M 2.5 years old - say what?!?

I'm baaacccckkkk. So much has happened, finally moved out of my sister's house, moved in to a mostly complete house and another big suprise which will be its own post. On to the title of this post - yes, I am almost a month late but I can say this blog was drafted on July 13 - her 2.5 birthday. So here goes.

Oh my goodness. Can anyone else believe that Molly is 2.5 years old this month?!? Time goes by so quickly but I love the stage she is in right now. She is so fun, can have a conversation and is starting to get an imagination. Just the other day she was telling me that there was a tiger that was following us in the car and we needed to roar really loud to scare him away. Said tiger comes around quite often, sometimes we pet him in our laps and other times we scare him away. It is humorous.

She doesn’t so much like going on bridges. For whatever reason it scares her or something. She likes to go under them and next to  them but not on them which is near impossible to do when you live in Houston. And for whatever reason she still won’t say “b”ridge. It is still fridge.

She loves Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. She can sing the whole song and is interactive (talking back to Mickey when he asks a question) through the whole show. This is the only cartoon she will watch. I tried to get her to watch Frozen but 5 minutes in she asked where Mickey was.

She is overall a great eater. Loves to eat yogurt. She could eat that 24/7. She was introduced to chocolate milk somewhere and won’t stop asking for it since.

We recently busted out with swimming and homegirl loves it! I need to get her in swimming lessons….on the to do list.

Singing, she is singing all the time. She constantly sings the bumblebee song, Jesus loves me and Jesus loves the little children.

She loves working puzzles, playing with her baby and stringing beads to make necklaces….this will keep her busy for 30 minutes!

Potty training. I think  she is there. Jelly beans are the bribing factor in this, which is a big deal – BIG DEAL. So she constantly tries and always wants to wear panties. So we are gonna try it out this week, panties all day and we will see how it goes. (Side note: now that we are almost 1 month past our 2.5 birthday I can say that we are potty trained and that will be a whole post to itself.)

So shoes are not her thing. She never wants to wear them. As soon as we get in the car they come off. As soon as we get inside anything she takes them off….including restaurants, grocery stores. This girl does not like shoes. But we recently got some jellys and she is all about them so we do wear those.

She is so sweet right now. Always giving hugs and telling me she loves me. She wants to kiss anyone and everyone’s booboo and right after she does it she asks “It feels better?” And in that toddler voice…..hits me straight in the heart every time.

She is a momma’s girl. Always wants me to pick her up, put her to bed, and do everything else. It gets a little exhausting but I think this phase will pass and I will miss it so much so I am soaking it all up. Although the excitement when Danny gets home from work sometimes rivals any excitement I get for the day.

Molly the Comedian

So, she tells jokes now. I didn't know 2 year olds could tell jokes but they can. Here are the jokes that Molly told us the other day so randomly. She must have learned them at school but it cracked us up!

M: Hey mommy, what's crackin?
Me: What? Not understanding it was a joke
M: An egg

And here is the other.

M: Hey mommy, what's cluckin?
Me: I don't know, what's cluckin?
M: A chicken

Little jokester. Just to finish it off, tonight after book and prayers we were giving our kisses and Danny starts walking out and Molly yells "good night old man". I literally died. It was hilarious.

Easter 2014

Yes, I realize that Easter was a month ago and this has been drafted for the whole month I just needed to add pictures. Mostly I update my life on Instagram now but eventually I will get back to the blog world on a regular basis. Anyway, Easter weekend was great. It started Saturday with Danny's family at the ranch. All the aunts, uncles and cousins come out so it is a  big, fun family get together. We did the annual egg hunt for the kiddos which was fun because Molly got it but was not the biggest fan of sharing and not eating all the candy right away.

Getting ready for the hunt.

A fam pic

Sittin with Mawmaw

This girl and the 4 wheeler....obsessed.

See....loves it.

Sunday morning we woke up, checked out the Easter basket and rushed to early church. After that we came home and enjoyed a big family lunch with my side. I was kind enough to volunteer Jenna's house since we still live with them. ;)

The loot - the Easter bunny went a little nuts.

Fam pic again

It was a great weekend!

10 Things

So life has been busy as I am sure it has been busy for everyone. Here are 10 quick tidbits of life right now.

• Molly has a cast of characters that she sleeps with every night and they go with us everywhere. Here is the main lineup (some other animals make it in occasionally). Lovey, first and foremost Molly needs lovey with her. My mom gave her this before she was even born and she has been attached to it since she has been on God's green earth. Then we have the following: bunny, which my sister gave her when she turned one, Polka dot, my Aunt gave it to her for Christmas and this is the only animal that she named and she won't part with it, baby, she got a baby when we went to Hawaii that she loved and well, that one took a dip in the potty so she got another one and finally doggie, this was a random purchase at Michael's and she got attached. Oh and she always has to sleep with her pillow that she got at Vacation Bible School.

L to R: pillow, lovey, bunny, baby, doggie, polka dot

• We are still living with my sister.....we are going on 3 months.......sorry Jenna. I have actually thoroughly enjoyed it because her and her hubs help clean, cook and take care of M. Moving back to a house where it is just me and Danny will be a slight adjustment. 

• I turned 30 this past Sunday. Thirty! I just don't know if I am ready to be in my 30's. I mean I feel like college was not that long ago and I am not that different of a person. It is just weird, this getting older thing, gray hairs and all. But I will just go with the best is yet to come.

• Molly is still constantly cracking me up and amazing me with her speech. She is hilarious.
• She has mastered the delay in bedtime. She realizes that once bath starts bed time is soon to follow and she wants to play and isn't ready for baths and then after she is not ready for a book and wants to read 3 vs. 1 and wants to say prayers a million times.
• She is gonna be a great big sister. NOT that I am prego right now but she loves taking care of people. We went to Corpus this past weekend with Danny's family for a wedding and she loved mothering her one year old cousin William.  

• Danny recently bought a harmonica and, well, Molly and Danny both think they are pros. It is a lot of noise. Although I will say Danny has learned a couple songs which is better than just noise.
• Molly wanted to take a shower tonight and we let her try it out. She was in heaven. Loved every second. She would go in and out of the water over and over again and do a little dance.
• We say two blessings every night before dinner. She learned a song at school and then we say out regular blessing. Her song is sung to the tune of "where is thumbkin" and it goes like this. "God our Father, God our Father, Once again, Once again, Thank you for our blessings, Thank you for our blessings, Amen, Amen.
• Our kitchen cabinets and granite are in and I love them :) 

• Oh and one more for good measure. I painted M's toe nails the other day and she thought it was the coolest thing. She just kept staring at her toes and laughing then for days after so would get everyone to look at her toes and would wake up every morning talking about them.

Cowgirl Molly

Girlfriend loved the rodeo. So much so that we went twice. The first time we went as a little fam and then the other time we went it was the three ladies (my sister, M and myself). We saw all the animals. Her fav. was the little piglets that were laying on the mommy. And....is it sad that I me and Molly matched?!? I kinda of loved it. We both had jeans, white top and red boots on. :) It's the little things.

Riding the shuttle to the rodeo and so excited!

Not wanting to pose

Waiting for the pig races to start.

The piggies!

The fam.

The second time we went we headed to the carnival. No surprise that she loved it and wanted to ride all the rides over and over again. Funny thing is that she only wanted to ride the orange colored rides......and for a while there I was worried she was color blind. The one time she rode the pink one she let me know in the loudest way possible that she did NOT want that one. She wanted the orange one. So not only does she like orange she has mastered the loud effect.

It's orange!

Another orange ride.

Round and round on the carousel  

Don't worry Jenna and I found the best fried food out there - fried pickle hot dog. Yummm

Videos That Make Me Smile

Reading to Baby (almost 2 years old) from Lauren Struzick on Vimeo.

IMG 1208 from Lauren Struzick on Vimeo.

IMG 1142 from Lauren Struzick on Vimeo.

2 year olds are quite entertaining.

It has been a while since I have blogged about life in the now. Everything I have been posting is catch up so now that I am up to date I will fill you in.

Bet you didn't know picking out granite could be this much fun!

We are still living at my sister's house. They are in NZ for a month so we are house sitting, not homeless. ;) The renovations are coming along. I can see the new floor plan which is progress.

This is one of those iphone panoramic pics so it looks a little funny. To the left behind the pink studs will be the playroom. The far left back room with the pink studs is my new closet. Center is the living room and right is the kitchen.

Molly is saying some hilarious things lately which I will post below for your enjoyment.

• I was changing your diaper the other day and you didn't want me to so while you were flailing your legs you said "Mommy, mommy, no. Can you be nice?!?"
• One day while driving on an overpass you said "We are going up on a fridge." Yes, we are going up on a bah, bah, bah bridge. So now every time we go on a bridge/overpass you said bah, bah, bah, fridge. As many times as I tell her a fridge is where your food goes we are driving on a fridge.
• When you want cereal you say "cerealealealealeal". We don't stop at one eal.
• I went to get you out of your bed from nap one day and you stood straight up and said "Mommy, I am a sassypants." 

Miss sassypants ;)

• Molly recently got a new baby because our other baby took a dip in the toilet when she was going potty so we went ahead and got a new one. Anyway. I asked if baby was a girl or boy and she said (very sure of herself) "Mommy she is a boy". I am still a little confused Molly....
• My personal fav. We were eating dinner, pot pie to be exact, and she didn't want to eat it. We tried everything including the plane trying to land in her mouth. She just shook her head back and forth then stopped - looked Danny straight in the eye and said "I don't eat cat food." Luckily I picked it up from Fresh Market so I didn't take offense but goodness I didn't know we had such a food critic in the house.

Oh girlfriend....

So, let me just tell you Molly is one strong willed little girl. While she can be super sweet, she can turn just like that. I will definitely have my work cut out for me that is for sure. Just the other day we were leaving for one of my friends/her friends house and she was eating an applesauce. Well, she threw her trash on the floor and I asked her to pick it up. She looked at me and said "no" so I handed it to her and said "please go put this in the trash". She threw it on the floor and said "no". Ok......Molly, two can play this game. While she was one step ahead of me and said "I wanna go in timeout" I said "ok, you can go in timeout until you are ready to throw away your trash". This immediately ended up in an on the floor, body flailing, temper tantrum complete with alligator tears. "I don't want to throw away my trash Mommy!" This lasted 20 minutes people - 20 minutes. I sat in a chair and just watched while reminding her that she is in control all she has to do is walk 5 steps to the trash and throw the applesauce away. WOW. She finally did it when I went to go put the bags in the car. Rough :/

Love riding the carousel

While she has her own opinion about things she does obey for the most part. Although I do have to explain why she needs to obey sometimes. I can't just say don't run in the street. She needs to know why she can't run in the street. She definitely still has to do everything herself. Right now she is super cuddly and I can't get enough. When she wakes up in the morning and after nap she just want to sit in my lap and watch a little Mickey. I just sit there and hold her while memorizing all the details - is that weird??!! Oh well, call me creepy.

Snow day in our new neighborhood

Teaching her early

We got our first shiner. She fell down on a hula hoop at school.

Sweet little momma gave baby her pillow and her lovey.

Cherish this cuddle time

My little valentine

Romantic valentine dinner = Chucky Cheese

Helping Uncle Bobby blow out his candles