Babies, Babies and More Babies

Lots of babies. Well, really just two new ones and then lots of older babies. We came back from vacation and had a busy week. One of my best friends in the whole world had her first baby the day I left for vaca. Womp, womp. But luckily Danny and I were able to visit the handsome guy as soon as we got back. P.S. I absolutely DIE with the hair. I am slightly obsessed. Meet Nathan. He is special.

The hair!

Hey-O Nanda has a baby!

Daddies

That very next day M and I packed up and took a little day trip to Austin to meet my cousin's new little baby. This is her second bambino and I mean between her and my other cousin with 4 you would think raising children was super simple. Seriously. And this amazing baby started sleeping through the night at 6 weeks. WHAT?!? I know, crazy, I know. The whole time we were there with six toddlers/kids running around he was just chillin. I didn't hear a peep out of him. Crazy amazing, that's all I can say. Meet Joseph.

Seriously, crazy good and super cute.

We managed to wrangle all the kiddos

She was a bit obsessed.

But event more obsessed with the chickens. Like, really, obsessed.

Then Friday, M and I headed to a little momma/kid playgroup. It was a lot of fun. Everyone else swam but Molly lasts all of 2 seconds in the pool because she would rather run around and see everything in the yard. But, in the middle of lunch, she did decide to take a dip in the baby pool with her clothes on which is why she is only in her diaper for this pic. I think these kids are gonna be good friends!

Inks Lake 2013

Oh Inks Lake you have come and gone. Inks Lake is the annual vacation I look forward to because 1. I know it is going to happen every year 2. It is 4 glorious days where you forget about your schedule, work and cleaning. It is a time and do nothing but eat really good food and relax……or as much relaxing that can be done with a toddler. My gracious grandparents rent two houses right on the lake where 15 adults, 1 toddler and 4 dogs manage to fit pretty comfortably. We do all kinds of stuff like….

Completely relax and get some sun

Practice riding dogs?!?

Celebrate a birthday

Play some football (the shirts happen to win this year)

We might or might not have slinged-shot (that is not a word but I don't know what else to call it) water balloons toward passing boats. But don't worry, we didn't hit a thing....boys will be boys.

Eat, eat and eat some more (especially the homeade peach ice cream). 

Play hide and seek

Even do a little cupid shuffling

And, that’s how we roll at Inks Lake

 

Until next year…..

Oh and literally 30 seconds after leaving M was OUT

1.5 years old/18 months

It is a big milestone Molly Grace. You are a 1.5 year old. I am not sure how that happened so quickly. I mean yesterday you were like 9 months. I look at you and just ask myself where my little baby went. You are a curious, feisty, independent, precocious, loving little girl now. Oh Molly.... In other news, I am posting this a day late because we have been out of town. This was your first weekend to have a sleep over. You stayed with Lolli and Pops and Daddy and I went to San Antonio for a wedding. It was nice to get away but we missed you so much. Lolli sent us tons of pictures which helped and it looks like you had a blast! I don't know what people did before text messaging. ;) You don't have your 18 month check up for another week so I don't have your stats but I do know you weigh 27lbs and below is all the other info.

Clothes:

  *   18 and 18-24 month clothes

  *   diaper: size 4  

  *   shoe: 4.5 - 5 (You must have some small feet because they have not changed sizes in months and I was told they change every 3 months, oh well!!!)

Sleeping: Same ol, same ol here. Nap from 1-3pm. Go to bed between 7:30-7:45pm and wake up between 7-7:30am.

Eating: The same. Milk sippy cups at each of your meals. You still LOVE milk and constantly ask for it. You sometimes have your morning snack and always have your afternoon snack with water. You are eating veggies a little more but meat is still tricky.

New Tricks: What can't you do these days....seriously. We might as well hike Mt. Kilimanjaro next....if only I could survive that, no doubt you could. It is not new that you can run but that is all you do now, run, run run. You also like to jump, although, hate to break it to you, but your feet don't actually leave the ground but you think you are jumping high none the less. You can count, really and truly. The numbers might be a little scrambled but that is ok. I am impressed you can count to begin with. I say one, you say two, I say three, you say seven, I say four, you say seven, I say five, you say, seven, I say six, you say seven, then you can say eight, nine and ten. So we have 4 numbers down, in the correct order!

Words: You copy everything now. Not only what we are saying to you but daddy and I will be talking and all the sudden you say what we are saying.......i mean I gotta watch myself girl. Not that I have a potty mouth but still I don't want you to learn certain words. You are still saying everyone's name all the time, including all your friends at school. Here are some of the things you say constantly: "calibooboo" (caterpillar), "my daddy!" (not sure where you got this but you have to tell everyone that daddy is your daddy....makes me nervous for future siblings), "tat you" (thank you), "welcome" (your welcome), "peese" (please), "stuck", "waler" (water), "hooold it", "a-men", "come on" and so much more. I can't forget the word you say 9,342 times a day - "pop-icle". It might even be 12,486 times a day.

Teeth: We have another one peeking through so we have 10.5 teeth now. OK Molly, let's talk about your teeth. You have turned into a biter. Yes, you have received two bad reports from school saying that you bit one of your friends. That is always fun for me to see their mom's in the morning as I drop you off and see the fear in their eyes as they leave their kid with mine.....so we need to work on that. No biting little lady!

Likes: You still love all your same things. You are still 100% an outside girl, much to my chagrin, you will soon realize that it is so goodness to gracious H-O-T in Houston. I mean I don't even try to get "ready" when I am home with you because I know I am going to sweat it off girl. Because it is so hot maybe that is why you LOVE popsicles. We have moved on from hugging everything to kissing everything as well. You want to kiss and hug some really random things girl, like yesterday when you wanted to hug the potty......interesting.You like to tell me when babies, or anything, is sleeping. You put your finger to your teeth and let out at big "shhhhhh". Oh and one last thing, you long to tell people to "come on" as you are waiving your hand for them to follow.

Dislikes: You still don't love to have people help you with things when you think you can do it by yourself but eventually you get really frustrated and let someone help. Great, means you got both of mommy and daddy's stubborn genes. I was hoping you would get neither but I guess you were bound to get some stubbornness. You just don't love to be in the car, period. It should be interesting this month when we are taking a 4 hour drive to Inks Lake.....should be a blast! Oh and I can safely say you don't like being held in one place. You are an explorer. I used to look at those moms who put leashes on their kids and thought they were crazy, well, no judgment now! Girl, I need to get one of those things for when we go out in public.

Oh Molly, Molly, Molly, how is it that you are a 1.5 year old. Now I definitely understand people when they say time flies by when you have kids. This month more than any other I know you are going to test your boundaries. You are meant to explore. I wonder what that means for the future. I am always watching the wheels turn in that little head. You don't sit still for one minute. The only time you do is when you first wake up you like to be cuddled or when we are putting you to bed other than that you are just a streak of light running through the house. One of my favorite things is just listening to you talk. You can make me and daddy laugh so hard when you are talking "toddler" which sounds a lot like German. You are fiercely independent but at the same time when we are just a family of three you like to go around the circle and say each of our names and you LOVE family hugs. Goose, I love you and your wild spirit despite the fact that you wear me out. I wouldn't have it any other way!

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.