Thanksgiving Extravaganza

This year trying to figure out how we were going to fit in 2 Thanksgivings as we usually do, made my head explode. Molly usually sleeps for 3 hours from 12:30 to 3:30 (Awesome, I know!) which is right around the time we would usually be having 1st Thanksgiving. We remedied this with a blowout Thanksgiving at our house with both of our families. I thought it turned out great. Meredith made the turkey and as usual she did a fantastic job of it. Everyone else contributed the typical Thanksgiving side dishes and everything (except my rolls) turned out great. It was also fun to have everyone at the same table. My dad made me a giant plywood leaf to fit my table, so we were able to accommodate all 13 of us. Molly enjoyed her 2nd Thanksgiving although I think she would have rather eaten mac n' cheese or an avocado. She did really like Cassie's mashed potatoes though (who doesn't) . I of course didn't take as many pictures as I wanted to, but at least I did better than last year (zero).

Milling about, waiting for dinner.

Playing blocks with Madeline.

Today was perfect weather, so Molly took her bear for a walk.

Goofy faces: She's full of them.

I do!

I can not believe that November is almost over, but I suppose I shouldn't be surprised at how fast everything moves nowadays.

Molly's still a mover and a shaker and has been super busy lately driving me nuts. Communication is a blessing and a curse. On one hand it's fantastic to be able to talk to her and have her understand us and better yet, we're even starting to understand her. If she wants something, she'll often times ask for it and I'll give it to her...a fantastic transaction. Lots of times though, she wants things I don't want to give her or worse, she wants to do things I don't want to let her do. Her new favorite "sentence" is "I do" (be sure to repeat that in your head at least 20 times). Time to get a new diaper? "I do" time to put on your clothes? "I do" time to get into the car seat? "I do". She has decided that it's time to take over her care, which would be great if she could actually accomplish these tasks. I'll give her the clothes, she has gotten very good at getting dressed to some extent. She can put her feet through the legs of her pants, and has gotten extremely good at putting on her socks and shoes (maybe not always on the right feet though). However, there is no way that I'm going to sit for an hour and let her try and figure out the car seat. Mainly I don't want her to figure it out too well because then I'm going to have a baby flying into the front seat of the car mid trip.

I'm also really enjoying the mock disappointment she expresses with "OOH-NO!" and "UH-OH". When she really gets going she'll intentionally do something repeatedly for the sole purpose of being up-set over it.

Another advancement in language is the answering of yes and no questions. On a positive note, I can get her to agree to almost anything if I put it into the form of a yes/no question. She does answer "no" occasionally, but she generally responds with an enthusiastic "Yeah" which is nice for now.

I'm discovering that there must be some sort of equation that charts the relation of obnoxiousness to cuteness. The little personality that's emerging is both endlessly cute and endlessly obnoxious...I suppose that maybe the cuteness has the edge.

Here are some of the latest endlessly adorable Molly pictures of all the endlessly clever things she's been up to.

Don't know where the football came from but Molly loves it and if some kid comes looking for it...I may not know what they're talking about.

Seriously, this did not look as scary when it was happening as it does here. I love how she now says "wow" "whoa" and "wee". This was probably more of a "whoa" than a "wee".

Molly and her hair *sighs* She wore pigtails the other day, but only after I added the top one. She looks like she's getting ready to be an extra in "How the Grinch Stole Christmas".

She loves her new kickball.

Here she is playing golf with Dink's tennis ball. It rolled between her legs and she went looking for it.

Somersault-she's actually done one on purpose at least once.

This one was not..."whoa"

Dink is poised

I actually cropped my moms hands out of the picture. She was totally killing our buzz.

Molly loves her some dude.

Today we took an impromptu trip to the park. I really should take her there more often now that the weather is nice. When we first arrived, there were several people running around looking for a boy named "Alexis?" with a "blue shirt and black hair". Anyhow, we did a quick glance and saw no children who looked lost and went about our own business. We played on the slides and let Molly kick her new ball around and assumed that they had probably found the kid. We decided to head over to the castle part of the park where they have a little toddler playground and again played on even more slides "again, again" as Molly likes to say. We did realize however that Alexis probably hadn't been found since we kept hearing his name being yelled. At this point I kind of felt a little concerned about this kid who must truly be missing (it had been quite awhile since we had arrived). I didn't really know what we could do though since they had several people looking and had already searched most of the park it seemed. While playing with Molly we decided to check out the little airplane model they have. We plopped Molly in the seat to let her fly and then Jonny sort of jumps and probably uses some mild obscenity (gotta clean it up for the kids you know :-) He says "there's a kid in there" of course you know where this is going, but at the time, we didn't really put it together right away. While we were walking away from the occupied plane, I say to Jonny "do you think that's the kid they're looking for?" he tells me to see if he's wearing a blue shirt and ask his name. He was of course wearing the shirt, but he wouldn't answer me. We then of course flagged down the search party and showed them where to look. It was a really good hiding spot and I'm glad we found him when we did because I can't imagine how freaked out they must have been and I could tell that there was no way that he was going to give his location up on his own. I had seen a few other kids playing around the plane but none of them said anything and other than them, the plane hadn't been too popular, so it might have been quite awhile before he would have been discovered there.

I have some videos that I would love to get on here but they're kind of a pain, so I don't know if I'll get it done anytime soon.

Bye bye MO

I tried to get tricky with the blog because the dates were messed up on my posts and now I'm regretting it because I deleted a whole post somehow...whoops. I've learned my lesson. Now I'm stuck trying to recreate the post. We'll see how I do
We left Missouri on the 28th in order to get home in time for Halloween. It was an extremely long trip and has cemented with me, that when we go to Joplin for Christmas, we will be flying. She was a trooper, but in the end I think one long day is better than 3 long days, even if it does involve possible tantrums in front of strangers.
Here are some pictures from our last days in Joplin.

Obligatory Porch pictures

She learned quickly that her buddy "Gen" was the one to go to if you needed something.

It was fun how quickly she learned to say Margaret and Glen's names, or at least her version: "Mar-gee, and "Gen". She LOVED hanging out at their house and talked about them constantly.

Glen reading his little varmint buddy a story.

Playing in the leave on the deck.

While there, Molly lived it up in Gran's claw foot. I suppose I could give her baths in ours, but she has her own bathroom, so we might as well use that.

On our way home, our biggest struggle was sleep. While other kids seem to pass out in the car and never wake up. Molly cannot stay asleep in her car seat. As soon as her head bobs, she's up. We tried some fancy pillowing to try and keep her asleep, but nothing worked long enough to get a good nap in.

Molly and her pillows

Since this was a problem, on the way home, one day we stopped in Albuquerque to let her get a decent nap in the stroller. While she slept, we walked around old town and eventually ended up in the natural history museum where, when Molly woke up, she had a grand time running around checking out the Dyn-Saws. I think she appreciated the break.

Pushing her stroller around was her favorite activity.

Halloween

Halloween was a busy day for us, but somehow we fit it all in. We started off our morning by heading over to Granny Kathy's house, where Jonathan and Madeline were also hanging out. They enjoyed watching the little pink poodle running around, even though she was a little moody (we probably cut it a little close to lunch/nap time).

Jonny really loves those puppy ears.

After nap time, we headed to my mom and dad's house, where my mom had some delicious treats for her. So far, candy isn't a part of her diet. I'm sure at some point I'll lose control over this, but for now I'm still doing good. In Joplin, after a particularly spirited tantrum, my Dad took Molly outside right before dinner. Knowing that Molly would probably throw a fit if I tried to bring her back in for dinner, I decided I needed a bribe to get her back inside. I lured her in for dinner with Broccoli. I'm that awesome.

After enjoying her banana treat, we went over to the Velasquez's house to visit. We missed Danny, but Molly charmed Karen with her puppy impressions.

"woof woof"

Then we headed over to Jonny's Granny and Papa's house to spread some more Halloween cheer.

We ended the night Trick or Treating with the Morris'. Their neighborhood was crazy, but we made it out alive.

Grayson and Molly getting their treats from Blaine.

Molly lasted about 3 minutes in the wagon before she wanted out.

After all of that excitement we hung out and handed out candy.

Grayson didn't want to share his beanbag.

At one point he cornered Molly and gave her a BIG hug which she wasn't able to withstand, and knocked her over. She was pretty upset and she was left with a whisker print on her face. Poor Grayson just wanted a hug.

Here are a couple of Halloween complaints/tips I have.

1) If you are a 60+ year old grandmother taking your grand kids trick or treating, you don't get to trick or treat too. If you absolutely have to because your Dr. said you need more candy in your diet and you can't afford it...at least wear a costume, preferably one that masks that you're too old to be trick or treating...essentially stealing candy from children.

2)If you are driving in a crazy busy neighborhood with all sorts of crazy kids running around, turn off the strobe light in your car, and remove the Scream mask. You already suck and you're going to suck even more if you hit some poor kid because you can't see.

Pumpkin Patch

I apologize for the betrayal Ramsey, but yesterday we went to a pumpkin patch to let Molly pick out a pumpkin. Truly it was just a photo opportunity, but Molly did enjoy running around and picking up, stepping on and sometimes throwing the pumpkins around. Since we've been here, Molly has kind of been a pain in the ass :-) She's constantly throwing tantrums about every little thing. When we're home we go to the grocery store once a week and target once every other week without serious incident. When we tried to take her here, it was a fight! She sat in the cart at target, but she fussed and whined. Then when we went to the grocery store she refused to sit in the cart at all, so I had to carry her. She wanted to walk, but I held my ground on that battle, I really didn't want to chase her around a grocery store while trying to repair all of the damage she created. Then there's eating out. I'm convinced after this trip that I will never do it again. She doesn't want to sit in the high chair, she doesn't want to eat, the only thing she wants to do is scream. I really hate being THOSE people, but lately we have been. Luckily it doesn't really show up in the pictures. When she's crying I'm dealing with that, not taking pictures. I suppose when I find her pain sort of funny, like if she's stuck somewhere, then I might take a picture of her. Little punk deserves it, ha ha ha!

These next three pictures are for Jonny. I thought he might be interested in the many cucurbits that the farm had to offer.

Molly and Me...see, I love her.

Picking out her Pumpkin

Found a winner.

She really liked the little white ones, she kept picking them out of the huge pile of mostly orange ones.

Having a picnic with Papa. When she got home she wanted to stay "AWESIGH". I would have been a hard ass and made her eat in her chair, but papa is a little softer, so he let her eat out.

I will note that this was the 2nd bowl of mac n' cheese, because the 1st one was dropped. The perils of eating outside.