Awesome X-mas

I'm going to try really hard to get this posted before the new year because so much has been going on and we're only getting started it seems. Christmas was a lot of fun as always, but I really enjoyed watching Molly get in on all of the festivities. Even though she's only 9 1/2 months, it's like she was in tune to something special happening. The fun started on the 23rd when Grayson and Ramsey came over for a little gift exchange. Grayson gave Molly this cool little snail toy that sings and lights up. He was however a little reluctant to let go of it.
"See here, this is how you do it."

"No no no! You're doing it wrong!"

"I know it says 6 months and up but you're obviously too young for this"

"I think I better save this for you until you're older"

On Christmas Eve she was a trooper and stayed up late to visit with her whole family at my parents house. Christmas eve is always one of my favorite times because in the past few years we've gotten both my family and Jonny's family together in one place for a nice evening. This year with Molly in the mix it was even better.
I know, but it was the best picture I had of her whole outfit.

Playing with her cousins Madeline and Jonathan.

The First gift of Christmas!



Molly woke up bright and early (as always) Christmas morning and we headed over to our remote location tree at Aunt Mere's house. We have no space for such frivolities, but Mere does, so as always, we invade and make use of her space. She loves it, I swear! Molly had a great time playing with her toys and tasting various types of wrapping. Santa brought her a little walker toy which she LOVES! Maybe a little too much. She immediately took to it and was off. We have to keep her on the rugs though because the wood gets her going faster than her legs can keep up. Now she wants everything to be a walker, hampers, stools, step ladders whatever. Of course not everything functions like a walker so life can be a little frustrating. My mom took some videos (on her fancy new Flip) of Molly cruising with her walker, but I'll have to wait and see if I can get them from her. Mere also took one on her camera so here's a good one of Molly walk, walk, walking!

Enjoying some music from her new favorite toy.

Watch Out!

After Christmas Morning and a nice nap, we headed over to Aunt Cassie and Uncle Ben's house for some more Christmas fun. Molly received some more great gifts and some new bigger sized clothes which she's going to need. I think I forgot to mention that at her 9 month appointment she was 28 1/4 inches and 19 pounds, 1 1/2 ounces...damn they're precise! I of course was camera less so I didn't get any shots of the excitement. Before we left Mere did take a good one of Molly and I with Molly in her Christmas dress (thanks Aunt Mere!)


To keep the fun going, on Sunday we went over to visit with Jonny's friend Nich and his family. Nich and his wife Brooke have a little boy just a month older than Molly so she had a good time hanging out with Weston. It was fun to see her interact with another baby around her age and I think Weston gave her a few new sounds to ponder...he had some good ones!
But Wait! There's more. Or there will be anyhow. Uncle Chris and Aunt Stephanie are in town this week and one of my old friends, also named Stephanie will be here as well, very exciting! I will hopefully take some pictures of all of the action and post them soon.

Who put the bop in the bop shoo bop shoo bop?

Well it took over 50 years but we finally know the answer to the question from that song...it was Molly. Molly's latest word of choice is "Bop" She loves it and makes liberal use of it. It's a noun, a verb, an adjective, kind of like the way Jonny and I use "fuck"...good thing I put my advisory back! Some of you may not believe it, but I am trying not to use fowl language as much since I would really prefer Molly didn't either. I wasn't this bad before I met Jonny and I'm sure I can go back to my clean language ways even if it has been 10 years. Jonny's a different story. Here's a video of Molly "bopping" it up. It also showcases her crawling ability. She's been doing that for awhile now(a month, month and a half?), but I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've posted a video of it.

I don't have nice pictures this time around, Mere is back with her nifty camera, but she's still working on getting her pictures from her vacation (I'm not sure she's calling it that) onto her computer. I did however take a few pictures on my cell phone the other day when we were helping grandma decorate at her house. They're not the best, but they're fun anyhow.
In my old rocking chair with a Christmas Bear

Hanging out on Mere and Chris' saddle

Grandma's day glow Christmas tree

In reality it doesn't look that electric it's just the crappy cellphone flash that gives it that effect.
I honestly can't remember when I took these pictures, it had to have been sometime in the last few weeks, sometime while Mere was gone anyhow. Here's Molly's tribute Mere, Chris and Stephanie's Delhi leg of their trip: Cheerio Bindi

She's been pulling up on things for awhile now, but here she is showing that off:

She's also been clapping for awhile but I thought this was a cute action shot:

I suppose my next post will likely be after Christmas, so I'd like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas from all of us at Molly Mac!

Christmas Pictures

I don't have much to write about but I wanted to post some pictures. The other day we had Bill Butler come over and take some pictures of Molly in the hopes of getting something nice for a Christmas Card. I haven't ever really sent out cards, but I figure since I have a kid now I should send some out. We (and by "we" I mean my mom, dad and our painter) worked all week to get the porch and our fireplace ready so that we could have some almost home pictures. Since only the sub-floor is down in the living room we threw down an old rug and pieced together some of our floor around the fireplace. Needless to say keeping an almost 9 month old in a designated area isn't always going to work so some of them show the ugly sub-floor. Regardless we have some cute ones.

Thanksgiving?

Well sign me up for worst mother of the year, because Thanksgiving has come and gone and I didn't really take any pictures of Molly on her first Thanksgiving. To be fair, she pretty much slept through the actual meal. When she woke up I did give her some of Aunt Cassie's mashed potatoes and turkey which she enjoyed...but no pictures to record the great event. I'm going to blame not having pictures on aunt Meredith who selfishly took her awesome camera on her awesome trip to India and Nepal...what the hell?!?! Doesn't she know I need not only her camera, but her here to document Molly's life for me? I have a camera, but Mere's camera makes mine look like I sent for it from a Bazooka Joe comic.
Regardless of the photographic evidence, Thanksgiving was great. We ate at Cassie and Ben's house with Jonny's family, including uncle Ben which was great, since he's been gone for so long. and then afterward we went to Karen and Danny's house to see my parents, as well as the Velasquez's, even Kelley was there. Of course I can't prove it since I didn't take any pictures.
I did however take some pictures on Friday which turned out okay. In an attempt to contain Molly, Grandma has decided that I cannot live without a proper play pen and has taken it upon herself to get me one. We haven't really used it yet since it is currently set-up on Mere's front porch (that's right Mere, yet another piece of baby junk has taken up residence at your home) but the hope is that we can set it up in the big house and I can help out with things while she's safely contained. I also took a couple pictures of Molly hanging out in my new awesome bathtub. Actually it's a really old bathtub, original to the house, but it has a new look and a new place in my soon to be "new" old house,can't wait!
Molly in her new cage, Note how clever we are spelling out her name.

Molly in my "new" bathtub.

"One Million Dollars"

Here's the latest Molly face, The fish. She just started doing this a couple days ago.

It's pretty cool how quickly she can learn something now. Before it might have taken her a few days to a week to really master something as complex as a fish face, but Jonny started doing it while he was feeding her and then boom, by the end of the day she has it down pat and would even do it in response to our fish faces.
Here's a bonus picture that I took on Mere's camera right before she left. I really dig her little puppy hat, of course most of the time it's too hot to wear it(My air actually kicked on last night for a little bit...boo), but it's still cute.


On a side note, has anyone else had the problem with not being able to SEE the pictures in the edit area? I can see them in the preview and on the blog, but they only show all of the code stuff (you can tell how tech savvy I am) on the edit page, not a huge deal, but kind of annoying. I've tried using different browsers, but it's the same everywhere. Chris and Annette, I know I should just buy a mac, but I'm going to be completely tapped until the house is done.

Misc. Molly

I've been slacking in the blogging department again. I'm trying to get one out at least once a week, so far I think I've been able to handle that.
Big things are happening at the McIntier household. First off Molly becomes better everyday at getting into and destroying things. Nothing too serious but the books are starting to take a beating since the bookshelf is one of her favorite places to go. It's getting to the point where I should never underestimate what she is capable of because it changes every minute. She can now easily pull herself up on almost anything, before she could do it, but it was an effort and it was only on certain things. Now every time I come to get her in her crib, she's standing there waiting for me. I was pretty impressed with this since she wears little sacks when she sleeps. I thought they would make that more difficult for her, but she seems to manage. Jonny says that this probably indicates a future as a potato sack race all star, I guess we'll have to wait and see. She is also able to walk along things while holding on. Her favorite thing to do is walk along the edge of the tub and then switch over to the toilet...like Michaela and Dustin, I see toilet locks in our future.

Also new in Molly's world are teeth. Yesterday she had a runny nose which was a first for Molly. I just thought some dust or something in the air was bothering her, since my baby is perfect and will never experience any illness (you can laugh at me now). Today however she was particularly grumpy and so I thought I would consider teething and felt her gums. Sure enough, it seems as though she may be the owner of a new tooth soon. I had considered teeth to be some distant occurrence. I didn't get any until I was a year and it always seems as though the signs of teething are also things that babies just do...like drooling and chewing on stuff. She's always done those things, so nothing new there. I'm hoping that it's teething that has made sleeping such a problem lately. It's seems as though anything to do with sleeping has become a problem now. For naps it's getting her to fall asleep. It's become extremely difficult, she fusses horribly regardless of what I do. If I just lay her in her crib (yea right, like that would work) she screams. If I rock her she squirms and hits and screams. At night when I put her down she goes through several false starts before I really get her to go to sleep and even then sometimes she'll only sleep 4-5 hours before she's up again. I realize some people would love 4-5 hours, but Molly has teased us with 8-12 hour (mostly 8) nights, so 4-5 hours sucks! Also when she's up at night it's hard to get her back down again. Even with nursing I might end up putting in a hour at night trying to get her to stay asleep. This pretty much blows, but I'm grateful that things tend to change quickly.

Also worth mentioning is that Molly is clapping and Doing the sign for "mommy". I wouldn't have believed it except I noticed her doing it while the mommy montage was going on her baby Einstein video. Now she isn't really using it or anything, but she definitely is mimicking the movement. One cool thing about the clapping (as well as waving) is that I can now ask her (without doing the motion) to say hello/goodbye or to clap and she'll do it...sometimes. I know this shouldn't be too amazing, she is a little human after all, but it tends to blow my mind when she learns things.

Well I don't really have any pictures to correspond with my stories, but here are some of the latest Molly pictures, I know most of you have already seen them on facebook or at my house but some of you (Ramsey) have not, so I'll post them anyhow.

Learning to drive stick in Grandpa's Vette!

Hanging out with Daddy.

Molly's friends, A-hole and B-hole

Spooky Scary

To start out, just a quick Molly Stat update, she's now about 18 and 1/2 pounds, kind of hard to believe but she's getting bigger all of the time!

Halloween wasn't particularly spooky or scary this year, nothing too freaky about a sweet pea...unless it has E. Coli or something, but ours did not. Here are some sweet pictures of our Sweet pea on Halloween '09!
We started out the Halloween festivities with a quick trip to the paint store and the beauty school to say hello to everyone. We had to walk down because the peas on her pea outfit aren't really compatible with her car seat.

Here she is saying hello. She's a waving machine now and uses any excuse she can find to practice her new skill.

Molly hanging out with Isabella the bumble bee. Isabella is our receptionist Anna's daughter, and since she is going to have a baby sister soon, she's very into Molly. I think she sees her as a little sneak preview of the fun to come!

A little later in the day we took a trip of to Molly's great granny and papa's house. This was her first visit to their house, so she had lots of fun crawling around and checking out some of the new things their house had to offer. While we were there Jonny's mom and her husband Kevin stopped by to see the little pea in all of her glory. That evening I had Molly dressed up one more time for my mom who helped in the sewing of the costume. My mom convinced me that with her help we could make Molly a really nifty pea costume and she was right, it turned out great!

Here's the Grandmother Trifecta:
Great Granny Betty
Granny Kathy
Grandma Marilyn

Molly's a pretty good crawler now and can go pretty much anywhere she wants to. This isn't always great for me because I REALLY have to watch her now and also, she doesn't like it when I stop her from doing something she thinks is great, but I think is not so great.

Molly Mac under the sink and up to no good!
On the move in the yard.

"Why is mom such a buzz kill?!?!"

Playdates and More

I've had this post just sitting in my drafts for a couple days now and I should really do something about it!
Molly actually has had a pretty big week. The biggest thing that she has achieved is crawling. While she isn't graceful or efficient, she is definitely getting from A to B, assuming you provide her some motivation. Along these same lines, she is now able to go from laying down to sitting up. That was kind of funny because she just started doing it without any fanfare or effort. One minute she couldn't, next minute she could. That of course meant that we had lower her crib down so she wouldn't attempt any triple gainers out of the crib.
Also new on the Molly front are some new interesting sounds. When she's in her high chair eating puffs, that's when she really goes to town babbling away. By far her favorite new noise now is growling. You can check out the video to get a sample.


She's pretty vicious! I like to think she's practicing for Halloween or something :-)

I don't really have much for the rest of the post but I do have some pictures that I've been meaning to get up on here.

Ramsey and I have been getting together on Wednesdays every once in awhile, we do it first thing in the morning since that seems to be the only time that Molly and Grayson are coordinated.


Riding Grayson's Tractor

Playing Nice!

Hanging out and looking cute.

Here's a picture from Blaine's birthday party a few weeks ago. I had thought that this was Molly's first trip to Lute's Casino, but we do end up there a lot...so I'm not so sure.

The next two are just some cute ones that Mere took the other day.

Sweet Thing!