Swimming with the Rozebooms

Yesterday Molly and I drove to Grinnell and met Karoline and Lulu for a picnic in the park and an afternoon of swimming. It was really fun to see them and it was an awesome pool. Molly is still a little too young to be much fun for Lulu to play with, but soon they will be best friends! Thanks Rozebooms for making the trip.

First ponytail and "I'm Gonna Get You"

Tonight Molly had her first pony tail. She looked so cute and grown up. Here are some pictures from our post dinner/bath playtime.
She makes the funniest faces!

One of Molly's current favorite games is "I'm Gonna Get You." She crawls away, we chase her and tickle her and then repeat (a lot). Mike caught it on film last weekend, quite a feat considering he was the chaser and the videographer!

The McGills go to Dallas

Here are a few pictures from our trip to Dallas to visit Aunt Annie and Uncle David and Aunt Laura and Uncle Hanna. It was a great trip, despite the explosive diarrhea (sorry DFW). Thanks Shanks and Saliyeh's!

Still cute

Okay, we're back from the Land of Technical Difficulties (Thanks to Aunt Annie). Here are some recent pictures of Molly. We have been really busy and I have to admit I have been terrible about bringing the camera with me when we go places, so most of these pictures are from when we are playing at home. We had a great trip to Grandview for the 4th of July, a wonderful tradition that was so fun to start with Molly this year.

I am amazed at how much Molly seems to be learning and changing these days, I'll post more details about this later in the month when she turns one, WHAT!?!

And yes, in case you were worried or wondering she is still cute.

Riding in the car, just being cool.

She loves to stand at the back door and watch Harvey outside.

You can't really tell in this picture, but Stephanie is holding a frog. I was using the bathroom in the Grandview Park shelter and this frog hopped across my feet. It scared me to death and I sent Stephanie in to get it and let it go outside to save other women the same panic. Stephanie was very brave as long as she had it wrapped in a napkin. Such a lady!

Mommy and Molly watching the parade. She especially loved the L & M marching band and the Shriner's.

I think she looks like a teenager in this picture, telling me to stop taking her picture. Scary!

Reading books, she's slowly starting to enjoy actually looking at the books and being read to instead of just chewing on them.

Silly girl!

She's holding her toy phone, just starting to understand what she is supposed to do with it.

"Um guys, a little help here?"

No caption needed. Just cute!

We've been spending lots of time at the Splash Pad lately and she loves it so I promise to take the camera next time we go and post those pictures.

we're still here...

We haven't disappeared, we are just currently without a camera.

We've had lots of fun since I last posted, including a trip to Dallas to visit Aunt Annie and Uncle David, our neighborhood Block Party and Molly's first trip to the local splash pad (she LOVED it)!

As soon the camera situation is remedied I'll post.

Memorial Day

This weekend we traveled to Chicago to visit Mike's sister Jessica's family. The star of the weekend was Baby Luke born on Mother's Day, although you could almost forget he was around - he is such a good and easy baby. He's beautiful and so tiny and cuddly. Mike's other sister Melissa went with us and it was a fun family weekend. I tried to get lots of pictures of the cousins together, but it was next to impossible to get them all looking at the camera at the same time. Thanks Mead's for a fun trip.

9 month update (3 days before she turns 10 months)

Warning: this is long and probably boring (unless you are a grandparent), but I haven't been good about writing in her baby book so I want to have a record of this information. Feel free to skip the update and scroll to the bottom for a new video.

At her 9 month check up a few weeks ago Molly was:
20 pounds, 14 ounces (83%)
28 inches long (67%)

She started crawling on April 17 (6 days before she turned 9 months) and we quickly learned how un-childproof our house is. She is really fast and loves to be on the go. She pulls herself up and will walk around furniture, but hasn't yet taken any steps on her own. It is fun to watch her get around, but requires much more supervision. And she hates her exersaucer now because she wants to be moving!

Eating has been going much better lately. We struggled from 4-8 months trying to get her to eat baby food and she was just never really interested. Now she gets "real" food and is much more interested in eating. Her absolute favorite food is cottage cheese and we can get her to try anything as long as there is a little cottage cheese on the spoon. Other favorites include yogurt, sweet potatoes, avocado, bananas, chickpeas, and black beans. Dislikes include most fruits (except bananas and cantaloupe which gave her diaper rash). She has 8 teeth (4 on top, 4 on the bottom) that help her to chew all that food. The bottom ones didn't really bother her, but all 4 of the top ones came in the same week and that was pretty rough (on all 3 of us!).

Her eating schedule:
6 ounces of formula when she wakes up
Breakfast around 8:30
5 ounce bottle at 10:30
Lunch at 12:00
5 ounce bottle at 2:30
Dinner at 5:30
6 ounce bottle before bed

Molly is a good sleeper. She usually goes to bed between 7:30 and 8:00 and wakes up between 6:00 and 7:00. She hardly ever wakes up in the night and when she does she can usually be soothed back to sleep pretty easily. Her naps are pretty inconsistent, especially during the week at daycare. She usually only sleeps for about 20-30 minutes in the morning and about 45 minutes in the afternoon (at different times everyday). On the weekends she usually naps quite a bit longer. This has been the case ever since she got the tubes in her ears. I think she hears a lot better now and therefore has a harder time sleeping at daycare.

She is still completely infatuated by Harvey. We are really working on being gentle with her because she gets excited and will pop him pretty hard. He snaps in her direction, but has never bitten her. The problem is that his snapping doesn't scare her, it makes her laugh so she gets even more excited. He is equally infatuated with her, especially now that she frequently drops bits of food on the floor (we have learned that he also loves cottage cheese), although he enjoys her more from a distance.

Favorite activities include going for walks in her stroller, playing at her activity table, baths, going on any outing where people smile at her, looking at picture (especially ones of her Aunt Annie) and sticking her fingers in the various orifices of her Mommy and Daddy's faces.

She continues to get cuter by the minute and we feel so lucky to be her parents. I'll close with a video of her working on her newest trick: waving (please don't mind the messy kitchen counter behind her - we are working on our audition tape for Hoarders :-) She hasn't completely gotten the hang of it, but is trying.