After Christmas Molly got to spend a lot of quality time with her "Uncle B" who was home on break from A&M. She got pretty attached to him and though she never attempted to say his name she looked at him every time his name was mentioned. Uncle B is a pretty fun guy in her opinion.
Her vocabulary has expanded though. She now says Momma, Poppa (my dad), baba (she even developed her own sign for her bottle), bye-bye, sometimes she'll say hi, and she will whisper puh-puh (puppy). But I swear she understands all of the daily language that I use! She will even look at me differently when I talk about something new while she tries to figure it all out. I absolutely love watching her as she learns something new. She will also play peek-a-boo now.
The most exciting thing that she has done this month is taking two steps a couple of days ago. She is so close to truly walking and has been wanting to hold my hands and walk more and more. It was so exciting when she took those two steps and I could see how proud she was of herself! I can see that she is still somewhat unsure about the whole walking thing, but she wants to so bad. I can't wait to see what this next month brings as far as this new development goes.
Molly has recently gone through a major growth spurt. I say major. It was major for her. Maybe not major for other babies. She is still able to wear the same clothes that she was wearing before which includes mostly 6 month but some 9 month clothes. But she started eating a lot more than usual and then all of a sudden she felt HEAVY. Now, if I carry her on one hip for too long, my arm starts to ache. Kind of sad, because I weighed her at home to be only about 17 lbs.
With this growth spurt, Austin and I decided to move her into a big girl car seat! She still met the weight requirements for her infant seat, but being as tall as she is, she was beginning to exceed the maximum height requirement. I currently have a love/hate relationship with this seat. You see, she is still too tiny to face forwards, so she is in this giant car seat facing away from me, just like she was before, only I can't see over this car seat to check on her and backseat mirror only allow me to see so much. Also, as long as she is backwards facing, I cannot recline her seat far enough to keep her head from rolling forward when she falls asleep. It will be better when I can flip her around after her birthday, but until then I have to time car trips so that she won't fall asleep. On the plus side, she is much more comfortable in this seat. It is super cushy and she is high enough up that she can see out of the windows. She rarely cries or fusses when she is in the car anymore, unless of course she is tired and can't fall asleep comfortably. Thankfully though, all of my issues with the seat will be solved once she turns 1 and she can face forward. Until then, we will manage.
I have to admit something though....I have been very bad about having my camera out and ready for any moment. Most, if not all, of the pictures I have taken this month have been on my iPhone. And let me just say, thank goodness for iPhones. Seriously, I don't know what parents did without them. I'm not kidding. I can take a picture or video at a seconds notice. I can look up the correct dosage for Tylenol from her pediatritians website when she is teething. I can buy diapers off Amazon when I know I'm running low. I can entertain her with Elmo or Barney with a few strokes of my fingers or show her a picture or even mirror view of herself which she absolutely loves.
And now for her pictures!
We recently added extra space to our patio and put Molly's footprints in the wet cement. When we came inside to bathe her someone was in her shower, so she got her first bath in the sink since she was a newborn. She thought it was pretty awesome. She loved the water coming out of the faucet. She touched it, tried to grab it, put her head in it and tried to drink it. She had a lot of fun! This is one of my favorite pictures. This also may be my only picture from my DSLR this month. How sad!! So I am sorry about all of the funky grain and weird lighting in the rest of the pictures.
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She loves sitting in her big girl car seat!
New Elmo pajamas!
She LOVES her bath time. She loves being in the water. I think she may be my little fishy. I can't wait for the weather to warm up and take her swimming!
Every night after her bath we play in her room before bedtime. She loves this time. One of her favorite things to do is pull books from the shelves. I do read to her everyday, but she still mostly enjoys abusing her books. We are learning to be gentle with many things...including books and friends. :)
Look at what a big girl she is! Ugh...I have to get my DSLR out this month. Though I will cherish her pictures no matter what they look like....iPhone pictures in low light are just icky! What was I thinking?!
I love love love this smile! Her whole face lights up with joy and it makes me so happy to see this.
She also loves taking down all of her owl and birdie pillows and eating her hairbrush. I figure as long as she chews the bristly side of the brush it is a nice compliment to the pathetic job I do of brushing her teeth every night. She doesn't like it so much, so each tooth does good if it gets a swipe.
The truth is...I can't get these kind of smiles with my DSLR. At least consistently. The only way she will smile like this for a camera is if I trick her into forgetting it's a camera. I do this by flipping the camera view on my phone so that she can see herself. She loves to see herself and will give a gorgeous smile without fail. So for that, I love these grainy, funky looking pictures :)
Molly loves a good hike. We all do. We love to be outdoors doing anything. She is probably the most content while outside. The weather has been so beautiful warm lately that this has been so easy to do. The most we have done is a 3 mile hike with her so far. We just got a new back packing carrier that will take her increasing weight off of Austin's shoulders. We are looking forward to trying it out and hopefully checking out new trails and taking longer hikes! P.S. look at their facial expression and especially mouths....exactly the same!
While we were visiting Austin last week we went to the Austin Zoo. Molly saw lots of monkeys, tigers, lions, a bear, and all kinds of interesting animals. I think she liked the goat and monkeys the most. Probably because we could feed the goat and the monkeys were very interested in her. She adores her daddy though and was happy just to be outside on his shoulders.
After the zoo Austin bought her a lemur in the gift shop. His favorite stuffed animal growing up was a lemur named Lemur. So this is Lemur.
This is her kissy fish face. Not sure where she learned this but she does it all the time! Especially at meal time.
love. this. girl.
I know that this post has been long so I will keep what I'm about to say short. I basically have way more to say at the end of the month than one blog post can handle. I also forget to mention certain things like the fact that she has five teeth right now and is cutting a third, or that she will now give kisses and hugs at will or when I ask. As we wrap up her first year, I am contemplating the direction I want to take this little blog. I would love to start writing more frequent and shorter posts. It may be all about Molly or it may just be simple musings. I don't know but I have enjoyed documenting this year and would love to document more of the special details that fill our days. We will see.
Until next month :)
