Does not compute

Okay, now it's kind of creeping me out how much Annette and I apparently have in common. Today, just like her, I have two videos to post. The first one is of Molly working her computer magic. We knew she had computer skills when at the young age of six months she was able to flip the screen picture at the paint store upside down. Meredith eventually had to google "upside down screen" to figure out how to fix this problem...other than standing on her head.

In this video I was trying to capture Molly playing with her toy (not sure what you call the contraption). When she plays with this particular toy, she likes to put the balls into it while it's spinning, and usually she like to do it as fast and as frantic as she can, which is hilarious. Her eyes get big and she gets flustered and fumbles because she's trying to do it so quickly. Regardless, as usual she wasn't willing to cooperate and decided that she wanted to play with her ball instead. So now I have a video of her throwing the ball to Jonny and even talking about her ball with Grandma. Good Times!

It's funny because I remember saying when I started this blog that I was afraid my blog would take a turn down the dark side and become this place where I vented about all of the negative things that being a parent entailed. As I look back through them I'm finding that I was pretty good at filtering out the bad and shining the spotlight on the good...for the most part anyhow. I look at the posts and if I was reading them as someone who didn't know anything about me, I might think I had it pretty well together, but as Michaela said once..."since when did we join the fake club?" I'm hear to say that it isn't all gumdrops...it's pretty well kicking my ass most days. For now my mantra is "she's only little once, she's only little once". Maybe someday I'll look back on these days and feel nostalgic, but right now when I'm saying my mantra, all I can think is "Thank-God".

She's got me dancing!

I can't believe what a total blogger slacker I've been lately. To all of you that rely on my blog for your Molly Mac fix, I'm really sorry, I'm going to try and be better. Really not much is new on the Molly front, she is getting steadier when she stands and enjoys walking around while holding onto things.
She has been starting to increase her vocabulary and now has her versions of "Bye" and "Ball" which do sort of sound similar, but I can tell that she understands the meaning behind her words which is kind of cool. She of course also makes all sorts of sounds that she's starting to string into "sentences" but ball and bye are really the only things she says where I'm sure she knows what she's talking about.
Something that she's done for awhile that's she's been doing more often lately is what Jonny likes to call "reset". This is how it goes: She's crawling around, doing her thing, when suddenly she biffs it or maybe things just get to be too much for her to handle. So what's a girl to do? Reset...head on the ground, just relax for a couple seconds then..BOOM back in business ready for action. It's pretty funny. She's also started to "reset" on Riley which is kind of cute.
Here she is with a sort of Riley reset.

Bath time is still one of Molly's favorite times, but I haven't really taken any bath pictures lately. I can't wait to have our house finished so I can get some good shots of her bathing in our fancy claw foot or better yet our freaking huge farmhouse sink...if she still fits.
Whooping it up in the tub!

This video is actually kind of boring. I'm posting it for two reasons: 1) it's an example of where she now likes to be in relation to her jump jump (she's no longer interested in being in it) and 2) She gives you a little taste of her dancing skills. Be sure to notice the little "conducting" movement she does with her hands. This is how Molly likes to get down.

Play!

Today we had a little playdate with Kate and Grayson at the Kate Monster residence. Good times were had by all, however if you want to see the coveted "all baby eyes on the camera" photo, you'll have to click on over to Kate's blog, I was not as successful at getting them to look at me. I did get a few good action shots though.
The cheerful hostess and Molly.

Well, they're all in the shot anyhow.

"I'm not so sure mom...I mean the toys are nice"

Getting ready in the morning is always my challenge. If I wait for her to nap I'm getting ready sort of late, and I may or may not get enough time to finish. If I make her tag along for the process, well, that can be a pain in the ass, and I think I need to get a good toilet lock before I attempt it...oh yeah, she can open the toilet by herself now...fantastic! When she isn't toilet diving, she's checking out the shower curtain which is also fun, and I would imagine slightly more hygienic.

Baby Legs

"bye bye blogger friends!"

New Year Walkabout

We've had an eventful week so I'm going to get another post out. Monday night Uncle Chris and Aunt Stephanie as well as my friend Stephanie arrived in Yuma so on Tuesday the fun began. We really didn't do a whole lot, but it was fun to catch up with everyone and of course everyone was glad to see/meet Molly. I hadn't seen Stephanie since my wedding almost 7 years ago so it was great that she was able to come down and hang out. I was almost bad and didn't take any pictures, but at the last minute, I pulled it together and captured a few moments before everyone left.

Molly with Uncle Chris and Aunt Stephanie

Molly and Stephanie

The 3 of us.


Hanging out on the couch, doing some high kicks.

Throwing Gran into the mix

Needless to say we all had a great time and I can't wait to do it again soon.
We rang in the new year sleeping (I've never really seen the point of giving up precious sleep for some point in time and I feel even stronger about it now.) or trying to at least. At 10 and at 12 there were some pretty serious fireworks that woke us up and scared the crap out of all of us, particularly Riley. We made it through the night though and had a pretty mellow new years day. We've been wanting to let Molly tear it up on her walker on the lawn so we broke it out and let her cut loose. She really enjoyed the freedom and we even managed to keep her away from all of the dog piles, pretty impressive with four dogs on the loose.
Cruising.

Cruising for a bruising.

Molly and Grandpa.

Hope everyone had a great new year, can't believe that it's 2010 and that Molly is finishing up her 1st year of life, freaking crazy!

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.