visit from grandma!

Grandma Mike has been here the past few days and we have had such a wonderful time! we had a lovely Thanksgiving (though molly was not at all interested in the food, except for using it as a facial/hair cream - see above), we went for lots of walks, saw the Festival of Lights at the Grotto, and Grandma and mom got to see Daniel Craig in Quantum of Solace (hubba, hubba!).

on Friday, we drove down to Eugene and visited our friends Paige, Skylar, Terri and Jim. i've know Terri since i was 12, and i've known Jim for at least 15 years now. Paige and Skylar are their twin daughters who are only a few months older than molly, and it was a blast to see all the girls play together. they enjoyed a lovely mac & cheese dinner, played with toys, got many kisses from the pooch (Porter) and started in on what i hope will become a life-long friendship!
.

so the past week has been awesome! and as for molly, she went from tentative steps to all out speed walking during the time Mike was here! here's a little video with a sneak peak.

now i've got to go get my rest, cuz i have a feeling i've got a lot of running around in my future!

a walkin', talkin', cleanin' machine!

so, molly walks now. yep! it's true. one minute you have a baby, the next you've got a little girl. it happens like that, almost literally overnight. in fact we can always tell when the next major physical and/or mental development is happening based on the amount of sleep we get the night before. no sleep means something big is about to happen. in this case, walking around the house as if she's been doing it her whole life. she really is spectacular!

so her grandma Mike is here to help us celebrate Thanksgiving, which is totally awesome. we decided we should do at least a little vacuuming and dusting before she got here, so i got out the tools of the trade. molly is fascinated with the vacuum. she doesn't seem to be afraid of it - though perhaps a bit anxious - and when it comes out she talks to it rather loudly. and when i turn it on she lets out a shout (but with a big smile on her face). this time however, what she really found exciting was the duster. she picked up on how we use very quickly and became my little helper, following along behind me, dusting. sure, she mostly dusted the floor (and under the couch), but i sincerely appreciated the help! here are some shots of her with the duster...
she does it with such flair, don't you think?! not to mention the outfit with one pant leg up (a la L.L. Cool J) and mismatched socks (i'm sure all other parents reading this will understand that you simply end up with one of each sock at some point, so in our case, she goes mismatched a lot of the time!).

Grandma Mike is here now (i'm sure admiring the well-dusted floor) and we plan on having a lovely time hanging out, making food, eating food, and hanging out some more. and Mike and i are going to steal away at some point and see the new James Bond movie - oh yeah! :)

a very, very happy Thanksgiving to everyone. we are certainly thankful for all your love, friendship, and support!

gobble, gobble!

nicknames

a list of the top 10 nicknames we have bestowed upon miss molly in the past year:

1. molly-moo (i don't know where the moo-stuff came from, it was just a natural extension for molly i suppose)
2. the moo
3. the mooser
4. tiny hiney (that one is care of Grandma May)
5. milky bandit (this started one night when she was on her changing table and had a burpy cloth draped over her mouth and nose, much like a bandit)
6. diapy bandit
7. burpy bandit
8. shrimp scampy (it started as scamp, and morphed into shrimp scampy)
9. little pterodactyl (she makes a sound that is just like the movie version of the pterodactyl)
10. squisher-tush (again with the butt references, but it's oh, so cute!)

and now for some fun pix of the moo, tiny-hiney, bandit, scamp pterodactly...a couple of her in her new cart that grandma nancy got her for her bday. grandma got it of course, to help her with walking. she could put her toys in it and push it around. instead she loves to sit it in, or even more, to stand up and have us to push her around. though just the other night she put her baby doll in and pushed her baby doll around, yay! then a shot of her with her finger up her nose, a common pose around the May/Feeney front right now (she's gonna kill me for posting that picture someday). and a shot of her playing with a dog toy (seriously, it's a dog toy, we did not give molly a bottle of beer to play with) - but the shot is too cute. and then some pictures of her funny faces that our friend Scott took. hey, all you parents out there, Scott takes some awesome pictures, let me know if you want his digits!


oh, and for those who want an update on molly-walking-news...we are up to FOUR STEPS! oh yeah, baby! love to all!

to molly

i think the thing that gets me most, is that sometimes, it's still hard to believe you are real. you've been in our lives for a little over a year now (post womb that is) and i kiss your perfect little pudgy cheeks, and i hold your perfect little soft hands, and i tickle your perfect little tiny toes, and i listen to your beautiful contagious laugh, and fall under the spell of your wonderful smile, i feel your tears when you cry, i smell your hair as you drift to sleep, i watch as you learn and grow and become an absolutely amazing human being...and really, sometimes, i just can't believe you are real. how did we get so lucky? you being in our life is the single greatest joy your father and i have ever known. and we've known joy, we've certainly known love, but the drop-you-to-your-knees, 100% complete and total in-love that we are with you, well that was unimaginable. the moment you came into this world of ours, and we laid eyes on you, we were filled with more love than we ever thought possible. and it is totally awesome! when you came home from the hospital you were such a tiny, squishy, sleepy little thing. only waking to nurse, take a few looks around, and then fall back to sleep. we were in awe of your every noise, of your every move. we cuddled you and gave you comfort when you were sad. we played with you and read you books and sang you songs. now, you are our tiny explorer, on the move almost all the time, near to walking, starting to talk, and so very much fun to be around. you read your own books now, and clap along to the songs. and now, you give comfort to us when we are sad, with hugs and kisses. my heart feels like it is going to explode when you reach your tiny arms around my neck and give me a squeeze. nothing in the world can hurt me as long as i have molly hugs to look forward to. you're a year old now, and i really wanted to tell you what you have given your father and i, something we never could have imagined, but it's near impossible to put into words. i do want you to know that our love for you knows no limits, and we are so incredibly proud of you and are so excited about the world of possibilities that await you. and we are here for you, whenever you need us, every step of the way. you are our child, our beautiful daughter, and we love you.

molly's big birthday week!

so it's official, i am the mother of a one-year-old. how on earth did that happen?! ya know, let me re-phrase that...i am the extremely proud mom of the best one-year-old ever! and we've spent the past week plus celebrating her complete awesomeness!

it started with a fun trip to the coast with our good friends Shani, Sarah and Scott (we must have a thing for "s" names). mona and harley (the pooches) went as well. molly's been to the beach a couple times now, but this was the first time we just turned her lose on the sand and let her crawl around. she loved it. especially getting to watch the pooches run and frolic. here are some shots of her on the beach - what a beauty!

then grandma May came to town to help us celebrate! and on the big day, october 29, we had an all day party fest! we started off the day with molly saying her first word. drum roll please...it was "daddy". yep, daddy. and no, i'm not jealous (or at least, not too jealous). she's been saying da-da-da for some time, along with ma-ma-ma. but on the morning of her bday she actually pointed to Zero and said "daddy". i was floored. it was so cool. what a way to start the big day! we then had pancakes for breakfast and opened presents. actually, we off and on opened presents the entire day (and for all the days since, she's a bit spoiled doncha know) and here is a little slide show of some of that. her favorite present i have to say is her baby doll from her auntie shani, though she's been quite fond of everything she received. she is a very lucky girl!

around 3:00 some of her little neighborhood friends came by and she had a little party. there were cheerios and cheese and much playing with toys and crawling around on the floor. it was pretty wild lemme tell ya!


after that, Shani, Sarah and Scott came by for dinner and cake. molly had her favorite for dinner (macaroni and cheese with peas) and i made her a banana cake and covered it with whip cream. here's the slide show of her cake experience, which ended up where all good 1st year bday party cake experiences should, with her plunging face first into the cakey goodness!

we had one day of rest and then it was time for halloween. we carved a pumpkin that morning and hung up our spider web, put out our ghost pirate ship and tombstone, and waited for trick-or-treaters to arrive. we got a costume for molly. she couldn't tell us what she wanted to be this year, so i went with the thing she seems to love most in this world, dogs! she wasn't fond of the costume, but boy was she cute!


also on Halloween we went to our first Tiny Tots storytime at the library. this is a big deal because you have to be 1 to go to Tiny Tots! after a couple months of finally being the seasoned veteran at Book Babies storytime (0-1 years old), and really running the show, Molly seemed to be a bit more hesitant at Tiny Tots. and who could blame her with all the older kids walking around. but i'm sure it won't be long till she's running that show too! she's not a shy girl, that molly...she's a real go-getter!

speaking of firsts, the following day Molly went to swim lessons and went under water for the very first time! she handled it very graciously. though right as i was about to dunk her under, she gave me this look like, "i know what you're up to mom, and i'm not sure how i feel about it". but after she came back up, she just looked around at the other kids, some of whom were freaking out, and seemed to say, "huh, that wasn't so bad". and she continued on with her water frolicking fun!

that night we went to her aunti Shani's birthday party and had tacos and cheesecake and played with Shani's family's dog, Lucy - you'll remember her from a previous post. I was thinking that at some point in the future (maybe when molly turns 21 and Shani turns, oh wait, i shouldn't give away her age)...well, i was thinking they could have a big joint bday party blowout! fun, fun, fun!!

and the party keeps on coming. she just got two great CDs from her auntie/uncle/cousins Beth, Sean, Sinead and Declan and we danced along to those! let's see how long we can keep this bday extravaganza a-rollin'!

catching up...again

so, it's catch up time again...i'm well over a couple weeks behind in everything.

my grandfather emailed me today and asked what was new on the blog, and it reminded me that i never posted a pic of when he and his girlfriend Sharon drove all the way up here from Cali to visit us! this was about a month ago and we had a truly fantastic time. molly loved hanging out with her great-grandpa and Sharon taught her how to "give me five"! we went for walks, went out for dinner, went to the beautiful Chinese Gardens (zero and i hadn't been there in years - if you live in Portland, go now!). Papa and Sharon were kind about my attempts at cooking (they are both very good cooks), they saw our house for the first time, and they raved about zero's new play. unfortunately, my camera was on the fritz, as was Papa's, so the only pictures we got were taken with zero's camera phone, so not the best quality...we are so happy they came!

so the rest of this post is mostly going to be words (refer above to "camera on the fritz")...but exciting words! for instance, molly is now standing on her own! yep, you heard it hear first, she stands on her own. no assistance needed from household furnishings, mom, dad, the dog...and the stance is great, very sumo wrestler with wide legs, slightly bent at the knee. i'll get a picture and post it as soon as i can (of course, she may be walking by then).

also, molly is getting into "dollies". in this case, it is her "meow, meow" the cat and "hop" the bunny. the past few nights she's been playing with the two of them together, having them "talk" with each other and dance around, it's too cute for words.

molly has also reached the point where she wants to do everything herself. if you try and feed her now, she points at the spoon and screams, demanding to feed herself (which explains the yogurt strewn all over the dining room, the dog is loving it). she wants to put on her own clothes (do you know how hard it is to put socks on yourself, think about it...now try it with pudgy, not quite coordinated, baby hands). and she helps with everything including folding the laundry (she likes to pull it off the chair onto the floor and then "fold" it), cleaning off the dining room table (from all the yogurt), making the bed and more. these are very exciting times!

speaking of exciting times, last weekend we had a blast. we went to a program on Friday that the library put on called "Dancing with the Dogs". this entailed humans dressing up in slightly silly costumes, putting matching costumes on their dogs, and then dancing around to such hits as "supercalafragilistic" and Madonna's "Express Yourself". yes, i'm making fun a bit, but really it was pretty impressive. these dogs are the same ones that do obedience trials and they know their stuff and love showing off. there were a couple Golden Retrievers, a Miniature Poodle and a Terrier mutt. Molly thought she had gone to doggie-lovin' paradise and she sat there squealing and clapping. she got so loud at times that the dogs would stop mid-boogie to look at her. she can make a very high-pitched noise when happy - and boy was she happy. afterward she got to pet the dogs and let them lick her face -very fun!

and it turns out, molly is an equal-opportunity animal lover. molly had been under the weather, so we skipped taking the bus dowtown for book babies last saturday and instead went for a leisurly stroll in our neighborhood. one house we passed had chickens, and though they may not be the smartest, they do know that humans equal food and they came running over to us as we walked by. molly lit up, pointed and barked (making a barking noise is pretty much her reaction to all animals). after the chickens caught on that the barking baby was not going to feed them, they wandered off and we continued on to the local skateboarding park to watch all the boys skate around. i have a secret hope that molly will be into skateboarding...so i'm starting young with the skater worship. they need some girls there anyway.

that afternoon, molly seemed better so we met our friends for a trip to the pumpkin patch. we only stayed about 30 minutes, but we got to go on a hay-ride, and we picked out a pumpkin. this will be Molly's second halloween, but being only 2 days old for the first one meant we really didn't do much. this year we have a costume! and Grandma Nancy will be here and we'll hand out candy to the neighborhood kids.

during the week i took the camera into the camera doctor. he explained a lot of stuff that didn't make sense as to why it might be behaving badly, and then he checked on how many pictures i've taken with it. he let out a slightly crazed laugh and said, "i've never know anyone to take this many pictures with a point and shoot, especially in only a year." so basically, i worked my camera to death. or almost death, sometimes i can get it to work for a brief span of time. but now you see why this is all so hard for me, not having a camera, i'm a picture-taking maniac! and i am missing a multitude of cuteness!!

also since i last posted, our neighbors had their son, Vincent. he was born around the middle of the month and his birth marked the fourth baby on our block all within a year of each other, pretty cool, huh? Beau, the oldest, turned 1 on the 15th, Molly is next in line, and then Adriana's 1st bday comes in the spring. we hope they will all be the best of friends!

this brings us to this weekend. this weekend molly and i are sharing a cold (isn't that nice), and today we started up swim lessons again at the neighborhood pool (only a 10 minute bus ride, yay!). we also checked out a local preshool. it turns out that if we want to start molly in preschool before she old enough to go to college, we need to get on some waitlists now. so we're checking things out...

and this evening, i actually had a perfect moment where i was not only able to get the camera to work, but i also was able to get molly and harley to sit next to each other. so we'll end this post with a couple of pictures of my two little girls!

what have you got in your mouth?!

a few weeks ago a friend of ours, who takes care of children for a living, commented on how molly doesn't try and put everything in her mouth, like some kids do. i was taken aback a bit by this statement, because in my experience molly puts EVERYTHING in her mouth. but upon further reflection, i guess molly is a bit different in that she never, ever wanted a pacifier, nor does she really suck on her fingers or thumb...which some may consider lucky, but i tell ya, a little "self-soothing" wouldn't be such a bad thing now and again.

but the reason i bring this up is because i was looking through some pictures taken fairly recently of the moo and i saw a theme...and the theme was things found in molly's mouth. of course, there were all sorts of pictures i didn't get because i was too busy trying to get them quickly out of her mouth...such as shoes (we are constantly having to hide our shoes because as soon as she sees them, in the mouth they go!), diaper cream tubes (yum, zinc oxide-y goodness), dog hair (eeew!), rocks (really molly? rocks?) and electrical cords (aaaayyy!). but here are some of the less troublesome items, and in most cases, these are even meant to go in the mouth!

for instance, the toothbrush! now that is meant for the mouth, and molly is very good about brushing her teeth every night. she looks forward to it actually, and starts gesturing towards the toothbrush holder in the bathroom. and once we are done brushing, she's very good about rinsing her toothbrush under the faucet. the only problem? at times, she doesn't want to give the toothbrush back...




then there is the teether - another pro-mouth item! i got this particular teether because it's of the safe-plastic variety, which is a pretty big issue in this day and age (for some more information on that read here and here). so this teether is a-okay in the plastics department AND it's very convenient for holding in your mouth as you crawl around! yay!






lastly we have the nasal bulb syringe...okay, so not technically meant for mouths, but we've never used it on her nose and she seems to really enjoy it. it's amazing what parenting does to a person, at one time this may have grossed me out, but no more.

so there you have it, things that go in molly's mouth. i only wish i had a picture of her chewing on her own toes, cuz that's a sight to see!

my mom

a couple posts ago i attached a picture of molly and i being silly (scroll to the bottom to see it). when my mom saw it, the image made her think of another picture taken many years ago, of me and her being just as silly!


i love my mom more than words can say, she's the most fantastic woman i know and she is one of my very best friends. it would be a dream come true if molly and i could be as close as my mom and i are...here's hoping! i love you mom! sa-mooch!

odds and ends and sushi

so, we'll start with the sushi. our friend Scott recently celebrated his birthday and we joined him for sushi on the big day. we went to a great place out in Beaverton...molly enjoyed tofu and rice balls and tried her first sushi! i ordered an avocado roll, and figured, why not?! this is in honor of my uncle Lonny and aunt Ritsu who instilled in me, at a very young age, a love and respect for Japanese cuisine. this may not seem very daring in today's day in age, but when i was young, i was probably the only person on my block to eat tofu. one of molly's first foods was tofu, and now, she can add sushi to the list. yum!

as for "ends", our neighbor is designing a new cloth diaper and molly gets to be a guinea pig. here is a slideshow of molly sporting the new diaper, which is pretty darn awesome. i mean it totally keeps her dry, it's amazing! and tres stylish!

and as for "odd", well that would have to be molly's newest sound added to her repertoire. it's like living with a monster. she likes to constrict her throat and then suck in air, making this super scary noise. it freaks me out, but she seems to be enjoying, so whattaya gonna do? pray it's a phase i guess. this is right up there with her gagging herself. of course i stay up to the wee hours of the morning blogging, so who's really the odd one...:)

take care!

a stroll down memory ave.

maybe it's because molly's first birthday is looming large on the horizon, but i've been waxing very nostalgic lately, and so i'm gonna post a variety of molly pictures, past and present, for your viewing pleasure.

molly's really been working the cuteness factor lately. her fantastic personality is showing through more and more...for instance, she really loves to play. hide and seek being one of her favorites. we take turns hiding from each other, and when the other person finds us, we laugh and squeal with complete abandon. what must the neighbors think?!

tonight we were playing and she went around to the backside of the couch to "hide" and i followed behind, but when i turned the corner she wasn't there (duh, she was hiding!). she had actually crawled under the table that resides behind the couch and into her old bouncy chair. we don't use the chair very much anymore, which is why it lives under the table, but it has been a major part of her young life. she's fallen asleep in that chair, watched mom and dad eat dinner from that chair, and merrily bounced along to some of her favorite tunes in that chair...and obviously she still has a soft spot for it. here you see a picture of her first time ever in her bouncy chair (at day 5) and tonight (day 326). unbelievable...and where did the time go?

oh, and by the way, the crazy bright red Elmo tee meets green polka-dot pants ensemble is all her father. i think he delights in making her clash.


so another thing that totally cracks me up is molly in the bath. boy does she love bath time. she has her friends (froggy, ducky and red boat) with whom she plays and splashes, she stands up and sits down and constantly moves all around the tub, she pushes on the bath mat's suction cup thingies and makes a pbbbtt noise while doing so, and basically has a good ol' time. here is a picture of her first bath, and then a shot of her playing in the bath this week.



similarly, a couple shots of post bath towel time. my mom made these bath hoodies for her - they started out so huge and now they're on their way to being a bit too small (but just a bit!).

so thanks for taking a stroll with me. i have a ton more pictures to post, but it's late and i need to sleep. so hopefully in the next few days. though we have company in town, molly's great-grandpa May is here for a visit and we are beyond excited! we'll try and get some pictures and tell you all about it! in the meantime, a picture of molly and mom being wacky!