11 Months

This month has probably been my favorite so far!  We are loving 11 months!  Molly's 1st Birthday is in less than a month now.  I thought that this would make me sad, but I am far from it!  I am so excited about her turning one and seeing what the new year has to offer.

In the last week she seems to have gone from baby to little person.  She is teetering on the edge of toddlerhood and I love it!  She is interacting with her world in a whole new way and is a little sponge absorbing everything she encounters in a day!

She is taking her sweet time to walk on her own, but it is just that...sweet.  She stands up on her own quite well, usually with something in her hands.  She will walk barely holding onto a finger and she will move from coffee table to couch to ottoman with grace and ease.  But when she wants to walk, she wants to hold on to me.  She still wants my support, my comfort, and my protection and that is beautiful.  One day she will be shoving my hands away because she is big enough to do it on her own.  But for now, she needs me and she can hold my hand as long as she wants to.  

In the last couple days she has been braving steps more and more though.  I love to watch her face as she contemplates whether or not she can make the next move and then her delight when she does as she falls and crawls away!  She is the happiest baby I have ever seen!

Her big achievement this month has been to say Dada!  It almost seemed as if she had been saving the word until she could say it perfectly.  Because when she did finally say it, it was perfect.  She looked at Austin, and without a doubt blurted out "Dada" as clear as day.  I watched Austin's heart melt and it melts even more every time she says it.  Which is a lot.  It is her favorite word at the moment and she has abandoned nearly every other word.  She says dada a lot as babble but she knows who her Daddy is.  She will point to him when he walks into her view as she says Dada and she will look at him every time you ask her where Daddy is.  A girl loves her Daddy and this girl is no exception.

But I have to say, my favorite thing that she has started to do this month is to laugh with me!  It is just so sweet and special to laugh with my favorite little person!  If I laugh at something she does, she will join in, but it has become more than just mocking my laugh.  She has started to enjoy the laughter.  Then she will repeat what made me laugh in the first place and we will continue laughing together.  I love her so much!

This past week was such a joy for us.  The three of us flew up to Washington to visit Austin's family.  Molly got to meet a bunch of family for the first time including her Aunt Sara, Grandma (Austin's mom) Great Aunt Alison, and Great Grandma.  Everyone was thrilled to meet her and Molly was not shy at all!  She did beautifully the entire trip.  She is a champion plane rider and and handled the layovers with a breeze.  She didn't even seem to notice a two hour time change.  She kept to her schedule for the most part but was flexible when the time called for it.  She slept beautifully even in a new room and borrowed pack n' play for both night time and naps.  And we didn't even have any issues in un-babyproofed houses.  I am looking forward to many more trips in the future.  Our one regret is that we didn't get the chance to go to Hood Canal.  Our hearts were set on taking her but snow was in the forecast on the day we had planned to go, so plans changed.  We hope to be able to take her there next summer.  When the air is warm, the water is not ice cold, and she can enjoy it more.

Pictures, pictures, pictures...

I am going to post all of these pictures in as best of an order as I can.  There will be iPhone pictures mixed in with pictures from my dSLR.  Though I try to take as many pictures as I can with my dSLR, my iPhone is on me 98% of the time.  

Molly celebrated her first Valentines Day while we were in Austin.  We got to do a little photo shoot with her and her daddy down by the lake. Precious.

Having her first tea party with Momma, Elmo, and Dolly.

The she had a living room campout with Daddy the next morning.

One day, I went to wake her up from a nap and found her like this.  

Monkeying around at Target!

She was pretty proud about drinking out of a real cup all by herself!

Baby girl was so tired after a long morning playing with friends that she fell asleep in my arms!

Can you tell I love a sleeping baby...and my Instagram app?

Hanging out in Momma's room and playing with a heart shaped cookie cutter.

Poppa put up her new swing in the backyard.  It has been such a mild winter, feeling more like spring, that I'm shocked we didn't do this sooner!  She loves her swing especially since she is still too little to fit into the swings at the park!

This is how we roll after our first flight and a layover in Colorado. Whiskey sour for Momma, pajamas and cheerios for Molly.  We won't tell anyone that it was 10am ;)

Molly and Aunt Taylor were so happy to be reunited again!  They look like twins!

Aunt Taylor bought Molly a bunch of new toys since we were staying at her apartment.  Of all the toys, this ball, which was probably the cheapest afterthought of a toy, was Molly's favorite.  She is crazy about this ball.  I can't tell you why.  But we brought it home with us.  Her face lit up when she saw me pull it out of the suitcase.

Having a bottle with Daddy.  Love.  This picture is horribly grainy and I had to increase the exposure a ton just so you could even see this picture...but I actually kind of like it.  I don't know if it's just the tenderness of the moment or how the grain gives it an almost old world feel, but I love it.

Molly got to meet Grandma Tammy for the first time.  Such love and joy!

Grandma Tammy brought presents!  It was like second Christmas (or early birthday)!

After presents, it was breakfast time.  Mmmmmm, eggs, whole wheat waffles, and blueberries!  Molly felt like such a big girl eating at the table, in a real chair, with a plate and place mat!  

Then I caught these two blowing raspberries in the air together!

Sleepy morning bottle with Daddy.

Peeking out the window.

Picture proof that she does indeed stand on her own.  Is she not the cutest thing you have ever seen?!

Trying to run away while Aunt Taylor puts on her slippers.

This has to be one of my favorite pictures of her this month.  Happy, happy, happy :)

To top off our trip, we spend the last day and night in Seattle.  We went to the Seattle Aquarium which Molly absolutely loved!

While we were in Seattle, we not only got to walk around the park that Austin played at as a child but Molly got to meet her Great Aunt Alison and Great Grandma Janet!

All in all, it was a wonderful month and a great week in Washington!  We are so much looking forward to this next month and Molly's first birthday!  I plan on doing a traditional monthly post next month as well as an entire birthday party post!  This will be an exciting month as we prepare for the big day and also celebrate my dad's 51st birthday (maybe he'll even get his own post!), and the turn of spring!

10 Months

Double digits?? Double digits?! Molly is officially 10 months old today.  I am beginning to accept the fact that I can do nothing to stop my baby from getting older...everyday.  This month has brought us many exciting new things!

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.

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 :)