Molly Has Discovered...

Her toes.
She was happily sucking away on them today at the end of her nap.
I started to video and of course-- nothing.

So I waited a few minutes, and then took some covert video.

For Fun Molly And Dani Pics check out...

This post on the Oppler's blog.
The girls were practicing their ninja skills yesterday, and Sara got pics.

Here's the link.

Tub Time

Every other night, about seven o'clock it's tubby time.  Sometimes it's every night.  Molly loves her tubs.  It's been one of her favorite things ever since I've known her.

She used to have a little baby tub, but she kicked and thrashed about so much in it that I just started going in with her when she was about four weeks.  We've kept that up ever since.  It's a pretty fun time.

Lately trying to catch the water coming out of the faucet is her favorite thing.  

She doesn't seem to mind the fact that she sprays water all over her face.  Often she puts her hands in the spray then sticks her tongue out and tries to catch some of it in the air.

Baby Legs Galore

Molly has some free Baby Legs coming her way.

That's right-- this is what was posted on the Baby Legs website this morning.
Woot.

Here's a link to our winning "story"-- also posted below.

Our prize is valued at $100.  If I can win another 260 (give or take) contests like this, than this MFA will have paid for itself.

Molly in the Puget Sound

I had a girl's weekend out at the cabin, so Molly got to spend some quality time with Auntie M, K & Q.
They were fabulous to her, I couldn't ask for better friends.

She even dipped her toes in the sound for the first time, while Q shot video.
I thought she might holler, but she was just as happy as she is in her tub at home, kicking her legs away and happy as could be.  This girl loves the water.

Also, it turns out this swim cap is more practical than I thought.  It keeps her nog from getting sunburned, and she likes putting her head in the water so it works better than a sun hat.  Who knew something so ridiculous looking could actually come in handy?  And yes, her swimsuit is officially too small, so we wore it as a tutu instead. Time to fish out the adorable one that Nana Martin sent from her stash of big girl clothes.  Girl is growing fast! (97th percentile for height and weight at her 4 month check up!)

Baby Legs

I wrote this little essay for a Baby Legs contest recently.
I use the term essay loosely.

The winner get's a gift certificate and I'll do anything for a freebie, so this was the crack I took at it.  I'll let you know if we get any prizes :)  (we did our best, and even mentioned Baby Legs by name!)

Molly in her Baby Legs

The theme was to tell them about your summer plans.

This summer I will be a mother.  For the past thirty summers I have been a daughter, a sister, an ice-cream scooper, a paralegal, sometimes even a babysitter, but never a mother.

My very first child, Molly, was born this past spring.  We spent a few months getting acquainted, but now that summer has arrived, we’ve really hit our stride.  We’ve got a routine, Molly and I.  She’s sleeping through the night (which is to say we are both able too), and I’ve learned to stock her diaper bag with things like sun hats, plenty of wipes, more diapers than I ever think I could possibly need, and extra socks-- in fact a whole extra outfit-- before we head out on trips to visit friends or hit up the farmers market.  

This summer I will be a mother, and that will mean Molly and I will head to the park together to see our favorite musician Caspar Babypants perform Stompy the Bear, it will mean laughing uncontrollably at one another (now that Molly has learned to laugh), it will mean taking a trip to Maine (which will also be our first journey together on an airplane) to visit her grandparents, and it will mean snuggling.  Lots and lots of snuggling.  

Being Molly’s mother this summer also means I am on the hunt for a shorter hairstyle-- now that she is in the stage (please let it be only a stage) of pulling and tugging on my hair, it will mean that I no longer flip through my pregnancy books at the first sign of any tiny ailment within my own body, and instead flip through my baby’s-first-year books whenever anything is the slightest bit out-of-the-ordinary with hers, and means my eyes tear up a little as I begin to pack up the newborn clothes that Molly has outgrown, and again when she starts wearing her newborn sized Baby Legs as arm warmers instead of leg warmers.  

This summer will be the summer that my daughter is an infant. By winter she will be crawling, and by next summer she will be walking, but this summer I will hold her in my arms.

That is what I will be doing this summer.

More Hodge Podge

Rolling around with my cuz

Nikita comes to visit

About to run my first 5k. Leggings are from Baby Legs (a Seattle company)

Grammy Squeak & the Cow Dress

Molly has a cow dress in her closet.

It’s been hanging there since before she was born.  Black and white checked, with a large cow face appliquéd on the front, and flouncy, cow-print ribbons stitched onto each shoulder.

It was a gift from her Great-Grandma Squeakie. 

The weather could have been anything the day after Molly was born.  I wouldn’t have known.  She was born in the late evening, and the days leading up to her birth had been long.  It was after midnight when we arrived at our maternity suite.  Molly was swaddled and sleeping in her bassinet and Ryan and I were making preparations to settle into sleep ourselves when the maternity nurse came in for a visit.  When I told her I planned to breastfeed, she matter-of-factly replied, “well have you?” I had not.  I didn’t know it was officially time to start. It was indeed, she told me.  And so we did that. “I’ll come wake you in two hours,” she told Ryan and me.   I felt like once I closed my eyes I would sleep for two days (or months, or years), “because she will be hungry again then.”  And so in two hours she was back again.  And then again. And again.  Newborns have stomachs the size of a walnut, or green pea, or something tiny like that.

I don’t remember what the weather was like outside, but I know the room was still lit with the white light of early morning when there was a knock on the door.  I was bleary and tangled in my pajamas and thin hospital bed sheets.  I felt I had hardly closed my eyes since our last visit from the nurse, and yet here she was knocking again.  Except it wasn’t her. It was my Aunt Sandra and Grandma Squeak.  The nurse was on their heels and slid past them as they entered the room.  “Is it ok?” she asked me, “they showed up, it’s so early, I didn’t know.”  It was ok.  I remember placing Molly in my grandmother’s arms, and for the first time thinking of all of the babies she’d held.  Later, with some of my friends, I’d have to say things like, “you sort of go like this,” and position their arms, then remind them to support her head before handing Molly over to them, but my Grandmother, like so many mothers, knew just how to hold a newborn.  Molly didn’t startle, or fuss, she didn’t even wake.  Instead she slept soundly in the secure curve of my grandmother’s arm, her tiny body pressed against the soft velour of her purple track suit.

She had brought gifts of course.  Four diaper covers with brightly colored flowers stitched to the behinds.  Grandma Squeakie’s gifts never blended in.  In the years she bought me elephants there were figurines made of blown glass, or bejeweled ones that clicked open to silk lined caverns where you could store pennies or secrets. There was one with a long curved trunk for holding rings, and there were carved elephants with brightly painted eyes and ears and feet.  There was never a simple grey elephant.  That wasn’t her style. And my grandmother had style to spare.

Molly is growing fast.  If I put it on her, the cow dress would probably just fit.  But I don’t put it on her.  Molly quickly got the hang of nursing, and so she has outgrown the flowered diaper covers my Grandmother brought to the hospital.  She has also outgrown the whale and strawberry outfits her great-grandmother Squeakie picked out for her.  This dress, the cow dress, will be her, and my, last gift from Squeak.  She’d given me the dress at my baby shower.  For her to wear on the farm, Grandma Squeak had written on the card in wobbly cursive.  A farm girl herself, I doubted my grandmother had ever worn a dress such as this in the fields.  Pictures show her barefoot and in overalls, sitting atop the combine.

In the weeks after Molly’s birth, my Grandma Squeakie passed away.  There was a ride to the hospital in an ambulance, and a late night, where everyone came to visit.  Molly came too, though she stayed in the car with her Papa, because she was still so little, and hospitals can be a dangerous place for a little girl with a brand new immune system.  At the hospital we reminisced, and my grandmother said things like, “Sandra I don’t think I will be able to go to the dump with you tomorrow,” (as they had planned), “we’ll have to go on Saturday.”   For the next few days everyone came to see her in the hospital.  The same as they had when she had her hip replacements in the years before.  And then, on the third day, after an evening of telling jokes (“repaint, repaint, and thin no more!), she passed away.   

Sara, my mother, and I visited our god-mother Marcey recently. Marcey has always had a fondness for butterflies, and when we were there, she showed us the many things that my grandmother had designated for her to receive.  Things like a butterfly teapot, dish towels, a creamer (which my grandmother collected), a cup and saucer.  Later, an elephant arrived for me.  Small, and filled with beans, a child’s toy, unlike any she had ever given me before—an elephant for Molly.  It was soft, and traditional: a simple grey elephant.  With enormous, bright pink, ears.

And though ruffled and cow-printed, or once again elephant-shaped, these are the two last things my grandmother picked for me (or for Molly, who is of me).  And I know it isn’t in the things-- it’s never in the things, but it’s in the moment, her thinking of Molly and me, the way I thought of her when I pulled a bouquet of flowers for her at the supermarket, always choosing the brightest colors, because those were always the ones she seemed to like the best.

Hodge Podge

Time to post these so I clean out the photo gallery on my cell phone!

On the ferry recently

Snooziling

She don't need no stinkin' pacifier!  Molly is quite content to suck on her hands.

Snug as a bug in her bunny bouncer

Snuggling on the ferry.  Molly loves kisses they make her giggle.

I swear she is laughing in this video.

Out to Lunch

Molly and I met Ryan for lunch in Silverdale recently.  We hit it around 2 pm.  And were the only people in the restaurant. Luckily.

We arrived. Molly was very happy to watch the traffic roll by outside.  Things were good.

Lunch came. She was starting to get a little wiggly (hence the blurry pictures)

Thank God we were the only people in there. At this point we were just walking laps. Luckily they had some fans to keep Molly visually entertained (as you can see from this photo).

So much for a relaxing lunch with her papa.

Happy Fourth!

Hope you are all having fun.

We've been busy in the yard and cleaning up the rental property.

My folks are headed over to help with a few small projects, watch the Sounders game, then headed down to the waterfront to a friend's to watch the fireworks.

Presidents of the United State of America (Molly's First Concert)

Remember these guys?


They were popular when I was in high school.

The lead singer has transformed and is now: Casper Babypants.

Presidents of the United States of America:

Casper (with Carson and Kai:)

That's right. Molly went to her first concert today: Mr. Babypants himself.
We were joined my Memaw, Sara, Jason and Dani, Meggy, Carson and Mason, and Krissy and Kai.
What a wonderful afternoon. It started grey, but by the end of the show Molly was rocking out in her diaper cover.

Here is one of our favorite Casper songs:

Pants...

This is Dani wearing another pair of pants I made.  How cute is my lil niece?

Time to start making new pants for all the little beans I guess... since Ethan, Dani and Molly are all growing like weeds!

Love it/Hate It

We went camping this weekend.  Camping earned a "love it" rating from Molly.  More pics from that soon.

In other news...

Exersaucer? Love it.  I feel like Molly looks a lot like Ryan in this pic.

Tummy time? Still hate it.

You can't quite see it, but she is wearing her new purple BumGenius cloth diaper in this pic. We switched to cloth today.  Hoping it works out... we'll see!