happy birthdays all around!

today was a very special day. it was Grandma May's birthday (happy birthday grandma!) and Molly turned 6 months old! i absolutely can't believe she's been in our lives for 6 months - it seems so much shorter than that, and yet it feels like she's been with us forever. she's the absolute best!

her big day started with a trip to her doctor's office for her 6 month checkup (i know, not the best way to celebrate). she passed with flying colors! she is now over 19lbs, and is 27 3/4 inches long (off the charts!). she is also the most prolific creator of drool her doctor has ever seen. more teeth must be on the way. while waiting for her immunizations, Molly distracted herself by chewing on my badge for work - yum, delicious!

after the the doctor, we gave grandma a call to wish her happy birthday and then dropped me off at work. Molly and dad had a lovely day, with trips to the library and much playing around the house.

when i got home, Harley and Molly had some smoochy time (with actual kisses from Harley), and everyone came away with all their hair still intact (i'm referring to Harley here...when little miss gets her hands on something, she doesn't let go, so we do our very best to keep Harley hair out of her grip).

then we sat around giving each other raspberries (the spitty kind, not the fruit) and laughing at how funny it all was!

after that came bath and bedtime, and our big girl is currently snoozing away after her big day...probably dreaming of milk, and getting her hands on that fluffy, fluffy dog! tomorrow's great adventure...bananas!!

love to everyone!

finally, the video!

finally got the video up of molly's first eating adventure last Friday. sorry about my giant hand being in the way of all the action, but you get the idea. can't wait to try bananas and sweet potato - YUM!

solid food, part deux

so we had more yummy rice cereal today...and today she went gangbusters! we took Jen F.'s advice and gave her one spoon to play with as we fed her with the other. that worked great! though sometimes she ended up with both spoons! :)

and it was another pretty day here in P-town so we got outside. after a bath, molly, harley and i enjoyed the sun, while dad went to rehearsal for his upcoming play. molly spent time playing in her "pack and play" (thanks to her auntie Erin), chewing on her toys, and practicing her raspberries (one of her newest tricks). harley and i shared baby carrots and looked at all the weeds and tried to figure out how on earth we are going to tackle this giant yard. but it was too nice of a day to really let that bring us down.

hope wherever you are, you're enjoying the day as well!

...and later that day

yesterday, after the food extravaganza, molly, zero and i went down the street to the library and celebrated Dia de los Ninos (day of the children). we got our picture taken with Clifford the Big Red Dog, ate fruit and cake, watched beautiful folk dancing, and generally had a wonderful time. but before we left the house we took a few shots of lovely miss molly in her pretty dress, including the one above where you can actually see her two bottom teeth if you look close enough...she was laughing at her dad dancing around the living room. the day was topped off when we all found the diaper bag i had lost the week before - sheesh, where is my brain?!

solid food!

yep, she did it, she had solid food today! well, very liquid-y rice cereal to be more precise. earlier this week i bought fancy-dancy, whole grain, organic, non-processed rice cereal (earth's best) and our good friend Karen gave us a lovely silver spoon! so this morning we got everything set up for her, and we even put her in the fancy dress her great-grandpa and auntie Sharon gave her for the special occasion. she did AWESOME!

we made up a couple teaspoons of food, and though she probably only ate one (or maybe even less), she did great with it. unfortunately, the beautiful spoon was just a bit too big and metal-y for her - she really likes to chomp down - so for now we switched over to a baby spoon with soft plastic on the spoon-end.

at first she made these great "what the heck is this stuff?!" faces...then she moved on to, "hey, this ain't too shabby!"...and then she was sucking it off the spoon and motioning for more! she especially loved the spoon, and sometimes it was hard to get it back from her so that we could load it up with more chow.

all in all, i think it was a great success, and we're looking forward to more rice cereal tomorrow! right now, she's taking a little snooze after her big morning. we have a quick video of her first meal, but i'm having some trouble downloading it. hopefully we can get it up soon! love to everyone!!

sitting at the table!

we are coming up on 6 months, and molly is starting to sit pretty good, plus she has 2 bottom teeth and LOVES to watch us eat...so we figure next weekend we'll try giving her some rice cereal. how exciting is that?! in preparation, our friend Martha gave us a little seat that attaches to our chairs and makes a high-chair for molly-moo. it works really well, and you can see molly seems to like it! she sat at the table in her own chair last night while we had dinner. in the past she's either been in her bouncy chair on the floor (with harley thinking she has to compete with molly on begging for food), or sitting in our laps (meaning a whole lot of food being dropped in her hair). so last night was a real step up!

other than that we had a really nice weekend, which in a way started on thursday because i got to work at the St. Johns branch library which is 3 blocks (or a 5 minute walk) from our house. how cool is that?! on friday we visited our friends Martha, Craig, Sam and Maria. Sam and Maria, via their parents, have given molly many of the fine clothes you see her in, not to mention her car seat and now her high chair. we are forever indebted to them and totally appreciate them making us all look like we actually have style!

on saturday we hung out with our friends Monica and Mobius. Monica, her husband Greg and their son Mobius were in birth class with us, though both molly and Mobius were obviously on the inside for that. Mobius is a bit younger than molly, but outweighs her by 3 pounds - he's a big boy! but molly is catching up, he used to outweigh her by 5 pounds!

here's wishing everyone a good week - bon appetite!

the sun!

so the sun came out today AND it was warm - these two things have not happened simultaneously for...well...a long, long time it seems. so we all got outside - hooray! and we got some fabulous shots of miss molly doing her thing. she was so cute, and seemed very happy to be outside- as did her "big sis" harley. molly got to wear the cute dress her Grandma Mike gave her, and her adorably chubby legs got to see the sun for the first time! so here are a couple pictures for you, in celebration of our lovely day, and a quick little video.

our hero zero

i like to think that at some point zero and i had a fairly equal relationship when it came to taking care of each other. we would help one another through tough times, had each other's backs, and when one of us was sick, the other would care for them. but once i got pregnant all bets were off, and zero spent the next 30+ weeks taking care of me. this was on top of working full time and being in a couple plays. he made sure i ate (even if all i did was throw it right back up), made sure i was keeping hydrated, made sure i had enough pillows, and most importantly made me believe i was actually going to survive. he saved me really, i couldn't have done it without him.

and he's still doing it. only now he's taking care of two of us. he spends his days caring for molly, playing with her, keeping her happy, clean, well-fed and rested. he keeps the house in order and always has dinner for me when i get home from work. and then, because i can not bear to be away from molly once i'm home, he continues to work on the dishes, taking out the trash, washing bottles, picking up. and on top of it all, he's in a play - so he somehow has to find time to work his lines and go to rehearsals. i truly don't know how he does it...but he does.

i will never be able to put into words how thankful i am to him, how much i love him, how happy he makes me, how much better he makes my life, how proud i am of him, and what a fantastic father he is to our daughter. i can say thank you, and know that because of his love and commitment and devotion to molly, she is going to grow up a very happy and healthy little girl...and i guess, there is no better thanks than that.

i love you zero.

ps- molly actually has both her two bottom teeth coming in - wahoo! ;)

teeth!...for real this time!

so a while back you may remember a posting where i mentioned feeling a tooth come in...well the truth of the matter is that the very next day i didn't feel it anymore. but last night, when little miss chomped down on my knuckle - as she is prone to do - i really felt a tooth. just to make sure, i peeked inside her mouth and sure enough, there is a little tooth poking out of the gums (boy does that look uncomfortable!). her first tooth is coming in on the bottom, front, just to the left.

it's weird, i'm super excited about this new development, but kinda sad too. it means she's leaving some of her baby-self behind. she'll be eating soon and before we know it she'll be asking us for the car keys. people say it all goes too fast, but it's impossible to describe how fast - it's a blur. a heartbreakingly wonderful blur.

it's hard being a baby...

it's been kind of a tough weekend. we had a couple immunizations on friday, and they took their tole on miss molly. she has been feverish and a bit unhappy ever since - and you can't really blame her! those mean ol' shots in her perfect, pudgy thighs - it's an outrage! zero keeps reminding me that it's much better than her getting polio or meningitis. hopefully she'll feel better today.

but even with feeling super ucky, she managed to have many molly moments and make us smile often...

...like watching her play in her new saucer for the first time (pictured above) - so many options to play with! what's a girl to do!?! (by the way, we got that off of craigslist for $10, score!)

...and the new game we like to play on the changing table - peek-a-boo with the CLEAN diaper - that really cracks us all up

...or when we dance along to a duet performed by "toofy the shark" and "meow meow the cat" to Marc Ribot's "Las Lomas de New Jersey" (fyi, the cat does the translating).

other fun things include trying to grab mom's water glass whenever she takes a drink, making rattles, rattle and chimes, chime (preferably without also whacking oneself in the face), watching dad work on his new shed, screaming at the top of our lungs just to see how loud we can be, and having little conversations with all the many friends - though sometimes those conversations can get pretty heated.

speaking of conversations, at the bottom is a quick little video of her with her squirrel/chipmunk...she's smiling and sort of talking to him (when the camera comes out she tends to tone it down a bit). i sound like a complete dork, but she's pretty darn cute!

and here is a picture of molly with her dad. look at those blue eyes! don't i have the most beautiful family?
we hope everyone else out there is happy and shot-free!