Life's a Beach

I think we have a beach lover on our hands.

Waking Up

Somehow, Molly seems to know when it is a weekend. During the week she sleeps through the night from around 8 pm to nearly 7 pm., and once or twice a week we have to wake her up to so that we can go to work.

Then comes the weekends, with last weekend providing a perfect example. On both Saturday and Sunday Molly woke at 5:00 and 4:50 a.m, respectively. In both cases Trina brought her to our bed with the hopes of Molly going back to sleep there. Not so much. She preferred to play - smacking us on the face, crawling around, and sticking her fingers in our mouth. On Saturday we got up early with her for a full day. On Sunday, after it obvious that Molly wasn't going back to sleep, Molly and I moved to the living room to play at 5:00 while we let Trina catch up on some sleep.

I set her up with a clean diaper, started the coffee maker, and fixed a bottle, which she drained quite quickly. Molly, the dogs, and I played on the living room floor for about an hour. Molly was all smiles and laughter, climbing over me, dumping out the basket of remote controls, crawling to the kitchen, and playing with her toys. After a little more than an hour, she crawled over to me and layed her head on my lap as though she wanted to go to sleep. On that cue I picked her up and settled on the couch with her on my chest. After a few minutes of practicing baby dentistry on my mouth and some squirming to get comfortable, she fell asleep peacefully on my chest.

Oscar and Daisy soon joined us on the couch where I felt and listed to her breathing, smelled her baby shampoo, and admired the little bit of fuzzy hair on her head. For an hour and a half we remain there together. I watched on-demand re-runs of Art Wolfe's Travels to the Edge until Trina emerged at 8:00. Molly woke soon after and we prepared for the day ahead - coffee at the Urban Coffee Lounge, lunch at Padria (our neighbor's Greek restaurant), and then to Costco for a few items.


Hopefully she doesn't grow too fast and we can have a few more mornings like that.

Molly the Explorer

Molly is a little explorer.

She has more than mastered crawling and does so with a purpose. One moment she will be happy playing with her toys in the middle of the living room and on a moment's notice will drop what she is holding, take off out of the living room with either the dog's bowls or perhaps her bedroom in mind. This morning she was playing in the living room with the dogs and I, and off she went, down the hallway crawling with the form, coordination, and nearly the speed of an adult, strait to her bedroom door and started banging on it with her hand.

Her awareness and memory is obviously growing. For example, she knows that she is about to get some grub when we get out a bottle to prepare for her and she quickly grows impatient. She also knows where her two boxes of toys are, the basket of magazines, and other fun things around the house, as she seeks them out regularly.

Every day she is harder to distract from something that we don't want her to get into. Frequently she will have the dog bowls on her mind and after she crawls into the kitchen we will pick her up and return her to a toy in the living room. She won't have any interest in the toy and will go strait back to the kitchen. This can happen several times.

It is obvious that she is learning a lot about her environment. She is curious about everything around her and is ever happy and independent. Cuddle time is a rarity. She would rather be on the floor, crawing between the t.v., the coffee table, a chair, the fire place, and standing up next to each of them and trying to grab something. With all this crawling, grabbing on to objects, and standing up next to them, she is getting much stronger, and gaining balance and confidence. It could be next week when she starts standing on her own without holding a chair or leg for stability. Already she is letting go and standing unassisted for a second or two.

Aunt Jessica and the Pumpkin Patch

It is now at the end of week two of three with Aunt Jessica visiting Molly. The time has passed too quickly. Although her body was in shock from the 13 hour time difference, we didn't let her sit and lazily fend of the jet lag. We kept her on the go by starting off with a trip to Bob's Corn Maze and Pumpkin patch. Bob's is a small farm near Monroe and is growing every year. In addition to the pumpkins and corn maze, there are wagon rides, pony rides, jungle gyms, kid's rides in trailers behind a little tractor, and a store with lots of local goods.

It had poured rain the day before, so the place was a muddy mess. Cars were getting stuck on flat ground, tractors were busy pulling people out, and the occasional kid would walk by splattered in mud from going down face first. Trina, Molly, Jess (and the small pumpkin she was smuggling), and I piled in the trailer that hauled us up to the bars.

There isn't a lot for an 8-month old at a muddy farm, unless you are willing to let them get real muddy, and put who knows what in her mouth. We watched some of the older kids and parents having fun, and then plopped Molly in the middle of the pumpkin pile for some pictures.

With all the colors, textures, and sizes of pumpkins in the pile, I thought for sure she would try to climb all over the pile and discover it all. Nope. She thought the stems were worth tasting. We moved her around a bit to see if smaller or different pumpkins would gather more interest from her, and finally we found one that did. She gave it a good rub down; perhaps it felt similar to her rather bald little head.

We let her cawl around on the pumpkins for a while, then mosied on to pick out our pumkins and a few other things. Hopped on the trailer for a ride back to the car.

The Bath

Molly is growing more independent. Since learning to crawl and stand up on her own, although with the assistance of a stool, coffee table, or leg to grab on to, she has become all the more active and independant. She rarely want to be held, except to eat or rarely to go to sleep. If she is in your arms, keep her bouncing, flying, or something to keep her moving. She believes the world is hers to discover and will stop for only a few things that ultimately help this cause - food and unwillingly, sleep.

Now that she is coordinated enough to support herself she takes baths with out us in the tub. We fill the tub with enough water to cover her legs, sit her on a yellow foam pad, and let her splash away.

She is very tollerant of the washing part of the bath and even seems to enjoy that as well.

Even in the bath it is hard to keep her still. The moment she gets bored with trying to eat her red devil rubber duck, she starts crawling around and in an instant is climbing up the wall of the tub to stand up with all the big people in the room.

Avocado

At last! The camera arrived in the mail today after a month long vacation at the repair shop in Portland. No more of that.

First off, I had to get back to photographing my favorite subject, Molly. Trina had started feeding her some whole grain puffs (a.k.a. 'baby crack), which we scatter on her tray where she has fun picking them up and stuffing in her mouth on her own. Next up was the new item for the day, the green, slimy avocado. Initial reactions were mixed, but positive.

Then it started to go down hill. Smiles were present, but not when we put the green slimy stuff in her mouth. Furthermore, the internal/external ratio was shifting to the latter.

Finally, the full-on gag ended the session. Trina cleaned her up and we ate dinner around the kitchen island while she was entertained by out antics. She particularly enjoys the rattling of of the martini shaker. Some green slimy death vegetable made it to her head, so Trina gave her a bath while I did the dishes. A big bottle and off to bed to stand in bed crying for a while before sleep.

A close call

We had our first true close call w/ Molly.

A car drove through the wall of her daycare room yesterday. Thankfully she is fine. Three other babies from her room went to the hospital. The news has reported that they are fine.

See Trina's blog for more.

Wow.

http://venardfamilypost.blogspot.com/2009/08/thankful.html