Where did spring go?

We were so enjoying the warm spring weather...playing outside, wearing short sleeves...WHAT HAPPENED????  It is stinking cold outside again!  And Miss Molly is NOT pleased with it.  She loves to be outside, she cries when you make her come back inside.

It has taken me some time to get my house organized from the massive amount of toys Molly got for her birthday.  But Molly is loving all of her new things!

She got this wonderful baby stroller from her friends Aybrie and Addy.  As you can see, at first she thought it was meant for her!

Then she finally came to terms with the fact that it belongs to the baby doll...and she LOVES it!  She crouches down in front of it and just talks and talks and talks to the baby doll!  It is too funny listening to her jibberish!

Over spring break we went to Dallas Blooms at the Arboretum with Liz, Steven, and Grace!  Molly had such a good time playing with Gracie!

I'm not sure if Gracie was playing keep away from Molly in this one, or if she was trying to coax her to cross the line to a place she is not supposed to be....

The theme this year of Dallas Blooms was Fairy Tale Castles.  I don't remember whose castle this one was, but Molly had so much fun peeking through all the doors and windows!

There was a petting zoo set up and Lizzie took Molly and Gracie in to meet the animals.

This was Rapunzel's Castle (sp?) and Molly LOVED crawling through the doorways!

Also over spring break, we had our first busted lip.  Poor Molly.  She was so sad, there was blood and everything! :(  After sucking on some ice and a nap, she was MUCH better, just a bit swollen.

And she has finally decided that she loves to wear her sunglasses!  She puts them on and takes them off and then wants you to put them on again!  She thinks she is really something else in them.

On St. Patricks Day, we met an old friend Michelle up at Los Rancheros to introduce her to the experience that is Domingo!  This was the first time we had been since Molly could walk.  And boy did she love it!  Blake put her down on the ground and she immediately walked right out on the dance floor and started dancing!  She was a riot!  I had to practically drag her off the dance floor!  A video of Molly and Grace dancing even made it onto Domingo's facebook page, Blake was a bit jealous!

Molly has become a climber!  She can't quite make it up on the couch, but boy does she try!  Look at that flexibility!

Oh, the Elysa tongue....

We played outside of the backyard.  Molly was trying to find her puppies!

 

Molly is loving her bathtime now!  She puts her whole face under the water, no biggie!  She will be ready for swimming this summer!

One Year!

A year ago today, we were at Presbyterian Hospital waiting and waiting and waiting for our Molly.

We had NO idea how she would change our world!

And at 6:37 pm she came!

The most perfect, beautiful, joyful blessing of our lives! 

(I can't write any more, or I'll be crying!)

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On Saturday we had Molly's first birthday party, and it was GREAT!  The weather was perfect, all the kiddos had such a fun time, Blake cooked great burgers, and Molly LOVED her birthday cake!

And I mean LOVED!  I think it was the messiest smash cake I have ever seen, and I am sure that was the case for most of our guests!

I will post more pictures soon (I didn't have my camera out, so I'm waiting to get copies of pictures from all my friends).  

Here we go again!

My Molly has been a total cuddle-bug lately and I am LOVING IT!

She just lays in my arms talking to me at bedtime.

That is one of the biggest things I miss from her being little, the ability to lay still long enough to cuddle.

I think she must know that I am pregnant~ all this loving on mommy started right when I found out!

We are SO excited about welcoming another baby into our home.  But there are also many other emotions that go with it!  

I feel a bit of guilt, right now, but I am hoping that will go away.  I feel guilty because Molly is no longer going to be the soul recipient of our attention.  She is going to have to share her Mommy and Daddy.  I know that plenty of other babies have survived this (as did me and my sisters), but still, the guilt is there.

Blake and I are hopeful that baby #2 is as good natured and dare I say, easy, as our Molly was.  Molly slept through the night at 2 months and has not woken up in the middle of the night since!  Hopefully we will have a repeat preformance of this behavior!

I just finished packing up all of Molly's bottles.  She is a big girl now!  Straight milk and sippy cups!  But I am sure I will be digging those bottles back out soon enough, when I have to go back to work after baby #2.

So we are busy trying to prepare ourselves for a move and the prospect of renting out our current home.  We have been through the inspection of the new home and the end of our option period and all things seem to be good to go so far!


We are also preparing for Molly's VERY FIRST BIRTHDAY PARTY this Saturday!  I'll be sure to post some pictures of all events at the end of the weekend!


And praise the good Lord!  After Friday we are on SPRING BREAK!  One of the lovely perks to being a teacher!  Just when you think you might kill a kid, spring break comes!  We aren't going anywhere for spring break.  Just a week full of doctor's and dentist appointments!

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And now, for your viewing pleasure, a bit of Miss Molly!

Molly loves to empty out her diaper bag...today she found a banana and carried it around with her the rest of the afternoon....needless to say, it was a bit bruised come snack time!

Silly Molly eating breakfast!

Molly likes to stick her fingers in the blueberries and then paint her tray with them!

Blueberry Pancakes = Messy baby!

When Molly is finished eating, she likes to take a baby wipe and wipe down her tray...she actually does a pretty good job!

Long time, no talk

See, this is why I said I don't do this kind of thing.  Life gets busy and I keep forgetting to tell you all about it.

So, where to start?

Well, let's start with the fact that my child is practically RUNNING through my house!  She rarely ever crawls anymore, unless we are playing with her on the floor.  It is so fun to watch her grow more confident in her walking each day.  She has also gotten very good at climbing.  She wants to climb on EVERYTHING.  I consider myself lucky right now that she is too short to be able to get up on the 'big people' furniture.  Molly is able to climb on an off of her little car, and she can even scoot herself backwards on it.  She is getting much better at independent play.  She will walk back to her bedroom and play for quite some time with her toys, unloading her baskets of toys and bed linens, and unloading her bookshelf.

Yesterday, Molly even walked over to her bookshelf, picked out a book "Where is Baby's Belly Button?", walked it over to me, and climbed in my lap for me to read it to her....who is this little girl and when did she become such a little girl?

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So we are in the process of buying a new house, a little bit bigger house, about 600 square feet bigger.  Not much to most, but it will seem like a mansion after the 1200 sq ft we have been squeezed into. 

More on that in the coming weeks as everything gets finalized and hopefully we close on time.  

But we are keeping our current home and using it as a rental property.  Soooo, if you know anyone that needs a place to live in East Dallas.....

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We have been keeping ourselves pretty busy around here.  We had a play date with Eben and his parents.  We LOVE our Eben!  Brooke, Eben's mommy, and I used to take Eben and Molly to Baby Bounce together.  We went for a good 4 months when the babies were VERY little.  It was SO much fun!  We still try to get together to play every so often.  

That same weekend, we invited Molly's Great-Grandma over for dinner.  This is my grandmother (my mom's side).  She lives just around the corner from us and we invite her over some Sunday afternoons to play with Molly and eat with us.  I think she really enjoys it!

Molly has started picking everything up and carrying it around that house as a purse.  This is my lunch bag that she adopted for the afternoon.  I guess I probably need to make her her own play purse, but I am sure that Mommy's things will still be more entertaining!

One afternoon, my sister Liz had an event at her school so we got to watch Gracie!  Grace is getting much better at the whole sharing thing!  We had no meltdowns from either party!  They even shared their first cousin bath time!

And lastly, this past Saturday Grace had her 3rd Birthday Party!  It was a Mickey Mouse theme and it was SO cute!  Molly so wanted to be with all the big kids.  Every time I took her inside, she made a beeline back to the door.  She walked SO much that day that she wore blisters on her big toes!  Molly experienced a bounce house for the first time and she LOVED IT!!!  Of course, we waited until the big kids were through with it.  But you can see by the pictures that Molly had quite a grand time wallering around alone!  She even stood up in it and made it bounce on her own...it was just too short-lived for me to get pictures of it.

This is the final product of Grace's Birthday present from us.  She is crazy about hopsctoch.  

The back side is tic tac toe.

Until next time, my friends....and I promise, it won't be so long before I write again!