'Give me space'

We've reached another milestone. Yesterday Molly kicked me out of the bathroom and told me she needed space. Hurray! It's a very sudden switch from needing me to run to the bathroom with her every time she goes, just to sit on the rim of the tub and hang out for companionship. We're still nowhere near ready to take her out of the house without a diaper but at least now I can kick back once in a while and let her handle the entire potty moment herself. That's a first!

Molly can be very sudden about that sort of thing, I've noticed. Sometime before Christmas she asked to take a shower with me one morning. Now she doesn't take baths. Period. She takes showers. She doesn't even want me to hold her under the water anymore. She stands on her own, asks for the soap, washes and rinses herself and then plays with the water on the walls and pushes it down the drain until I turn off the water. I get involved only to torture her with shampoo. She doesn't even want to towel off right away these days -- she tells me the shower stall is her house and there are fishes in there. It makes me cold just to look at her.

Speaking of cold, we got out of the habit of playing outside because it was bitter cold for weeks on end. Now that it's been back to the 30s and 40s I'm trying (sort of) to get outside a little bit more. Here's Molly in her snow gear.
And here she is having a delicious, snowy snack.

This snow came from the edge of the driveway. That's the cleanest, right?

'Show Daddy'

Molly has become quite concerned about her daddy's ability to find his way around the house. Any time he heads toward the bathroom she says, "Oh, show Daddy," and runs ahead to point the way. She cries and nearly melts down if he tells her, "Thank you but I can find it myself."

This morning she was suddenly worried that he won't be able to figure out which shampoo and soap are his and has told him several times, "No use Molly soap and shampoo."

The other day as he was leaving to get in his truck she told him, very earnestly, that he would need to turn the key. Don't forget.

She is becoming an excellent little micro-manager.

She's also been creating some interesting art work. She seems to be going through (continuing to go through?) an abstract period.

Here's the artist at work:
And here's a painting. I asked her to tell me about it and she said it's a picture of Oma and Grandpa.

Molly's bakery

Daddy says he's going to make a pizza dough. Molly says, "YAY!!!!"


"I can knead it. I can knead it."



And then...

"I'm cleaning up Daddy's mess."