Beautiful weekend

It's suddenly summer and we're having a great time.

My mom was visiting this week. Friday we took Molly to Rockport and Gloucester for her first visit to the rocky shore. She was mildly interested in the crashing waves, but mostly she was excited about chasing little dogs around Bearskin Neck and picking up rocks.

The harbor in Rockport.

Looking at the famous Motif No. 1 (that red barn thing that everybody paints).

Picking up rocks on the shore in Gloucester.

... with Grandma's help.

This weekend we've been spending a lot of time in the backyard.

Molly in her new sun hat and a hand-made dress.

Getting friendly with the garden gnome.

Digging with Daddy (his photo).

Running over to see what Mommy's doing to the compost pile (also a Daddy photo).

Relaxing with Daddy in the shade.

Ba-la-la

The other day I was putting fruit in a bowl and Molly looked right at the bunch of bananas and said "ba-la-la" and grinned. It was the first time I heard her say a word for an object without being prompted. I got very excited and she got very excited. I can't get her to repeat it, though. Still it was pretty cool.

We had a crazy and fun trip to see family for Easter. It took us the entire week to recover from sleep deprivation, and I don't think Jim's caught up yet. Molly's second top front tooth is very close to poking through, so there has been a lot of crying and weird sleep this week. Indeed, she's screaming right now. I'd better go. I'll post photos soon -- we're slow on photos lately because my computer is maxed out on space and I can't get the photos off the camera without moving a lot of stuff around.

New tooth

Molly finally cut a new tooth today -- one of her top front teeth -- and it looks like one or two other teeth on top may be ready to break through soon. Finally!! It's been about 5 months since she cut her first and only two teeth. Now she might actually be able to bite food (and people -- yow!) We're looking forward to showing off her new tooth at Easter. See y'all soon!!!

Naps

Molly is asleep right now on our bed. She has been napping beautifully these past few days, as long as she's put down anywhere except her crib. What's up with that? How does she know when she's sound asleep in my arms that I'm standing in front of her crib? It's so weird that she freaks out if I try to lower her in, but I can just walk across the hall into our bedroom and put her on our bed and she doesn't even open her eyes, let alone protest (knock on wood).

Her naps have gotten nice and long, sometimes 2 hours, which is good or bad depending on where she is when she falls asleep. If it's in our bed, that's fantastic. If it's on my lap in the rocking chair and I don't have a book to read (as it was Sunday), not so great. The most common place she's been napping is in the car in the garage. She typically falls asleep around noon or 1, just as we're coming home from morning errands. If it's a nice day, I can open the car door and the door to the house, then I can go in and sew in the basement while she sleeps. If it's too cold, as it was Saturday, somebody (in this case, her daddy) has to sit in the car for two hours with her. Not so great. Yesterday Jim was home sick from work so I put her in bed with him for her nap -- super cute!

Mostly, we're just glad she's getting a lot of sleep. It makes her really fun when she's awake. She gets into crazy moods in the evening lately where she runs around, hops around, rolls around, dances and makes all sorts of noise. We call it puppy crazies.

Molly has been very affectionate lately -- lots of kisses and snuggles, even for the neighbor moms and other kids at play group, but especially for Mommy and Daddy and her stuffed animals. She feeds little bits of food to her stuffed animals. Yesterday, about the time she was getting sleepy for her nap, she got a newspaper out of the recycle bin and put it on the kitchen floor, put a baby doll on top of it, then put a bib over her like a blanket. She put her baby to bed! The other day, she dragged Jim into her bedroom and proceeded to get out all the big teddy bears, feed them food and then one by one put their noses in her mouth (which he's pretty sure was kisses).

I think she's getting a little closer to talking, too. She's certainly not at the level of the 17-month-old girl we met last week who was saying "flower" and all sorts of other words, but she's starting. Once in a while she'll mimic a word one of us says, and Jim and I stare at each other as if to say, "Did you hear that, too?" The first time that happened she said the word "bread." I've heard her make attempts at "cantaloupe" (mostly the AH-LOH sound, but with all the syllables) and "pasta." The other night at dinner Jim said something to her about how she was using a strap on her booster seat as if it was a ripcord and she was trying to eject. She said the word "eject" clear as day. That time she even repeated it a couple times. She has yet to continue using any of these words, so I think she's mimicking the sounds rather than understanding what they mean. In the meantime, we've been coming up with signs for specific foods. Ever since she learned the sign for apple (holding out her fist), she's become obsessed with apples. Apple slices have replaced Cheerios as the one food that will keep her occupied and quiet in the car or grocery store. She sometimes eats two or three entire apples in a day.

OK, off to check on the sleeper. The disadvantage of napping her in our bed is there's no railing so I feel the need to watch her while she sleeps. Even if I did trust her not to roll out, the monitor isn't set up in there so I can't go far. Still, a sleeping baby is infinitely better than a cranky baby who refuses to sleep.

Getting out of the house

For a few miraculous days last week we were all healthy and ready for adventure.

On Wednesday, Molly and I rode with two other neighborhood moms and their kids to Drumlin Farm in Lincoln to see the new lambs. After all my complaining for the past several weeks about how difficult it is to get Molly to nap, she fell asleep in the van just as we pulled into the parking lot. I got her out and put her in the stroller, fully expecting her to wake up. She didn't!


She stayed asleep as I rolled her along the bumpy dirt farm roads. She slept through the cow exhibit, the deer exhibit (and a long walk through mud to get there), a bathroom stop and most of the birds and owls. It was way colder than the weather forecast predicted -- about 40, cloudy and windy instead of 60 and sunny -- so she wasn't dressed for the weather and everything was outdoors or unheated barns.

I'll spare you the series of pictures I took of Molly asleep in front of all the fences with animals in the background. It was so Molly to do something so crazy and out of routine.

Eventually she did wake up to the sound of a pheasant screeching. How surreal must that have been? Then we went into this dim corridor underground to try to see the fox and woodchucks. She was pretty disoriented. Around the time we got to the baby goats and lambs under heat lamps in a barn she seemed to perk up and after that we had a great time.


She got to practice her new "chicken" sign in the poultry barn. She did the "horse" sign for the goats and sheep until we saw a big horse/mule animal (never did figure out what that was), then the sheep were dogs. I tried to make up some new signs on the fly but nothing stuck. She didn't care. She's too little to understand much of it anyway. The highlight for her was at the end in the little vegetable garden, where there's a big raised bed full of dirt and garden tools for the kids to play in. Molly apparently popped a handful of dirt in her mouth when I had my back turned. It's always best to hear about moments like these from another mother who witnessed the event -- much more embarrassing that way. :) I just shrugged. It's not her first mouthful of dirt and certainly won't be the last.

Anyway, that was our first adventure. Our second was Friday morning when we were getting in the car to go shopping and my neighbor invited us to a free town-wide play group at the elementary school instead. It was a nice little group, but I assumed Molly would just play with the toys while the older toddlers did whatever structured activities they had planned. Molly disagreed. After some serious play with a doll house (she put a tiny baby in a tiny high chair -- could she really understand that sort of thing?), she got interested in the group when everybody sat in the circle to sing songs. I think the room full of singing people surprised her. Then everybody washed their hands and the women set out a little pile of goldfish crackers at the long table for each kid. Molly sat down at a chair with all the other kids to eat. I thought for sure she would be up and eating of the floor, off other kids' napkins, standing on the chair, pushing chairs around, etc. but she didn't. She just sat there like a big kid for what seemed like forever. The group leader read a book while the kids ate, and Molly sat there and watched her from beginning to end. It made me feel all freaked out to see her acting so grown up. She stayed at the table through the craft project coloring with oil pastels. Whatever. She's still my little baby.

Toddlers rock!

I've been having so much fun with Molly lately. What a great age this is! The sleep problems stink, but we're surviving. It's all part of this little personality that's developing -- it's so amazing to watch.

She's learning so fast now. Last night Jim made up a sign for "chicken," showed it to her once and now she has a sign for chicken. She has recently discovered that some of the people in the pictures on the walls are Mama and Dada, and she likes to point and say our names. She copies little things she notices, like the other day when Jim pointed out that she was putting a toy plate upside down over another plate, which is a weird thing I've been doing to cover food in the fridge to save on plastic wrap.

She collapses into shrieking fits with no warning, and then gets all kissy and happy just as abruptly.

Last night I gave her some diced up pickles. She ate a few, then got off her chair and pointd to the refrigerator. I opened it and picked her up. She pointed to the mustard, so I gave her a squirt on her plate. She mixed it with her pickles and chowed down.

She's so messy at meals that the clean-up would be best done with a hose. Last night she left noodles all over the floor, her chair, her shirt, her hands, my shirt and stuck to the bottom of her socks.

She has two special stuffed animals, Little Dog and Bunny, who she requests and then snuggles whenever it's time to nurse or go to sleep. Sometimes she also snuggles with dolls, her monkey, a big plastic spoon, a bath sponge and assorted measuring spoons.

She gives lots of kisses and hugs. Sometimes she even kisses herself.



She's also developing some signature dance moves. It's best when she dances to Guns N Roses or to me singing, but this is pretty good, too.



And finally, yesterday afternoon the light through the prism in her window created rainbows all over the walls and ceiling. We spent a long time playing with the rainbows. What could be better than that?