Happy Birthday America!

It was a great day, exhausting but great. We sang happy birthday quite a few times today. There are only a few songs that get Molly all excited and dancy when they are sung and Happy Bday is one of them (the others being Jesus Loves the Little Children and ABC's - any other song and she shakes her head and says "no!"). After singing it 509 times within 30 minutes we had the breakfast of champions, donuts. Hey it is a holiday! :) It was her first time to really have donuts and she didn't love them (which is like me) but licked all the icing off (like Danny - straight up sugar) and then we settled on some strawberries.

After that we went down memory lane for me by going to our neighborhood parade. Growing up I can remember being at my grandparents house in Ft. Worth, no doubt dressed just like my baby sister in some polka dot shorts, painted American flag shirt and the massive matching bow. Why I remember what we were wearing was beyond me but I do. Once my cousins came over we would just go up and down the street in the little medal red rider wagon waving our flags, singing songs. It was good times so I thought Molly needed to have some similar memories. I don't remember a parade at my grandparents, besides the one that we put on, but still there was a wagon, American songs and flag waiving so the memories can be similar. Since our little neighborhood puts on a parade and we were up we needed to go. We loaded up in our newer, plastic version of the red rider wagon and rode to the parade. We had good times waiving our flag and dancing to the music.

After that we ate lunch and napped, then got ready again to celebrate 'merica. We picked up my dad and brother and went to La Centerra. There we met up with some good friends....Liam, Liam and Liam. Molly kept telling us who he was just in case we or his family forgot. The kids zone didn't really work for us, too many people and M really isn't patient enough to wait in lines these days. So, we did the next best thing. We ate. M settled for cheetos and pickles - super healthy. Then for the next 30 minutes she entertained herself by getting ice out of the vendor cooler and putting it in a big orange cone or the washers hole. Oh and let me mention - she doesn't walk anywhere anymore. She is all about RUNNING and she is pretty fast, let me tell you. She is quite the little hudiny when she wants to be. The goal was to see some fireworks thinking that we probably wouldn't last that long but I can't believe we made it but we did. She was up 2.5 hours past her bedtime and did great. I don't know why I get nervous when we go off her routine because she always does just fine. Maybe it is because I thrive on her routine. Who knows but all in all we had a great time and she is passed out now. Oh and she totally loves fireworks, not scared at all. She just kept saying boom, boom, boom!

Fam of 3 

Great friends 

Look how tall I am!

What?!? I am sitting like you asked.

Smile

Why ice belongs down a cone I will never know...

The fam

Dancing to the music

Waiting for the firework show

High-five and BOOM, BOOM, BOOM

 Happy Birthday America! Blessed to live in the land of the free.

Craziness

That is the only way I can explain these past 2 weeks. I will put it in bullet form because I seem to like lists.

• First, we had a great day last week playing at Lolli's house (my MIL). Molly loved swimming, watering the plants and the bubbles!!! She didn't eat much which was when I should have figured out she was not feeling great.

Hey-O

Ride it, ride it, ride it (that is all we heard)

Weeeee

Uhhh what do I do with this!?!

Oh, ok, it goes in here.

Ahhhh there are bubbles!

Awwww yeahhhhh

BUBBLES!

• The next day we took her to Urgent Care because of course she is going to need a doc when the office is closed. That is just how it works, right?!? Well, they thought she just had a really bad ear infection which led to a sore throat. Oh, we decided to take her because she was up all night long crying and wouldn't eat anything and was drooling like a champ. That Monday we went to her doc to check everything out and turns out she has hand, foot and mouth disease.........AGAIN! Goodness gracious, it was way worse the second time. It took about 5 nights for her to sleep through the night again. And man, those 5 nights were L.O.N.G. took me back to the newborn days. Yikes! But she is better now. My mom, MIL and cousin bailed me out, otherwise I would have needed to take the whole week off work. Thank you!
• This past Thursday night was girls night out, holla! Three of my best girlfriends headed out to a night on the town 90's style. We went to the Boyz II Men, 98 Degrees, New Kids On The Block concert and it was AMAZING. A whole stadium dedicated to thousands of 20-30 something year olds screaming at the top of their lungs like we were 15 year olds. It was glorious.

• Friday was rid the house of hand, foot and mouth and do some crazy cleaning and set up for a baby shower that was at my house the next day.
• Saturday morning was one of my bestest friends shower. So fun to celebrate little peanut.

• Saturday night one of my best friends from high school was in town from Arkansas where she lives with her family. We decided to have a little pool party, high school family get together. It was fun to see all the kids playing and fun to catch up.

Clearly you can see where Molly spent most of her time.

My friend Catie (teal necklace) has a little boy one month younger than Molly.

Kiddos with their daddies

Cheese!

Danny and Josh just chillin

• Sunday was church and no rest for the weary. We went to something called the Master Pancake Tour, which is a comedy thing while a movie is playing. If you are interested google it. It was pretty funny. And now we are starting a new week.....at least there is a holiday in the middle.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Oh man...

Today was one of those great days where it was fun and I got a lot accomplished. Molly and I woke up this morning, played, ate breakfast, you know, the normal stuff. Then we got a quick visit from Aunt Nenna on her way to some function then M and I headed off to go pick blueberries. It was one of those things where I knew it was either going to be a crazy fiasco or a ton-o fun, pretty much the way most things go with toddlers. Well, turns out it was a blast despite the ridiculous heat! There were blueberries she could pick (that were her height) although most of the really good ones were up high. But after showing her the difference between the blue and the green ones she surprisingly just picked the blue ones (of course after tasting a green one and realizing it was quite sour) and she put them in her bucket. I think her favorite thing was carrying the bucket which was fine with me. The bonus for me was that I made it home without her falling asleep in the car so we walked in and went straight down for normal nap time. We would definitely go back and do this again. It is called Chmielewski's if you are interested in going.

During nap time I searched Pinterest found a good recipe for blueberry muffins, whipped some up then found a recipe for eggplant parmesan and whipped it up, that was a fail but oh well, I tried. The muffins were the bomb.com though.

Once nap time was over I decided we needed to run to target and get a new water toy. Target....can anyone ever walk in that place and not spend less than $100. I might have gotten a little carried away. Oh well, it was fun.

17 Months

Clothes:

• 18 and 18-24 month clothes 
• diaper: size 4
• shoe: 4.5 - 5

Sleeping: You still take your one good nap from 1-3pm. You go to bed between 7:30-7:45pm. We pushed it back because you were waking up before 7am and for momma that just doesn't work. So now you wake up between 7-7:30am and surprisingly most weekends it is like you know it is the weekend and you sleep until 7:45-8am. I like it! Keep it up kid.

Eating: The same. Milk sippy cups at each of your meals. You LOVE milk and constantly ask for it. You sometimes have your morning snack and always have your afternoon snack with water. You are still a good eater but I haven't been the best with meal planning this month so we have struggled a little. 

New Tricks: Girl I don't even know where to begin here because I feel like there are so many new "tricks". I feel like I am going to continue to feel like this each month. You have figured out that you can pretty much climb and get on everything which makes me a little bit of a nervous nellie because I really can't turn my back on you these days. 

Words: I mean....what don't you say these days. Pretty much ANYTHING that is said to you you at least try and say it back. Most of the time you get it and of course when there are long words we can't understand what you are saying but you think you nailed it. Here are some of the things you say constantly: "bananananana", "hooold it" (you NEED to hold everything, you don't take help anymore unless you ask for it and say "hep me, hep me"), "daddy hooome", "mommy hooome", "up, up, up", "Bible", "a-men". You constantly say every one's name: "meme", "papa", "tyla" (tyler), nenna (Jenna), reece, lolli, pop, baby wi (baby william), bobby. We are still working on Kyle and Steph. And you say "I lovie" meaning I love you!

Teeth: Still 10 but your gums are swollen and I feel like 2 more top ones will be coming anytime soon.

Likes: You still love all the same things liking reading books, swinging, dancing, being outside, riding your car, horsey, the dogs and being outside. Your favorite foods are grilled cheese, strawberries, cuties, lasagna, and you LOVE jellybeans. The new thing this month that you absolutely love is hugging. When you see something you like you need to hug it. Flipping through pics on my phone and see someone you love, you need to hug the phone, need to hug harli all the time, hug your friends at school, hug your babies, bunny and teddy bear. Oh and you always want to see "pit-ure", "pit-ure" which means you need to see the pictures on some one's phone and you just flip through it on your own.

Dislikes: I would say your dislike this month is people helping you when you want to do it on your own. And, recently you have been a little difficult getting clothes on in the morning and your shoes. Goodness girl, I know you think you can put your shoes on and I appreciate the effort but seriously we would be here til next year if I had to wait for you to put your shoes on. I give you a couples minutes to try and figure it out, you end up getting frustrated and I finish it up. Oh and apparently you have your own opinion on what shoes you should wear each day. If I get out the ones that I want you to wear most definitely they are NOT the ones that you want to wear.

So Molly Grace, this month at school the teacher was asking who everyone was in our family picture (they have family pics up of each kid in the classroom) and you named everyone including the dogs and when she asked who you were you said goose. Oops, maybe I should start calling you Molly more.....nah. I will stick with goose. You know your name and when you try and say it it is pretty amusing because you can't quite get the double l's. And in other school news you are officially a big girl. You moved up a class and no longer sleep in a crib during your nap. You are on a mat on the floor. I was nervous but of course no big deal. You slept just fine the first day. Oh and I think you have a crush on a little boy at school named Will or "we-al" as you like to say because you say his name about 239 times a day. I feel like I look at you these days and no longer see my little baby but a little lady. How did that happen already?!? I love you big girl!

A little bit of this and a little bit of that

• We have been having a ton-o-fun on my days off lately. Wednesday we went back out to the zoo with Candace and Liam. The kiddos had a good time playing in the splash pad or just walking around the splash pad which is what M decided was best. One day she will run across the water, she is just a little cautious right now. There was a minor melt down from M when I had to go to the ladies room and she stayed with Candace. I guess when she realized I wasn’t there she freaked out and from there on out I was not allowed to put her down or in the stroller. So my back was killing me but secretly I kinda liked it cause this little girl is so independent is was nice to know that she still needs me. ;)

• Friday we went to the Noah’s Ark splash pad. I know, you might be asking yourself “why are you taking this girl to the splash pad when she doesn’t want to get in the water”. Well, I will tell you. It is nice to be with and meet other stay at home or part time moms and homegirl is gonna have to like, I take that back, LOVE the water since it is ridiculously H-O-T here in h-town and both my parents and in-laws have pools. And she likes the water just not ready to be super brave yet. I don't have any pics from this outing because there were a million people there and the water is pretty deep for a 16 mo. old, it came up to my shins, so I was watching her like a hawk the whole time.

• I am really into reading these days. I guess I go through spurts and since there is no good tv on in the summer I constantly have my nose in my nook. I am not a take my time kinda reader. When I pick up a book I NEED to finish it. I get so enthralled with the story, characters and what is going to happen. I don’t think Danny is the biggest fan because I am so not social but I mean I just can’t put it down. Danny can pick up a book and about a year later be done. I mean if I were to take that long I would have no idea what happens in the book because I would forget! Oh, you what to know what kind of books I read, well, I read all kinds, fiction, non-fiction, biographies, syfy, etc. They do have to bring me in within the first chapter though and I don’t like “thinker” books and I need happy endings unless it is a true story then I need the truth. But I pretty much like my books like I like my movies, fun, entertaining and light (unless again it is true and serious). I am a Cinderella story kind of girl.

• I downloaded this awesome app called “heads up”. It is a game that Ellen plays with guests on her show. It is soooo fun, kind of like catch phrase or something like that. I love it and I love games. Anyone wanna play?

•  So, I lost all this weight when I was pumping (30 lbs less than pre baby weight) but I have gained a lot of it back! Grrrrrr. I bought this work out dvd for post baby women (The Dia Method) that help strengthen the core muscles that were lost with baby. We will see…..it also doesn’t help that I like ice cream. A lot. And Danny brought home the new Blue Bell key lime pie flavor…..O-M-G so good but key lime is my fav!!!! Go out and buy it - seriously. You won't regret it, unless you are trying to loose weight and then ugh we are in the same shoes.

• Molly is crazy fun these days. I know I say that often but she is! We have been teaching her to say I love you for a while and well she just started saying it. Thursday morning she was drinking her milk I was getting her lunch ready for school and she came over wanting me to pick her up and of course I did. She then stared at me then leaned in and gave me this huge hug and then said “I lovie” meaning I love you! What?!? Now she might have been saying lovie because she had only just learned to say I love you the night before but she wasn’t reaching for it so I will take it that she said I love you. A moment I will treasure. Oh Molly....

•  I should also add that this diva has a mind of her own and she will let you know when and how she wants something. Anyone have any advice and how to not get your toddler to throw their food on the floor. I mean I am stumped. I have taken it away from her, said no and meant it, ignored it thinking she just wanted the rise but still does it. She doesn’t just do it with food she doesn’t like but even with mac and cheese.

• OK, one last thing. I know you are getting bored. But, omg, this girl LOVES and I mean LOVES jelly beans. I only found out because I was eating them one night (see bullet number 5 and you wonder why….grrrr) and left them out. Of course she opened up the tupperware the next morning and spilled them everywhere. I was ferociously picking up the little choking hazards and she got one and was in heaven apparently. So, occasionally I will get them out, shake the tupperware and she comes running! Oh my goodness, the excitement. And then sometimes she will stand at the pantry door saying “jelly, jelly, jelly”.

• Oh and she is doing this super cute thing where when she is completely comfortable she crosses her legs. So cute!