OCTOBER - Pumpkins!

Molly has taken three trips to the pumkin patch/corn maze this year.  The first was on a gorgeous sunny fall day with Ben, Kathleen, Chris and Owen.  The second was on a cold day with Ben and I.  The third was on a cold, wet, muddy day with Josie and her cousins.   It's no surprise that Molly's favorite part was the animals.

Come on, Molly!  Let's go!

"Hi, Chickens"

Mini Maze

"Hi, pumkin!"

OCTOBER - Rita's Walkstars

Molly's beautiful Grandmother is one of the most amazing women I have ever known.  She is selfless, loving and full of spirit.  Several years ago, she was diagnosed with ALS, and a group of us joined together to walk in support of finding a cure for this horrible disease.  It was a very cold fall morning but turned out to be a beautiful day at City Park.  Molly loved walking!  She was a little girl on a mission and was so cute crossing the finish line.  It was a great day in honor of a great woman.

OCTOBER

Long over-due on the updates on our beautiful, energetic, loving TODDLER!  My goal is to start with October and go backward in time month-by-month to catch up.  Will see how we do.

We have been enjoying a beautiful fall in the Mendoza household!  October has involved a lot of playing in the leaves (one of Molly's favorite activities, just like her Mama!), a walk to support ALS in honor of Molly's beautiful and inspiring Abuelita, a few trips to the Zoo, a fall festival with her cousins, a trip to Keystone with her little buddy, Owen, a few visits to the pumpkin patch, her first visit to taco bell (momentous!), a sleep over with her cousin, Zane, and her first time trick-or-treating. 

Molly is thriving!  She just had her 15 month pediatrician apt and is still just shy of 20 lbs.  She is in the 10th percentile for height (thanks, Grandpa Ben!) and 30th percentile for weight, and 50th for head circumference (thanks, Dada!).  She has 6 teeth and the cutest smile.  She is walking everywhere and it still takes my breath away to see her walk across the room at times.  She can jump on a trampoline, feed herself with a spoon (sort of!), and draw with a pen (we avoid crayons because she likes to eat them whole!).  

Her newest big accomplishment is her talking!  She has so many new words.  Half of the time I don't even know where she learned them!  She says "please" "help, please" "night night" "mama" "dada" "ball" "pup pup" "cheese" (when you take her picture) "Nell" "bye" "eat" "up" "out" "Molly" "baby" and, my personal favorite right now is "cracker."  Something about the way she says it is too cute.  I'm sure there are plenty more words as well. 

She loves doggies and perks straight up and yelps every time she hears a dog bark.   She waves at everyone and says "bye" at random points in conversations.   This month she also started to realize what it means when I put on my green scrubs and get ready for work.  This has been a bit heartbreaking, as I was working night float for a good portion of this month and all of last month.  So glad to have that over with!  She waves at the telephone to say goodbye, waves at the mirror, even waves at her own shadow.  She smiles big when you say "show me your teeth."  She winks (or blinks really).  She loves straws.  She loves dancing, especially the Hot Dog dance from Mickey Mouse club. 

She is definitely becoming more of a toddler and wants to do everything herself.  She can go from being the happiest kid around to all out tantrum in about 18 seconds and has given her cousin Smith a piece of her mind a time or two, but overall she is still our sweet, loving, girl.

Pictures from October to follow....

Great grandma Fran

Flying home from Ohio for a service for Molly's sweet great grandmother, known as gfran by her 7 grand kids. We lost her unexpectedly a few weeks ago, and I am still overwhelmed with grief. She was one of the sweetest, most gentle, loving and selfless women in my life and I am so very sad that Molly won't have more time with her.

The last time we spent time with her was for a birthday party for Molly's cousin, Emerson. It went past Molly's bedtime and she was getting a little fussy. Grandma reached over with her famous long finger nails and gently to tickled Molly's arms and neck. She was immediately in a trance and fell asleep in my arms. Grandma was an amazing babysitter for Molly when Ben and I were in a bind and always came bearing gifts that ended up being Molly's favorites.

I will miss her stories, her tickles, and her soft soothing singing voice. I will pass on our memories and traditions to Molly with Andy Williams playing white christmas with the first snow, eating Jiffy cornbread with milk and sugar, always putting a little cinnamon on Molly's applesauce, rolling out and decorating the best christmas cookies with Molly, and I'll probably even watch Miss America contests with Molly and think of gfran. I will tell her stories and tickle Molly's back and arms. I will try to show Molly the love and sacrifice that grandma always provided for her children and grandchildren. I am so glad they at least got to spend a little time together.

11 months

How is it even possible that our sweet girl is 11 months old?! She is such a joy in our lives as always and changing every day. She is very mobile and crawling all over the place and up the stairs. As is true with most babies, she puts everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) in sight straight into her mouth. She has the cutest personality with so many facial expressions. There is never any doubt what she is thinking or feeling. She is usually a happy, sweet girl but can also loudly have a thing or two to say if she's unhappy. She eats like a champion and is growing so fast! She is a little clingy at times with some separation anxiety. She loves to dance, shake her head "no!," play in the bath, laugh with her dada, talk to mama on facetime when I work, and play outside. She can tell us when she's "all done," wave and blow kisses, pull herself up to standing in her crib, and show how she is "so big!" She sleeps like a champ. She also loves to dance and will sing along too. Her favorite things right now are ritz crackers, yogurt, her Elmo book, and her monkey who sleeps with her every night. She brightens our world every day. Can't believe she's almost one year old!

She's not so cute!

Some less flattering pictures of my beautiful baby girl....

Aug 27, 2012

Six Months!!

Baby Girl is 6 months old!

Getting this one in right under the wire, as Molly girl will be 7 months in just over an hour :)  I cannot believe how big she is getting so quickly.  All of the pictures below are from my iphone - I will download from our camera and video camera soon :)

Here is what Molly has been up to during her 6th month of life:

Eating!  Molly is the best eater - she is so cute in her highchair and kicks her legs in excitement between each bite.  She is eating 3 solid meals per day now and we are adding more and more new foods every week.  Ben has been making her baby food and she currently enjoys oatmeal cereal with breastmilk, rice cereal with breastmilk, sweet potatoes, apples, blueberries mixed with apples, bananas, peaches, peas, green beans and squash.  We have tried puffs, but they are, at this time, just about the only item Molly will NOT put in her mouth lol.  We also try to give a little diluted apple juice in a sippy cup with variable success - she loves juice but sometimes struggles with the sippy cup.  The first time we gave her juice was on a the plane ride on our way home from Californina earlier last month - she LOVED it!!  We have video recorded each new item hoping to get a good facial expression from her, but so far she seems to love just about everything.

When we first started feeding her (on new year's eve), she grabbed the spoon and insisted on holding the spoon herself.  She would fuss or even yell if we tried to take the spoon away.  Now she doesn't even try to grab the spoon.  She just continues playing or exlporing her world and passively opens her mouth and waits for a bite.  When she gets one she kicks her legs and waves her arms in glee.  I love love love meal time. 

Um...Molly...You got a little something on your face!

Aunt Nell feeding a delicious blueberries/apples/oatmeal/breastmilk combo.  This day Anthony had a fundraiser for his school at Chili's and Molly and I met her for breakfast.  She looked tiny in the highchair!!

Happy girl!

Lunchtime with Josie - Smith had the nerve to be using his own booster seat so Molly got the Bumbo Seat on the kitchen floor - she didn't seem to mind one bit.    

Homemade green beans

Homemade peaches and peas (I kinda of managed to burned the peas a little...maybe I should leave the baby food making to Ben!)

Dinner time - Rice, Milk, Beans and "Mommy's Juice" :)  This was a lovely Friday evening with Molly after a week of nights in which Ben was working overnight and Molly and I had a girls night.  She enjoyed dinner and we cuddled for a long time before bed time.  I then enjoyed Indian takeout and some wine.  Such a good night (even if it was without dada)

Blueberry face

Mesmorized by the food

For a time she insisted on having her own spoon. 

I love how tiny she looks in her high chair - happy, sweet girl.

SLEEP
She is still a champ when it comes to sleeping, but is starting to sleep less and less during the day.  She usually sleeps from 7:30pm until 6 or 7am (yes, we are spoiled).  She takes 2 naps a day (sometimes a short 3rd cat nap in early evening). 

We used to have a guarentee that she'd pass out in the car no matter what, but she now often stays awake on the drive to or from Josie's and plays in the back seat. 

I have to say that working nights has made me appreciate bedtime SO much.  Ben will "face time" me each evening so I can say goodnight, which helps, but it's hard to beat bedtime with Molly.  She is so snuggly at night and it is some of our best bonding times.  I will admit that she does always cry when we put her down in her crib, but usually for only a few minutes.  She is no longer solely a back sleeper - we find her in all sorts of different positions throughout the night.  She will frequently roll from back to front and back again.  Ben and I do sneak in her room most nights just to peak in on her - the first time Ben found her on her stomach I think it scared him (you know all the "back to sleep" montra) - he immediately flipped her to her back.  I laughed so hard I almost woke her up, she didn't seem to mind one bit.  We also found her laying on her stomach with her butt in the air the other night.  So funny!  She also does her fair share of snorning (takes after her dad!)

This night she was especially exhausted from a day with her cousins and passed out during her bottle.  It was a Friday evening after a week of night-float so I took advantage of the extra cuddle time and just held her for almost an hour!  So refreshing after missing her all week long!

Shop till you drop!

TALK!
Molly has found her voice.  She loves to talk all the time - she says 'mama' and 'dada' (though more as sounds than acutal words).  Also La and Ba and spits and screams and even sweetly tried to sing back to me when I was singing to her the other night before bed.  She also does her fair share of laughing.  She has the sweetest laugh.

PLAY
Her favorite toys are currently the classics (Trudy the mouse and Sophie the giraffe), a play-school Dog from her Grandma Rita who dances and sings, her exersaucer from her Grandma Jodi, and pretty much anything she can bang around and make noise with.  She is starting to find it entertaining to drop toys on the ground and watch mama pick them up.  She loves to play with her hands.  Most of all, she loves tags.  She eats the tags on her toys and her play gym all the time.  She puts just about anything in her mouth - the other day she was playing with dada and totally just bit his nose and laughed.  She loves music and will flail her arms and legs in dance when a good toon comes on.  She is so interactive and will smile and laugh with you.  She also loves the cell phone and remote control.  Love play time with Molly.

The rest are just random pictures from my phone from her 6th month of life. 


This day we were hanging out with Janelle and Anthony and decided to go to the part on a cool sunny day.  I love the random outfit!  (More park pics to come)


Ready to go to the park!

This was a very cold Sunday morning in which dada slept in and I took Molly to brunch at Snooze with some girls from work.   She is so cute all bundled up and did a great job at bfast.

Snot face

Bath time with Dada

These next pictures were taken by Ben on a morning in which I met him at a Starbucks on the way to Josie and Zack's house on my way home from work so he didn't have to drive all the way there.  He fed Molly a bottle and took these pictures while waiting for me...

I love her big brown eyes!

This was a fun day at home as a family.  I love the Providence College t-shirt from our friends, Brian and Stephanie, who are both professors there.  I think she looks so cute in it!

I think this is her philosophing face



Play time with Emmy





The monkey on her exersaucer was so almost out of reach just a few weeks ago - this morning she was so proud of her self for finally reaching him that she would not let go.  She's grown so much in just a few weeks that now he basically sits on her head.  Oh my.



Drool everywhere - one of the many times this month Ben or I  have said "I'm sure she's getting a tooth!" - not yet!

Stretch

Bath time with her cousin, Smith

 

Everything goes in the mouth

I love these last few pictures.  We got this "Baby MD" outfit from Grandma Rita long before we even thought about having a baby!  Ben was looking all over for clean pjs that actually fit the other night and ran across this.  I love it.