Summer Fun

It's getting hotter as always and we keep doing summery things, I suppose we should just embrace the heat.  My mom bought Molly and Maggie a fun little kiddie sprinkler to play in.  Maggie's not sure she likes it, but without fail, she always crawls into the middle.

Of course we have a lot of watermelons to eat.  Giving Maggie her own slice was pretty funny

Thank goodness she likes it, I don't think Jonny could stand having a kid that didn't like watermelon.

Molly, showing her how it's done.

We told her she should do it "pie-eating contest" style

but she's a cheater.

We also started swim lessons this week.  Maggie is in the parent tot class with me, and Molly started in the preschool class.  The first day went pretty good,the 2nd day was a little rough.  I could see Molly just looking pitiful the whole time.  Maggie's class lets out a half hour before Molly's so I went in to get Maggie cleaned up and I guess while we were in the changing room, Molly had told her teacher that she needed to go to the bathroom.  They tried to find me, but we were in the bathroom, and they didn't know.  They asked her what I looked like and she said that I looked like she did (sweet, but not exactly accurate).  Eventually they took her to the bathroom, but they didn't know that their toilets are too tall for her to hop up onto.  At this point I found them, but just a second too late.  When I went in to help her, she just started crying and peeing all over the floor.  Whoops!  After that, we just called it a day and went home.  Thankfully, today went much better and she seemed to be much happier in class. 

Blueberries!

I used to feed Molly little frozen blueberries all the time.  I had forgotten until recently.  The only drawback is that their little hands get stained and look kind of bruised.  I never really intended to feed her like this, but I'm almost exclusively giving her finger foods.  I did do this with Molly too, but I also made a lot of purees.  I'm sure Molly was like this too, but I hate trying to spoon feed her since she's always knocking it out of my hand and trying to steal it from me.  I gave up pretty easily this time around and decided that if she wants to eat, she can take care of herself.  For the most part, she does.
Sort of random fun fact about Maggie:  She has a Mongolian mark.  I hadn't ever heard of it, but I noticed awhile back that she has a faint  bruised looking patch on her lower back and butt.  I know they say you shouldn't use google to diagnose, but in this case it worked out.   I typed in "bruise like marks on baby's back" and there it was.  Hers isn't as noticeable as some of the kids on google (I can't even take a visible picture of it) , but that's definitely what it is.  They say is goes away by age 3, and it isn't any big deal.

Molly went to work with my mom today and she was cracking me up because of how "grown-up" she was trying to be. After I told her that she was going to go, she became obsessed with getting ready by herself so she could go to work. She even made a few comments to me about how Gran really needed her help and how she'd better hurry-up for Gran. I'm not sure how helpful she was, but she did have a good day.

Maggie's getting ready to walk now. She's pretty good with the walker now, this video was from about a week ago, so she's even improved since then.
She's also getting good at picking out watermelons now that Jonny always has several laying around.

Nutella

Can you blame her?  That stuff is amazing. Unfortunately, the 2nd time she did it I did blame her.  I probably sent a mixed message by taking her picture the first time.  Just now she saw the picture and was all excited about how she was "all messy with chocolate!"  I asked her if she was ever going to do it again, and she said "no", but immediately started beaming and analyzing herself in all her chocolate glory. For now, the Nutella is locked up.  This is the problem I've been having now that Maggie requires more attention to go down for a nap.  Most of the time I can keep her occupied with a show or the iPad (I'm a terrible mother...I know) but sometimes she gets creative, and I come out and find something like this.

One last lick.

 

Jonny, always does this with Maggie and it cracks me up.  Make sure you turn up the volume so you can hear her. 


Quick Maggie update.   She's 9 months, 17 1/2 lbs and in case you're keeping track,(I am), she still wakes up at least twice a night.  I try to keep it in perspective, I know Molly figured it out eventually, but I hate being tired.  I'm not sure where my optimism is coming from since it's sort of  out of character, but every night I think to myself:  this will be the night she sleeps.  Maybe it's desperation more than optimism, but more than likely one of these times I'll be right. 

Wettest Day Ever

Molly declared mother's day the "wettest day ever"

Maggie agrees!

I can't remember exactly how everyone became so wet, but I have a hunch this had something to do with it.

She can dish it, but she can't always take it.

 

I know I've been slacking lately and haven't posted anything.  Maybe it's because I'm busy dealing with shenanigans like this:

 

A big thanks to Crayola for making their products truly washable.

I also might be a slacker because of easy access to HBOgo...it could go either way.

Fair warning, this video doesn't show too much and it also had a lovely portion where the garbage disposal is running.  I'm posting it because I love how Maggie "talks" while she crawls around.  This is particularly noticeable when she's crawling with a mission, such as getting to the dog water bowls before me.

Babies crack me up.

Bubble beard

Maggie got a bubble beard while taking a bath the other day and Molly said "Awe Maggie!  You look like Uncle Chris!"  So then she wanted to join in the bubble beard fun.  Here they are with their bubble beards.  The resemblance to Uncle Chris is uncanny!

Never quite figured out what to do with those things.  Things she has figured out:  Walking a little bit while holding onto things, clapping, waving, and she's a peek-a-boo master.  She also very skilled at finding any tiny piece of paper on the ground and then holding it in her mouth indefinitely, turning it into a little spit wad.

Let's hope this doesn't mean she's a budding Dexter.  She had these not exactly Barbie dolls, one was a "Mom" and the other was the "Baby".  A while back she took the heads off and switched them...fantastic.  Then today she took the Mom head/Baby body combo and completely dissembled it. Then she wanted us to fix it...but wait...no...SHE wanted to fix it.  All by herself.  Then she needed tape.  How much?  8 pieces...no...wait...9!  Nine pieces it is!  She actually did a pretty good job "fixing" it, considering what she was working with.

She loves to help water the plants.  Sometimes she gets a little a carried away.  Today she was hanging  the water wand on the fig tree and making it rain.

Here she is before

This is her after.

This could be a picture of Sasquatch.  Or it could be of the little hummingbird who kept trying to come down and get a drink of the rain.

I told her to stand back and let it come down and get a sip, but instead she wanted to go the instructional route and show the hummingbird what it should do.  It made a few attempts to get close, but in the end 3 year olds are terrifying.

As I'm sure I've mentioned before, she's really into smelling flowers.  Jonny planted these sunflowers in the front and they're kind of fun to have around.  This one is called the little Becca, so of course it's my favorite. Shortly after this, she tore off every petal of the little Becca.  I think it's a terrible omen.  Not really, but I wish she'd just leave them alone.

There are all these funny stories that I have of all the funny things that Molly says, but right now the only one I can remember is this one:  I had just set Molly's sandwich down on the ottoman, and Riley just casually walked by and snatched it up, like I'd put it down for her. I said "Man Riley!  Got some pretty big balls there!".  Thankfully Molly was there to set me straight "Mama!  That's silly!  Balls don't have dogs!"  (She mixes things up sometimes).  She's always coming up with gems like that one. I could watch my mouth...but then I would miss out on her witty replies.

Sleepover

We took a quick trip to California this past weekend, but I should probably start with Easter, since I didn't ever post those pictures.  We still had to coach her a little, but she did pretty good this year finding her eggs.  She was really into it. We had about 30 items for her to find, but it wasn't enough, when we finished, she wanted to start all over.  My Dad indulged her and did hide stuff again for her to find.

Maggie even found one!

Molly and Maggie with Granny

On Friday we took a last minute trip to California to visit some family.  We also had a chance to take Molly to Legoland for her first time.  She was really into it, and had a great time making Jonny go on all the rides.

 

This was my favorite ride.  3-5 year olds driving cars. For me, the 3 year olds make this ride awesome, but for the 5 year olds, they're completely ruining it by crashing all of the time.  They told her to turn her wheel, which she did...left, right, left right (in quick succession). I think she thought it was like her plasma car.  The looks of confusion on her and this other kid's face crack me up.

 I'm guessing that this is the worst job at Legoland: redirecting all the junior "drivers".

This is how she ended her race.  The truth is, she never even completed a lap.  Maybe next time.

Somebody creeping on Molly and I on our boat ride.

Found the creep!

There's also a nifty aquarium there.  Molly in a bubble.

While on the trip, Molly was fascinated with idea of sleeping at the hotel.  She called it the sleepover and asked if we were going to live there now.  She made Jonny sleep in her bed with her and he said that she wouldn't sleep unless her feet were somewhere on him.  Even though Maggie didn't let me get too much rest, I'm kind of glad I didn't have to share with little miss bed hog.
Maggie wasn't too happy about being in her car seat.  I'm not sure how she knew this trip was going to be different from our regular trips around town, but as soon as I would set her in her seat, she would scream.  Kind of a bummer since I was sort of hoping we could leave town as often as possible this summer.  Hopefully we can work something out.

The Great Outdoors

Actually, I'm going to start with the indoors.  About a month ago, we had some 6 month/3year pictures taken by Bill Butler. I thought it was interesting how much Maggie reminded me of Molly at the same age.  Or maybe it was just the white background/same white dress/6 month old baby combo. 

Here we are outside.  Since for now, the weather is still pretty nice, we like to hang out in the yard and even eat our dinners outside.  This will be coming to an end soon enough, so may as well take advantage while we can.

Maggie is a skilled crawler now.  I told Molly that we should enter her in a baby race and she came up with this long story about how really we should get her a little car so she can go really fast and also we're going to need to build a racetrack.

She also does a lot of this business.  Trying to walk away.

Hanging out in front of Papa and Gran's

Molly's really into the idea of camping, so we're probably going to have to take her on a "real" camping trip eventually, but for now she's pretty happy with s'mores cooked over the smokey joe.

She's not to be trusted with the marshmallow bag.

I've been trying to capture that "Popeye" face that Molly also did around this age.  This one reminds me the most of Molly's face

 

 But I think this one might take the Popeye cake,