in her life (how many times before they take her away?) I found a recipe that was really similar to one I remember making when I was a kid. The only difference was the inclusion of Gelatin which I think made a huge difference in the consistency, from what I remember anyhow. I did see her sample it once, but the insane saltiness of it made her spit it out right away...perfect! Dink did the same thing when she tried sampling it too, serves her right! Here's the recipe I used.

play dough
1 cup flour
1/2 cup salt
1 cup water
1 tablespoon oil
2 teaspoons Cream of Tartar
3 1oz pkgs unflavored gelatin
Mix all ingredients together and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until consistency of mashed potatoes. Let cool and knead on heavily floured suface with floured hands until dry.
Then of course I kneaded it with different food colorings.

The spread.

She liked it when I made little ball for her...

So she could smash it. She's all about destruction.

Her masterpiece!

She looks so proud!

Other than that, not much is going on here. I'm glad that my parents made it home through all of the snow and ice almost completely unscathed and that we are half way through the 3 weeks that Jonny is gone this month.

Annette had mentioned that I should write about being pregnant while corralling a toddler and for me, it's just about the toddler right now. The 1st trimester was practically non-existent to me since I didn't even know about it and I really don't feel much different (although I have had to break out a few maternity clothes since nothing fits anymore). I suppose I'm a little more tired here and there but when you've been sleep deprived for 2 years, who notices anyhow? The real action for me is going to start in August. Yikes! I hope I'm ready.

Tennis!

I've been terrible at taking pictures lately, so I don't have much to post. Part of the problem is my camera battery. A pro and a con of my camera is that it take AA batteries. This can be really convenient if you're prone to forgetting to charge things (I am) but since I use my camera a lot (usually) I can blow through them pretty quickly. So I decided to try rechargeable batteries, which really blow. Ramsey told me that hers work pretty well and I read up on why mine suck and hers rock, so I have some on the way so I can be back in the picture taking business. God forbid we don't document every single little piddly thing that Molly does :-)

We've been hanging out with the Morris clan lately since she's still on maternity leave and we could both use the company. They generally play pretty nice together, but there is still the whole toddler element, so they have their fights which we have to break up occasionally. Of course it always revolves around what belongs to who. "MINE" I pretty sure it's impossible to go through childhood without going through that stage. Despite their problems, they still manage to have a good time together and are actually getting better at taking turns which is kind of cute. I also like that Molly is very concerned with Grayson's well being when he's upset or if he falls or something like that. She always says "Grayson are you okay!?!" Of course sometimes I sure that she is part of his problem.

Here's Molly at Grayson's the the other day she was having a good time with the tennis racket. Aunt Meredith is so proud!

I know that the whole language updates are probably getting old, but it continues to crack me up. As Annette wrote in her blog, Molly likes to talk about things being broken. Anything might be "broken". Crayons, an empty cup, her face (after bumping her head). She's also really concerned with "fixing" the broken things and then exclaiming after she's successfully fixed something that it's "much better". So say her hair is in her eyes (a frequent problem) she'll say "Oh-no! eyes broken!...I fix it...(rubs hair frantically)....oh! It's better! much better!"

Well, that's all I have! maybe I'll be better in the next few weeks, but for now I'm out of pictures and stories.