Happy Birthday Baby!

Yesterday was officially Molly's 1st birthday! Although the party isn't until Sunday, we still had a good day. We've been trying to get the house cleaned up for the party. Even though we're not going to be living there yet, we're still hoping to have the party there even if it is a little rough around the edges. The appliances are in and with any luck the gas will be turned on giving me a working kitchen, which will be a nice thing to have. Mostly I need to do some cleaning for the party. Molly has been kind enough to help me out with that. She watches me clean the floor at our house with a paper towel all of the time and she's picked up the technique. It's pretty clever!


Come to think of it, there are probably a lot of things I should be doing for the party, but I really have no concept of how to have a party really (sorry Molly) so I guess I'm just going to clean as best as I can given the slightly unfinished circumstances and hope that people are content just watching Molly do her thing. Oh-yea, and I'm also hoping that somehow food will appear at my house on Sunday. I'm counting on Jonny to do that for me :-) fingers crossed. I'm also hoping that the cupcakes or cake that I bake don't suck too bad. Can you tell that I have sort of low expectations for this party? I apologize to my guests :-)
On to some Molly centric news. Molly is walking! Not just the few steps here and there like she has for the past couple weeks, full on walking. Lengths of rooms, turning corners and sometimes a little too quickly! I don't have a proper video to post, but I'll try for it soon. Life as we know it is over! Really we've gotten used to that concept now, things change so fast these days. I only have a couple pictures this time around, but they're good ones!
Dinkers has warmed up to Molly since she learned how to open the dog biscuits.

Before she throws it on the floor, Molly likes to smash her face against the tray.

Make sure you check back soon for the birthday post. It will be my last post before I get the hard copy printed off! I can't wait to get a hard copy, it's going to fun to thumb through it in the years to come.

Mahotan Molly

Molly got a little early birthday present yesterday! A lovely little hooded jacket from her great great aunt Margaret. Molly's very own Mahota handwoven, woven with care by her cousin Andrea. She looks adorable in it.

Parkin'

We had another fun Sunday in the park. The Morris' couldn't make it, but the girls still had a good time. Last time the swings were occupied the whole time, but this time we were able to get the girls swinging. It made for some cute pictures.

"Uh-Oh, how does this contraption work anyhow?"


"Higher!"

Well it's confirmed that my magic milk has failed. Molly has managed to contaminate the whole compound, but happily we are all mostly on the mend now. Molly spent a couple nights propped up on her boppy (I know that's supposedly bad but I think at some point it ceases to be a death trap and becomes just another pillow). In the end though propping up her crib mattress with pillows underneath seemed to work the best for her (thanks for the tip Rams). I was going to post some great snot faced pictures of Molly, but in the end it was just too gross, so I'll pass on that. I'll just save them for the archives.
Yesterday we hung out in the yard which is probably one of Molly's favorite things to do. She's going to be pretty disappointed when the temperature goes into the 100+ range and I refuse to leave my A/C sanctuary.
Well actually before we went outside, Molly had to eat lunch. Isn't she clever with her foot on her table? You can also see that her table is missing it's protective plastic tray. She figured out awhile back how to remove it and lately it's been her new game to throw it and it's contents on the floor, so for now we just forget it altogether.

Picking the grass and feeding it to Dink is one of Molly's favorite outdoor activities. She also is into trying to eat it herself, but we try to keep that to a minimum.

I swear it was just a tiny amount and it's just tea anyhow.

It's a little scary how good she is at standing now. also she has been reported to have taken up to 5 consecutive, unassisted step. I've only seen her take two or three at most, but Jonny swears. I'm sooo screwed!

Thought we'd let her try a little lemon. Surprisingly she wasn't that bothered by it.

She'd still rather Dink had it though.

Awe, Baby feet!

The Park and my expired magic milk

Yesterday we went to the West Wetlands Parks to visit with the Morris Family, Annette and Kate. It was a great day with great weather, so it was nice to be outside. Since both Ramsey and Annette are interested in getting new cameras I brought mine and Meredith's cameras along and we all played around snapping pictures here and there. Here's just a sampling:

"Who are you anyhow?"

She's doin' alright, getting good grades, her future's so bright, she's gotta wear shades."

Blaine and Grayson having 50 cents worth of fun with Ramsey's 2 for 1 dollar store kites!

The girls facing off.

Grayson loving every minute of it, Chicks dig scars right?

Molly has unfortunately been a tad bit under the weather the past couple days, but she's been a trooper throughout it. I guess I don't know for sure that it's a cold, I suppose it could be a teething symptom since she's getting her two front teeth right now, but either way runny noses suck when you're a baby and can't blow it out. Poor thing. I want to believe it's teething since I've been working off the assumption that my milk has magical properties that were keeping her healthy, but I suppose it's possible that my magic milk has expired. We almost made it the first year too! :-( Really Molly hasn't been too deterred by the sniffles and she seems to be on track to be walking soon, maybe even by her 1st birthday which as you all know is right around the corner. Where has the time gone?

Molly Dangerously

"Hello, my name is Molly D. McIntier. The "D" is for Danger!" It seems to hold true that Molly's favorite things as of late are the things that we think are a little on the dangerous side. Sometimes I try to put a stop to it, sometimes I just have to hold my breath and hope for the best. The first picture I have, really didn't seem that dangerous at the time, but the picture kind of has me a little terrified. That appears to be a lot of air between Molly and her Daddy...Yikes!

Back with Daddy safe and sound.

Next on her agenda of danger: Steps. She loves them, and will spend a significant amount of time crawling up and down any steps she can find. The ones at Aunt Mere's house are the best since there are two of them, but in a pinch the one at our house will do.
Coming,

and going.

For her final trick, Molly is set on mastering the hazards of doors. I have to make sure that I close the doors to any room we're in because she loves to swing them around and then go in for the final SLAM! So far we've managed to avoid diaster, but since I'm pretty sure that there isn't any method to her door madness, it's probably only a matter of time before a baby finger or two get slammed in a door...ouch!

Not all of Molly's pursuits are dangerous though. Here she is giving dude a big smooch.

"Muah!!!"
Since we had a great play date today with Grayson & Kate at the park, I'm hoping to get another post up by the end of tomorrow, wish me luck!

Bed Head

This post is going to have WAY too many pictures, so I'm apologizing ahead of time. I'll start with the bed head picture because I think it goes along with the whole inherited traits theme from the last blog. When Molly is sleepy, she messes with her hair, and I call this an inherited trait because her daddy also does this. It isn't as visible as it used to be before he decided to shave his hair short, but when his hair was longer, I had seen him fluff his hair up into quite a rat's nest. This picture of Molly is from a few days ago. She had woken up from a nap earlier than expected and I was still in the shower so I didn't get to her a quickly as usual. When I came to her crib this was the state she was in:


These next couple picture are showcasing some of Molly's favorite activities: Getting into my purse and having someone read "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see?". Getting into my purse is fun because it involves three more of her favorite activities: Taking shit out of shit (as we like to call it), putting shit back into shit, as well as finding shit she really shouldn't have. I'm not sure why "Brown Bear" has such a draw for her since she really isn't interested in other books, but "Brown Bear" really floats her boat and she will sit, listen and help turn the pages. It's a good thing I have it memorized because she turns them very quickly!



These next pictures are from my new Fancy Pants camera. My sweet sweet husband bought me a new camera for Valentines Day to replace my Kodak POS from 6 years ago. I feel bad saying that because it has served us well, but the new camera really puts it to shame. I don't even know how to use the thing and my pictures have improved GREATLY. Since this camera isn't a Kodak I decided to download a new photo organizing/editing program and since Picasa is free I went with that. I'm not really into fancy editing so for me Picasa is amazing and it also does super cool things like uploading directly to this blog and snapfish or Kodak gallery (much faster than before) So I'm in love with my new camera and Picasa.

Here are some of pictures from my new fancy camera:

Yesterday was Valentines and Molly was given her first Valentine from her Gran and Billy. You can't see from the picture but the card is fabric that Gran had sewn into a card. Very sweet!

Inherited Traits

When I look at Molly, I have to admit that physically I don't see much of myself there. However, the two above pictures are showcasing a trait that she definately got from me. I learned that the ability to cover your nostrils with your upper lip is something special a few years back when I was watching my niece and nephew over summer break. We were always swimming at my parents house and Jonny would join us from time to time. At one point jonny pointed out to me that when I swim I do this, I hadn't really noticed that I did before he pointed it out, but when I tried to not do it, I found that water went up my nose at an alarming rate...now he makes fun of me (rightly so). I still didn't think this was anything special, just some weird thing that I did, then I tried to get Madeline to do it since she would alway hold her nose when she swam, she wasn't able to do it. Then I asked Jonny if he could do it, he can not. Fast forward to a few months ago...Molly can do this...she loves to do this. It cracks me up that THIS of all things is what we have in common physically...Eyes? Not so much!