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.

Bee Sting

Poor, poor Molly. Last weekend she was playing outside in her sandbox and all of a sudden she just starts screaming. I had been watching her and as far as I could tell nothing had happened. I went over to her and she showed me her hand and I saw what I thought was a splinter. I took it out and thought it seemed sort of strange for a splinter and that's when I realized she had been carrying on about a "beetle". Then I saw the dying bee in the sandbox. Although she cried pretty heavily for at least a couple of minutes and continued to talk about it in a forlorn sort of voice throughout the day, after an hour neither (Molly or I) could really even remember or find where the actual sting was. I suppose this could be for 1 of these 3 reasons:
1) She's like her dad and has little or no reaction to bee stings.
2) I pulled the stinger out fast enough that it hadn't really packed any venom punch.
3) Since it was on the pad of one of her fingers, the bee was unable to really puncture through her skin completely.
Who knows, I'm just glad she's over it. Well I spoke too soon there. minutes after typing this she started screaming and losing her mind because a "beetle" landed on her. Fortunately this bee was just looking for a drink of water and wasn't interested in attacking.
Well, just in time for it to be too damn hot to go outside (it was 98 today...booo!), we have a nice little area for Molly to play. I've wanted to do this for awhile now and I'm glad that it's finally done. For her birthday we gave her a little slide and a sandbox/picnic table combo which she loves. I particularly love that I can sit in one spot and keep an eye on her since the area is all fenced off. Before I was constantly chasing her around keeping her from the certain death that lurked around every corner. So a big thanks goes out to my parents, Jonny and even Jonathan who came and helped us one weekend, I really appreciate the space.
I was so pleased that she was actually wearing her hat outside...

But then she did this.

Getting her water table all filled up.

She was so pleased with herself. She kept talking about how she was taking a bath outside.


In other news the past two days I've been hitting potty training pretty hard. The only times I've put a diaper on her have been sleeping and if we're out somewhere. I'm doing this hardcore and NOT using pull-ups. I have these Gerber training pants and plain old underwear. I really like the training pants since they do absorb some amount of pee (although they're definitely wet) the only problem with them is that they're impossible to find. Online they're sold out, at target they're always out of them, and yes, I'm willing to buy the boy styles too. Right now we have 6 pairs, which is not enough to get us through a day at this point. The first day I couldn't believe how many times she went...I suppose I'm doing a good job keeping her hydrated. When I was folding the laundry last night I counted 10 "accidents". I'm determined though that if I just stick to it, she'll catch on eventually. My approach right now is to take her to the bathroom as often as possible. If I was super diligent this should probably be every 15 min. and 5 if she's just downed a ton of liquid. Today was better than yesterday, so I'm hopeful that we're getting somewhere.
This picture is from Molly's nap today. What I can't understand is how she can fall asleep like this so seemingly easy for a nap, but for bedtime, I still have to jump through so many hoops to get her to go to sleep. Cutting her nap to one and a half hours has help, but it's still not a perfectly efficient process. Oh-well.
She's under there somewhere.

Singalong

One of Molly's favorite songs is one called "Jump-up". It's a kids song that she 1st heard on Sesame Street and since she liked it so much I bought it for her to listen to. If I play it while we're in the car, whenever it's over she says "Jump-up again". When listening to other songs, she'll frequently ask "different song?" but "Jump-up" NEVER gets this treatment, it is her favorite song. On one of our nightly walks she got into her "Mama" loop, where she just keeps repeating "mama, mama, mama..." even though she doesn't seem to really want anything from me, just wants to keep my attention I suppose. To try to break the cycle, I asked her to sing me a song. She started with the "ABC song"(I'd say she knows about 3/4ths of it now). Then she went into Jump-up. I wish I had a recorder on me because it was so cute. Her words went something like "Jump-up, Jump-up, I know lying down, Jump-up dance with me" just for reference, the actual lyrics are "Jump-up, Day is breaking, Jump-up, let's get shaking, I know, you're lying down, Jump-up and we'll dance around." Jonny and I were cracking up, it was just so painfully adorable. She's since learned the entire 1st verse. Just today she was running around the house singing it over and over.
In other cuteness news, today out of the blue she decided that a Lego piece was a camera and proceeded to take pictures while exclaiming "cheeeeeeese" over and over. So naturally I had to take pictures of her "taking pictures". This started a whole vicious cycle and now I have like a billion of the same picture, oh-well, happens all the time. I think I'm going to have to get a few of those huge Terabyte hard drives to hold all of the childhood pictures of Molly and now Maisie? Maggie?...no decisions yet.
Cheeseball

Smile!

New Chapters

I should seriously be in bed right now, but for some reason I feel compelled to whip this out. This will be the 1st post of my 3rd Volume (In my printed books anyhow) I can't believe how much I've written and how many pictures I've taken to fill up all these books. It's funny because I remember in college whenever I would have to write a paper I would become obsessed with how long it would have to be so I could make sure I was doing the bare minimum (sorry to all my teacher readers) and now I have casually written pages upon pages. Of course maybe if I had found my topic as interesting as this one...now what was it that I majored in again? Oh yea, human development. Well it wasn't interesting to me then.
You may have heard that there are new car seat recommendations that say that you should keep your child rear facing for 2 years or up to some weight that I can't remember, probably 30 lbs. This is fine and well for people with normal sized cars, but for me, this means that for two years (starting in August) one passenger in my car will have wrap his or hers legs around his or hers neck. It is possible, but it's a pain. So we may in the coming weeks get a more sensible car. Right now I'm leaning towards leasing since it seems that gas may be on it's way out and I don't know what's next as far as cars go. I don't want to be stuck paying for a beta-max. I suppose it's not going to happen right away or anything, but it should probably happen sooner rather than later or else we might find ourselves in some sort of crazy Mad Max nightmare. Seriously though, what do I know...absolutely nothing...except that two kids take up more space that I don't have.
On the same thought of running out of space, my abdomen is starting to look like it might be. I think I look like I'm about 2-3 weeks bigger than I was last time around. I'm hoping this really is just a early "popping" thing and doesn't necessarily translate into a bigger me come delivery time. I was pretty large last time. I'm also to that point where I can now feel Maisie or Maggie (possible names) all of the time now. Just like Molly, she's a mover and a shaker. P.S. if you have an negative opinion about those names...I'm probably not interested. I may however be interested if you have an opinion between those names...maybe.

Moving on: Pictures

Last weekend was crazy birthday party weekend. We started it off on Saturday with both Kate's and Jeffrey's parties and finished on Sunday with Keegan's. It was fun for us though since we don't get out much, sad but true.

Jeffrey's party was at Summer's house. Molly had a blast going crazy with all of their toys. There was the slide which big cousin Emmaline helped her with and the plasma car which was super cool. I'm going to have to get her one of these even though the suggested age is 3+. Then there were the simpler things like shoe swapping.

Lorelei with Molly's shoes, Molly with Emmaline's shoes=good times!

Also a good time is my make-up drawer. Yes, I know I need to get a lock put on it. All of the other drawers/cabinets in the bathroom have them, but at the time she couldn't reach the make-up drawer. What? They grow?

Grayson came over to play the other day and made it clear that he's cool with girls and their stuff. Here he is checking out Molly's dress with some very pretty shoes on. And no, despite her reputation, Ramsey did not make any attempts at dressing him up, he picked it all out himself.

Trying on some shades. Again, Grayson is secure enough in his boyhood to wear pink.

Party time, and...

This weekend Molly had her 2nd birthday party. This year she definitely grasped the concept of presents. Especially since the entire week prior to the party consisted of her receiving them.

One of her early birthday presents was a cool activity table from my parents. It's the kind with the roll of butcher paper for lots of big drawing fun. So far it's a big hit. She especially likes to sit on it.

For her party, I made her some cupcakes in the images of some of her favorite characters. It's a show called "Peep and the Big Wide World" about 3 little bird named Peep (a chicken) Quack (a duck) and Chirp (some sort of red bird). She loves them and she liked her cupcakes...it of course helps that it's cake.

Singing happy birthday

Yum yum!

I remember reading a while back from some etiquette expert that having children open presents in front of other children is unnecessary and maybe even cruel at times. I think there may be some truth to this, especially with toddlers.

Grayson loved Molly's new puzzles so much that he was thinking he might take one home. Fortunately when we showed him he got his own favor, he was cool with letting go of the puzzle. Literally, he just dropped it on the floor. You can also see in the background of this picture an enthusiastic Madeline. She looks like that in about 15 consecutive pictures. Sorry Madeline.


When it came right down to it, Keegan really wasn't interested in giving Molly the present. Don't worry, your birthday is next week, I'm sure you'll get some pretty good stuff too.

Well if you're still reading I have some news to tell. I'm sure this is what everyone wants to know and it probably should have been my lead story.
Well if you're someone who knows how to read these things, you probably already know. Jonny says that he would have known, which makes me feel good about my decision to find out. I hate the idea of him knowing and me not knowing. At the party we talked with Karen and Danny about my agony over deciding whether or not to find out. Danny came up with the best advice that anyone has given me regarding this and told me I should just flip a coin. Later that day I got out my ipod and used a coin toss app that I have. Jonny called it tails (although since he wasn't paying attention to me, he didn't know why he was calling it) and that was our answer. So if any one's interested, Molly's going to have a baby sister!

Today when we got home I put the DVD in and she watched. She wasn't really interested at first, but afterward she exclaimed, "YEAH! Baby sister!" It was so cute. I have to say I feel the same way.