Twin Sized

Molly is the proud owner of a new twin sized bed. It became apparent last week that the transition is was probably something that should be done sooner rather than later. I considered getting a new crib and keeping her in the crib a while longer, but in the end this just made more sense. So far, it hasn't been that great, but hey, it's only been one day. I actually did a little test run at Mere's a couple weeks ago where we've set up an old crib mattress on the ground for her to use over there. That was such an utter failure that she almost didn't take a nap that day, until she went to hang out with my mom at her compound house and passed out on the bed there. I suppose I could use the" just wait until she passes" out tactic, but the problem with that is that when she takes a nap too late in the day, it make bedtime at a decent hour difficult and by decent hour I mean 9:00, so you can see why I don't want to get much later than that. Last night went okay, she fought it a little bit, but she was mostly tired and I think she liked that I was on the bed with her. The problem is of course that she can get up and leave a regular bed. It really sucks because I had come to love how simple nap time had become: Read a story, leave the room, feel awesome. Today's nap time went only slightly better than the one at Mere's house. Although the end result was sleep, it was only after tears and frustration (mostly mine on both counts). I thought I could convince her to snuggle up and fall asleep but instead she repeatedly got up and jumped on me, and when she was laying down she would kick me repeatedly, not cool. When I would leave, she would of course just get up and try to leave the room too. Eventually I had to put up the baby gate and close the door (fortunately the strange door jamb allows for that). When I came back later she was ready to lay quietly and fall asleep. Of course my attitude about the whole process is pretty bad because I can't shake the thought in the back of my head that "this is the kind of shit I don't want to put up with when we have a new baby". I know that this is why I'm doing this now and not in August when it would be so much harder.d
Since she's still a crib sleeper in that she rolls around a lot. We thought it would ease the transition if we had something to serve as a bumper so she wouldn't be constantly bumping her head.
She was quite the little helper, helping us clean before we put the bed in place.

We attached some shams to some molding giving the bed a sort of daybed look.


Hopefully this goes better than potty training. After 3 weeks of panties I caved and started putting the pull ups on her. I just felt like I could physically not clean up any more piss (that's what you call it when it's all over your floors, your couch, your life). If I'm going to count any victory from this it's that she at least tells me when she has to poop. I suppose I should be grateful that I've had to clean up very little of that.
Here's an example of an act of defiance (they're becoming more frequent). She was playing in her water table the other day and I told her we needed to go inside. Since she was sopping wet I took her clothes off, but before I could drag her inside, she was back in the water table butt naked.
How come she makes defiance look so cute?



Here's something I feel terrible about. With Molly, from about 16 weeks on, I took frequent belly pictures. This is the first time I have taken a picture and I'm 25 weeks in. This is my formal apology to baby girl M. I am hoping that I get it together and get some nice maternity pictures taken when we get a little closer. Of course, I can't imagine how huge I'm going to look in those.

Easter Bunny

I think that Easter is officially Molly's favorite holiday. More that just her frequent exclamations that she "Loves Easter!" it seemed that the activity of finding eggs was far more entertaining for her than opening presents or getting candy from strangers. I imagine that this will change in the future, but this year, she had a blast participating in all Easter activities.
This year I let her help out in dyeing the eggs, and although I was certain that this was going to result in a cheery rainbow colored catastrophe in my kitchen, she actually did pretty well, and we managed to keep all the messes contained to the counter.
Plunk!

She was so enamored with the Easter eggs from her egg dyeing experience that it took very little encouragement to get her to go find them in the morning. As soon as she saw her first "hidden" egg, she was game to find them all. I'm of course a total buzz kill and didn't get her any Easter candy. Her concept of candy is pretty limited so it wasn't like she felt like she was missing out plus the unfortunate truth is that I would just end up eating it all anyway. Do as I say not as I do.
Getting geared up for the hunt.

The egg on the slide proved to be a little tricky.

with a little help she figured it out.

She found the egg I had hid in an old jar without any help

She even came up with a solution as to how to get it into the basket.

All done! Which actually turned out to be a bit of a problem. She "loved Easter" so much that she wanted more and more eggs to find. I'm guessing she'll talk about it for quite awhile to come.



Fortunately, when we went over to Cassie and Ben's house later, Madeline had a little egg hunt for her too. She was so nice and she actually hid the eggs for her twice so she could keep the Easter buzz going.

Thanks for the great egg hunt Madeline!

All in all Easter was a big hit this year. Fun for Molly and fun to watch.

Dirty Water

Yesterday we wanted to take Molly to gateway park and let her splash around in the river a little. Unfortunately there was a tea-party rally there which made it an unappealing destination for us...for several reasons. Undeterred we drove over into the CA side and saw that there's this adorable little park on the river's watershed (not sure if that's the correct terminology) right by the casino...with a huge gate blocking the entrance and a "park closed" sign. So we kept on going. We powered on and ended up at some shitty little make-shift boat ramp down the road. Jonny thought it was fine and served it's purpose (and he's right) I on the other hand was a total buzz-kill and complained about litter, and the seemingly stagnant water (although since there were water plants and fish it's unlikely that it was THAT bad). Regardless, Molly didn't care and loved splashing around. Jonny has also assured me that if she had contracted Girardia or something, we'd know by now. My mom will be mad at me for including this, but she did make me feel bad about it, confirming my worst fears about why I shouldn't have let Molly near that water. In her defense though she did backtrack and tell me that I'm probably right to not kill Molly's sense of adventure. I guess I'm frequently letting Molly do things that make my mother cringe. Truly it's probably out of my own laziness rather than trying to foster adventure, but I suppose I don't freak out about stairs, running on uneven ground and climbing as much as I probably should. The other day my mother witnessed Molly walking on a little low brick fence we have around our front yard, she tackled it with ease and Gran was impressed. She said that none of her children would have been able to do that until they were much older...mostly because she wouldn't have ever let us try. Even though I'm not as concerned with her learning those kinds of skill at the cost of a few bumps and bruises, I fully intend to walk in my mother's footsteps in other "over-protective" ways. For example I'm hoping to have her convinced she will be doomed to horrible sorrow and pain should she ever step foot in Mexico for the purpose of partying. I still don't even like to look south while drinking an ice tea.
But for now, she's two and she "loves that dirty water"



P.S. Potty Training Sucks! Everyday I have to convince myself not to give up. Right now the only argument I have is that it will be exponentially harder to do after August. Must. Power. Through!

It's Raining!

Yesterday out in the yard, Molly got a hold of the hose. It didn't take her long to figure out how to adjust the water stream and that the fun was much greater when trying to get us wet. It quickly became difficult to take the pictures since I didn't want to get myself or the camera wet.
Needless to say she had a blast.





The whole time she kept screaming "It's Raining!" over and over again. Of course when the whole episode was over, it was all "Uh-oh! I made mess" and "I's all wet". Messes aren't typically a problem for her until after the fact.

1 day since an accident

Well this title would have been true had I posted it yesterday like I had wanted. Unfortunately, it should probably now read 1 hour since an accident. Regardless a completely dry day is a huge achievement and I'm hoping that it's a sign of more to come. Personally, getting over the accidents and just going forward was the hardest part for me. The first week was worse than having a new puppy as far as cleaning up pee goes. It's also super frustrating when I would take her to the bathroom 3 times in 20 minutes with no success only to have her have another accident mere minutes from the last bathroom visit. Fortunately just like everything else it gets better, even if it feels like it won't at the time. I just had to remember that nearly every person on Earth has been potty train in one way or another and that dehydration is not the answer...trust me, it's tempting. Fortunately, I chose NOT to neglect my child for the sake of my sanity...what a lucky girl.

Yesterday Grayson and Colbie came over for a play-date. Molly's love of Colbie still holds strong.

Maybe a little too much love for poor Colbie.

For some reason, these cabinets haven't been an issue. Every other cabinet an drawer has and probably still is. She discovered these the other day, and I'm sure this won't be the last time she gets stuck in here.


She kept say "Mama, I's stuck". Even now when she sees these pictures she say "I'm trying to get out"

New Car Smell

Well we did it, we sucked it up and got a new car! I hadn't been too excited about the prospect of going car shopping, dealing with dealers literally makes me sick to my stomach. I can honestly say that both times I have bought a car in my life I had felt screwed when I was done. Jonny and I are complete pushovers and even though I know I'm not getting the deal I should be, I usually end up going with it just because I want to get it over with. This time was completely different. Since I'm sort of a consumer reports dork, I had been going crazy for a few weeks looking at different cars and I had finally settled on a Subaru Outback even though the only way to see one was to go out of town. I had a Subaru before, I was pretty sure I would like this one. Consumer Reports has this awesome thing where they will pick out the dealers willing to give you the lower prices, so I used that and there was a dealer in San Diego with a really low price on a car I wanted. Unfortunately we weren't able to make the trip to that dealer, but instead we went to Peoria since Jonny had to work nearby one day last week. At first they weren't going to give us the same price as the other guys, but because I'm such a hard-ass they eventually did. ha!
Also worth mentioning, if there are any Big Lebowski fans reading this, we totally bought a car from "The Dude". At first I was a little put off, laughing at "The Dude" is great, but buying a car from him? I wasn't so sure. He looked a lot like him, all he needed was a bathrobe and a pair of size 12 jellies and he would have been perfect. He also sort of had a "dude abides" sort of way about him. One example is how I turned to Jonny after we had signed all the papers and asked him if he even knew the guy's name...he had never really introduced himself. When he came up to us on the lot he said "Whatcha guys want?" it did get better from there though. I did like how when he was going to talk to his boss about our deal he said "hey, the people before you didn't get a car, so things are looking up for you guys!" nice poker face dude...ha!
I really like it, there's plenty of room for all the baby junk and the car seats. I even put a little potty in the back so that maybe we can be a little more successful when we're out. Leaving the house has been our main roadblock in potty training, otherwise, things have gotten much better.


Here are some random pictures from my cellphone. not that fantastic, but kind of goofy.
Doing some painting at the store.

Spray sock

Today we went to the Taco Festival with the Morris' and the Howards. The lines for the food sucked, but Molly had fun playing with her buddies and going on a few rides.
Her first pony ride: She had a blast.

"Giddy-up!"

By the 2nd pony ride, she had gotten a little too brave and had to be reminded to hold on.
She also went on a little caged in Ferris wheel for kids. She liked that too, sorry no pictures.
This is one of her new favorite things to play after bath time. She makes me swaddle her and then pretends that she's her favorite person "Colbie baby". So cute.

Fair Furnace

It's 100 degrees today (My car said 102) so what better activity than the fair! right?!? Actually it was a lot of fun. We met up with Kate and Annette and the girls had a blast going on the little rides. We didn't know if they would be able to go on them or not since they're not quite tall enough yet, but apparently they aren't hard core about their height requirements, which was a relief since I'd already blown 20 bucks on tickets. The first ride I went with them just to make sure they didn't try to bolt or freak out. When I was getting on the ride with them the carny guy asked me if I was pregnant and I totally lied...nope, I just drink too much haha! I guess height isn't an issue but pregnancy was. Now I could understand their concern over some crazier ride and I know they have to cover their asses, but c'mon! We're talking about stationary cars going in a circle...no bumps, hills, nothing. Not any worse than your average car ride. Anyhow, he took my word for it that I was just a little tubby in the middle and let me on and low and behold baby M has made it through unscathed.
Here are Kate and Molly on their second ride that they tackled unaccompanied. Kate was cracking me up on the rides, as soon as they started she would just squeal, it was really cute.

In their pink race car, super fast! (not really)

We also took them in the petting zoo, which Molly loved. She kept talking about the "doggies" although I did finally get her to say "goat" which is what the majority of the animals were. There was also a chicken, a llama, a few pigs and a wallaby...but mostly goats.
The girls petting some goats.

Come back tiny goat!

After only an hour or so, we were all done with the fair, it was just too hot!
Although the petting zoo didn't seem to have any rules about where one went to the bathroom, I thought it was wise to keep her diapered. She has been doing better though, yesterday she only had 8 accidents and today we've only had 3 so far and since the afternoons seem to go better than the mornings I think we should able to beat our record from yesterday, but I suppose we'll just have to wait and see.