Granted my sort of party is pretty tame (some may call it lame) but I still had a good time last week with all of my parties. It started last Saturday when Ramsey asked me out to lunch for my birthday and instead was throwing me a surprise baby shower. I didn't catch on that it was a baby shower for a few minutes (when I was told) but really it's not fair to do throw a party that close to someones birthday and not expect some confusion. Just ask Ramsey, she's had experience with this. All my glory. Thanks to everyone who came, it was a lot of fun! On Tuesday, I turned 31 (doesn't seem right, but I did confirm this with my mom). Since it coincided with my friend Allysia being in town with her kiddos, we had them and the Morris' over for dinner. It was a total 10 year old birthday party complete with pizza cake and ice cream. All of us, with all of them. Molly would not look at the camera at all, so this was the best we got. Molly with her favorite person, Colbie baby. Obviously she couldn't be trusted, whoops! Jadon stealing some lovin' from Miss Colbie. Okay, I couldn't resist sharing my child's genius. When asked to write her name, she will fairly consistently do something like this. Yes, there's no real "M" (although it should be noted that she does say "M") and yes, there are too many "l"s (they're fun to write I guess) but she's only 2 and I'm impressed. It should be noted that it probably helps to have not only a simple name but also a simple to write name. Poor Maggie will probably not have as easy a time writing her name since she doesn't have any super simple letters like "o" and "l". Although Maggie has not mastered her name yet, she has done me the favor of getting in the correct head down position. On my birthday I had an appointment and she is supposedly head down. Let's just hope she stays that way.
"Hello customer!" That is the name of Molly's new game. Ever since she saw me painting my toes months ago, Molly has thought that it was the coolest ever. Since I knew using regular nail polish on her would be a disaster I have bought her her own special paints (piggie paints) that are water based and dry faster. It isn't enough though, she still feels like she needs to get in on the action. Since I would rather she didn't ruin everything with nail polish (waterborne or not) I have been on the lookout for play nail polish bottles (empty ones). At first all I could find was "play" nail polish which was actually "real" nail polish with kiddie packaging, but this week I finally found a play set at target that has two little polish bottles as well as a play flat iron, blow dryer (complete with working fan) and various other toiletries that a two year might need. She loves it all and is now really into playing "hello customer". I'm guessing she's picked up this stellar customer service from all the time she spends at the paint store/beauty school...Meredith is known for her service with a smile...wait... Well regardless of where she learned it, this is how it goes. She greets us cheerfully, asks what she can do for us today, and then either paints our nails or straightens/combs our hair depending on what we choose (although we've been known to choose wrong). If we choose nail polish, she even asks us which color we want. Very professional.
Yes this should compliment your coloring nicely. Concentrating hard on daddy's pedicure. Haven't talked about potty training much. That's probably because I feel like a failure at it. I suppose I'm being hard on myself, since when we're at home and she's going commando, she's almost perfect. Unfortunately as soon as you put anything on her, panties, pull-ups, pants she's peeing all over the place (fortunately she's been 100% in the other area for well over a month no matter what she's wearing) This has made staying dry while out and about difficult. I'm too chicken to put her in panties when we're out, so I put pull-ups on her. I try to ask her frequently, but that doesn't seem to work. Also, her new found fear of public restrooms isn't helping matters. Which brings me to my new found hatred of automatic flushing toilets. If I was two I think I would be terrified of those things too. Since she won't wear panties and use the potty we've implemented a strict dress code of dresses minus bloomers. Before bedtime if I'm not interested in seeing her little naked butt running around, I'll put a skirt on her to cover her shame. The only skirt I have that doesn't have some sort of under short attached is pretty fancy, so this is what she looks like before bed, flitting about in her fancy skirt. As I probably mentioned before, we've been going to the summer movie program at Harkins. The first movie went great. Of course Clifford the big red dog has a lot to offer to Molly. We've since gone to Megamind and How to train your dragon. They haven't gone quite as smoothly. She's pretty good for awhile, but maybe 30-40 minutes in, she'll lose interest and say she wants to leave. This would be fine, except that when we start the process of leaving, she freaks out and says she wants to stay. So we go back and forth like that for awhile until I just give up and make her leave. Then the tantrum starts: Super Fun. When we left Megamind she screamed and cried the whole way home: Awesome. This last time was a little better, but not much. I haven't decided whether I'm going put myself through that again. We'll have a two week break from it since we start swim lessons next week. Jonny gave me my birthday present early. He said he thought that I was having a bad day and wanted to cheer me up, but I didn't think I was having that bad of a day. Anyhow, I like my cool new present. It's a little video camera. We have a camcorder, but it's always inconvenient to use, so we don't. This one is tiny, convenient to charge, use and easy to get the videos off of. I'd been reluctant to get one because I hate how dark the videos always end up on those little things when you're taking video inside (at least that's how it seemed on my mom's flip). Jonny did some research and decided this one would work well. So far I like it. You can actually see the picture even if the video was taken in our dimly lit house which is nice since that's where I will use it the majority of the time. Here's a video I took with it. It's of Molly doing probably my favorite thing that she does: reading a book. It's so cute and hilarious. This book is "Hand Hand Fingers Thumb" and in case you don't remember it from your childhood, one of the main phrases in the book is "Dum ditty dum ditty dum dum dum" which is what she's saying the most. The book that she reads the best is "The Cat in the Hat Comes Back", she reads that to us almost every night. Sorry, the video ends in the beginning of an argument about why she can't use the camera. I turned it off before it got really ugly though.
My new plan for posting videos is to upload them with You Tube and then embed them here. That seems to work way better than directly uploading them. Not sure why blogger's video upload is so difficult, but I always spend hours trying to upload and then give up crying and huddled in the corner.
How do you like that Tracy? I named the whole post after you! Unfortunately though, I'm probably going to expand to topics other than Tracy. Sorry Tracy. Somehow, Tracy has avoided the typical military family life of moving every few years, and has managed to stay in Yuma for the better part of the past 16 years. Sadly her luck has run out and she and her family are off to Fl. Yesterday Molly and I went to a farewell BBQ and Molly had a blast swimming, socializing with the many youngsters in attendance, and even playing a little tailgate toss with her new buddy Tracy. In case you've never seen tailgate toss I'll describe it. You may have played a more complicated version in kindergarten on "brag day", it's basically a board with a hole and some beanbags, you can figure out the rest. Molly is an expert at it...as long as she's cheating. I should have taken pictures, but I've been really bad at taking pictures this week. It's just as well though, because Tracy informed me that she didn't think I needed to post any other pictures. Good Luck in Fl, we'll miss you! So since I've been terrible with the pictures lately, I'm just stuck with stories. I'll start with the ones that I left out of the last post. While we were hanging out with Michaela last week, Molly was full of antics. The first one involves her obsession with all things canine. She was so in love with Steve and Rachael's dog Cash that at times it got a little out of hand and she had to be reminded to tone it down a bit. At one point Michaela sat her down and told her that maybe it would be better it she just petted Cash with her eyes. So Molly took the literal meaning of this, and started rubbing her face all over Cash. I was laughing so hard I was crying. The second involves contributing to the delinquency of a minor. I left Molly sitting on a chair while I went to get a glass of water and when I got back, I was informed that Molly had found an abandoned cup of sangria and helped herself. I'm guessing she had a pretty small amount since she didn't seem to have any ill-effects as a result. She did however inform me that it was yummy. Yikes. Then there's Sea World or as Molly has been calling it Sea Horse, not sure why. Last Thursday, Ramsey and I took Grayson and Molly and met up with the Burgess' and Steve and Rachael for Sea World fun day. Of course I have no record of it, because I forgot to put the memory card back into my camera. I'm the worst. I'm guess though that soon enough if you check the Morris blog or the Burgess blog, there will be some Molly Sea World pictures. Sea World was super fun though and I got a huge kick out of how excited Molly was to see all the animals. The 1st show we went to was the Orca one and when they jumped out of the water, she squealed with delight. It was so funny. She was also a huge fan of the sea lion and otter show (who isn't). I'm hoping that Jonny and I can make it back really soon, like, before late July/ early August. Lastly, this weekend Mere's friend Trish and her family were staying in the guest cottage. Molly thought this was great because she's completely enthralled with Trish and Dave's Daughter's Laurel and Kendal (I believe they're about 9 and 7). When she was first introduced to them, she was told that they were sisters. Since her only concept of "sister" is "baby sister", she named them the baby sisters. She loved the baby sisters and I loved that they would hang out and play with her. I'm starting to think I messed up this age distance for siblings. I can see how having a little helper might have been good idea. Wish I had thought of that 8 years ago. Oh-well!
In Maggie Mac news, I had an appointment yesterday and although Maggie is fine, she isn't head down yet which kind of has me freaking out. I'm 31 weeks today, so we still have time, but I really really really need her to turn turn turn. The sooner the better. In fantastic news, the Burgess clan was in town for a few days. Molly had a great time running around and playing with Landon's "guys" although I think Landon and Captain America might have wished she hadn't. Sorry about your guy Landon. In case you were wondering how this picture was taken, it should be known that there were bribes involved. Also, this is pre Molly taking Captain America for a swim. Although the Morris' were busy running around in the mud, they were able to make it for a couple visits, and we even snapped a quick picture of the kiddos. I didn't get one of all of them looking at the camera, so I included the two best ones. Relaxing on the lawn with a frosty beverage. Also thrown in our week was some sprinkler time. Some puppy time at Granny's. Molly's loves Dixie because she's just her size. She even loved carrying her around, which wasn't always in Dixie's best interest, but it was kind of funny. We even got in some Chicken time at Poppie (Cassie and Jonny can correct my spelling later) Shawn's house. I have desperately wanted to get a picture of Molly with the Chickens, but it has never worked out. One time my camera battery was dead, another time I forgot to put the card back in my camera, plenty of times I've just plain forgotten my camera. This time I wasn't able to because Molly was just plain scared of the chickens. She's always been so fearless, but lately she's starting to catch on to the idea of what it means to be scared. The past two weeks or so have been filled with all sorts of scary things as far she's concerned. Some of the things I'll give her. Chickens can be sort of scary (the chicken pictured below scared me when I was trying to get her to move so I could get the eggs she was sitting on), but I'm not buying that she's afraid to watch the Baby Einstein movie that she pulled out the other day and decided that she had to watch. Still, she insists on feigning fright and letting me know how scary it is. After it's over, she screams "Again! Again!". Watch out! She's mean! Stay tuned for more McBurgorris fun!
Jonny and a few of his farming buddies planted a big "garden" for themselves. There is currently a ton of green beans and there will soon be a ton of corn and melons (not that we've ever been short of melons). Today we went out and picked some beans. Molly tagged along too and was even helpful for maybe a minute. Then after her helpfulness had worn off, she even managed to entertain herself near us without being a pain/causing damage to property/herself. Then her shoes came off and she took off making me chase her all over the place while she threatened to cause irreversible damage to everything she touched. Not to mention making a huge muddy mess of herself "Look at that!"-one of her favorite exclamations.
Here is the result of our labors. A 5 gallon bucket o' beans (+2 eggplants) Add that to the little bell peppers Jonny's co-worker brought from a trial, and I think we have more than we know what to do with. Then there's these little gems. Unless you plant your own, you probably won't get to taste one because I'm probably not sharing. Before we had this tree I had only ever eaten a black fig, but I like these way better. This variety is called Kadota. Jonny picked two for me today, they're already gone. We'll have more this year than we did last year, but probably not so many that I won't be able to keep up with eating them all. Molly continues to be equal parts cute and pain in the butt. Her latest thing is to try and explain her miss-behaviors to me in what I consider to be a condescending tone. For example last night while I was laying next to her, waiting for her to "Go the Fuck to Sleep" (go here to see what I'm talking about) she kept pulling my hair. I kept telling her to stop, but she just kept doing it to the point where I'm sure she could tell from my tone that I was getting pissed. Of course getting pissed doesn't work with her. Sometimes she just laughs at me, gotta love that. Or what she did last night which was lecturing me. Possibly my favorite (and least favorite) Molly quote to date- "Oh mama, it's okay. Sometimes I pull your hair". Fantastic! According to my two-year old pulling my hair this is just something that I need to learn to deal with. I really wish I could capture the sincerity she had in her voice, she was really trying to be sympathetic. Haven't quite figured out what I'm going to do with this, so far all I've been able to do is hold back laughter.
First things first, in case you hadn't already heard, my parents and aunt and uncle are fine and their houses are not damaged. You have probably heard about the horrible tornado that took out Joplin on Sunday, fortunately my mom and dad just missed it because they had been visiting Chris and Stephanie for the weekend. They were also fortunate in that their house was not in the tornado's pathway. Although they were in town for the storm, Margaret and Glen's house was also spared. We're just really grateful that they're okay, because it seems that is not the case for a lot of people in the area. The title of this post now has a double meaning. "Meow mow mow" is Molly's word for Watermelon." This is probably going to be one of those words that I have a hard time correcting since I kind of like it better than the real word. Meredith even tried to get her to say "watermelon" and she said to Mere "No! you mean meow mow mow". Too funny. The Morris' shared some of their Meow mow mow with us and it was all Molly could talk about. She's like her Daddy and LOVES melons. The other Meow mow mow that Molly can't stop talking about is the kitten that imposed itself on me in the Sam's club parking lot this morning. When I was putting the stuff in the car, this little white kitten starts mewing out from under a car. Since I'm not in the business of taking in stray animals, I made no eye contact and generally tried to ignore anything that I saw/heard. Unfortunately this kitten was determined to get my attention and it walked right over to me. Molly was thrilled and pretty much lost her shit screaming and carrying on about how much she loved her new best friend the white kitten. Since I'm not a complete monster I decided to take the poor thing in and take it to the pound. Of course the pound in closed on Mondays so Meredith has been kind enough to take on my burden and is taking care of the cat for now. Molly is absolutely in love with this kitten and isn't holding back in her profession of it. She's even given it the name "little dude cat". She really wanted to pick it up herself, however it didn't prove to be a good idea since she tended to be a little "Lennieish" (totally a word) and not know her own strength and also completely unable to control her own excitement. This picture cracks me up because of how she's trying to remove Mere's hand. She wanted that kitten all to herself. The plan for now is that tomorrow at 10 it's going to the pound. Molly's pretty sad about this, but we've said our goodbyes tonight and hopefully she'll forget about it. I kind of have my doubts though, she seems to remember everything. Kind of off subject, but she even remembers nursing and occasionally brings it up even though it's been months since we've done that. I'm pretty much screwed when Maggie gets here since there's a pretty good chance she'll want to get in on the action too.
The past few days have been pretty eventful. Poor Jonny hasn't been golfing in almost a year. He's either too busy or his golf buddies are too busy. I'm usually a buzz kill and don't want to go since I'm terrible, but last week I decided to be a good sport and Molly and I went golfing with him. The plan was to have her take a stroller nap while we golfed. At first we were going to go to Desert Hills, but at the last minute we went to Arroyo Dunes with the thought that she might wake up and want out of the stroller which could be a problem for other golfers. Since Arroyo Dunes doesn't really have other golfer's, it seemed like the better choice for a two year old's first golf outing. This turned out to be the right choice since she did wake up 4 holes in. She had a blast though and since the course was deserted it wasn't a big deal that she was whooping it up. Golfing with my girl. This was her main mode of transportation between holes.
Unrelated: Earlier that same day, Jonny and Molly spent the morning together. When I got home I saw that Molly's dress was on backwards. The funniest part is that he took her out like that. It doesn't seem too obvious except when you see the back (front) of the dress. Yesterday we drove up to Phoenix to go to zoo and to see Jonny's uncle Mike and aunt Chris. The Zoo was fun, but a little hotter than I would have liked it to be, especially carting this belly around. The funniest story from the zoo was the scary peacock story. Molly was in her stroller eating some popcorn when one of the wandering peacocks (male of course) that the zoo lets roam free came over looking for a handout. At first Molly was pleased that she had made a new peacock friend but then when he practically had his head in her stroller, she wasn't so sure she wanted to share. When I started to move her and the peacock saw that he wasn't going to get the popcorn he had hoped for, the peacock expressed his discontent with a very loud yelp, right in Molly's ear. That's when she lost it screaming, crying and blubbering that the peacock was scary. simultaneously so sad and so funny. poor thing. After the zoo, and cleaning off the zoo stink in our room, we headed over to Jonny's uncle and aunt's house. It was fun to see them since it had been a very long time, and Molly had never met them before. She warmed up to them and their house very quickly and was thrilled to play pool and bake pretend cookies with Chris. Even though it was a short visit, it was good to see them and hopefully it won't be as long before we see them again. New buddy at the zoo Ready to go home after a long day
