Summertime!

I am absolutely LOVING being home for the summer with my little sunshine girl and her Daddy. It is such a blessing that Eric gets to work from home in the evenings. We get to spend all day together as a family hanging out and having fun, and even after Eric goes to work, I know he's right here with us. We still get to eat dinner together and he still gets to kiss Molly goodnight every evening at bedtime. I think it's going to be even harder to go back to school this fall than it ever has been before. But, in the meantime, we're soaking up every drop of summer and having a blast! See what I mean...
So, what's up with the full moon in June? Well, diapering has been quite the acrobatic feat lately. Molly is now extremely mobile and agile. Within milliseconds of being laid on the changing table, she is rolled over and trying to dive-bomb off the edge and onto the floor. I've started just changing her on the floor to prevent any unfortunate mishaps. Well, you can see the problem with that...once the diaper's off, she's already found something more interesting to do than get a clean diaper put on. In this case, whatever Daddy was doing on the computer was much more fascinating than having Mommy snap on a new diaper. I need to grow 3 or 4 more arms in order to succeed at both holding her down AND putting on a diaper at the same time.

We spent last Saturday afternoon at the Hillsborough Hog Days. By the time we got there, they had run out of barbecue, but they still had some fabulous mediterranean food and Greensboro's own Natty Greene's beer. Molly got to try hummus for the first time...

...and she thoroughly enjoyed it! Don't worry, she didn't wash it down with a Southern Pale Ale ;-)

Last Sunday, we celebrated Eric's first Father's Day. Molly was so excited to help Daddy open his gift.

And here's Eric trying to hide his face from the camera so that we can't see his "eyes watering" as he reads the photobook Molly gave him as a Father's Day gift. I used our Shutterfly account to put together a book of pictures that chronicle Eric's journey into and through the first year of fatherhood. It even includes captions written from Molly's perspective as she thanks her Daddy for what a great father he's been. We both love him bunches and I thank God for bringing us together every day.

Since we're going to the beach next month, I thought we should try on Molly's bathing suit to make sure it fit. Well, the bottom's have a built-in diaper, so they're too small to try on over her cloth diaper. I wasn't about to attempt the diaper acrobatics described earlier, so we just tried it on as a hat instead...fit's good, don't you think?

It's been wicked hot here the last few weeks (upper 90s), so we decided to take a short hike along shady Lake Michael and discovered this great little spot to dip our toes in the water.

Molly had a great time splashing and was pretty thoroughly soaked by the time we left.

Eric decided to do a little illegal swimming to capture this shot (shhhh! Don't tell). He wanted to take Molly illegal swimming with him, but I told him that she's too young to be a criminal like her Daddy.

Even without an illegal dip in the lake, our little nature girl had a great time hiking, splashing, and studying the beautiful world around us. Ahhh, gotta love summertime.

In the DOUBLE DIGITS!

Our little MoJo is now 10 months old. She's growing and changing by the day, learning new skills and experiencing new things. So what's Molly up to at 10 months old?

• Molly is still the "girl of a million faces" and has been since she was a newborn. We've discovered the only way to truly capture the full spectrum of Molly-faces for the blog-o-sphere is on video. Enjoy:

• She now waves "Hello" and "Bye-Bye"...well, sort of. It actually looks more like the "Heil Hitler" Nazi salute. She raises her pudgy little arm straight out in front of her like a little German soldier. Oops! We'll have to keep working on that one. She's also very into clapping. Everything deserves a little applause, in Molly's opinion.
(In case you can't tell from this picture, it was really cold in NY when we were there!)


• Molly is now an expert crawler and cruiser. She can get pretty much anywhere she wants to in the house and definitely has her favorite play-places...ususally the exact places we want to keep her away from. She's in love with our entertainment center, even if the TV's not on, which it usually isn't. She likes to push the buttons on the TV, pull all the CDs and DVDs off their shelves (uh-oh!), and push over the Wii (double uh-oh!!). She hasn't tried to stand on her own or walk while holding someone's hands. She seems to be pretty content to crawl and cruise her way around the house.


• We LOVE to read together. Molly now has several favorite board books that she "reads" on a daily basis, especially touch-and-feel books with flaps and textures. She loves to flip the pages really quickly and gets impatient if there are too many words on one page. Her current favorite is a Peter Rabbit touch-and-feel book she got for Easter. She will even point to the fluffy bird on one page if you say, "Molly, where's the BIRD?". She's also very into magazines...not so much for reading, but more for destroying. I apologize to the person who sat in our Southwest airlines seat after we flew to NY. The in-flight magazine may have been missing some pages.

• Molly took her second airplane trip this past week to NY for her Aunt Joy's wedding. The last time we flew, she was one month old and pretty much slept the entire trip. This time was a little different. She's very squirmy and busy. It was definitely a 2-person job to keep her occupied. Thankfully, she had her own seat on two of the flights and did fairly well in her carseat. Overall, she did a great job and charmed all of our flight attendants.
• One of her favorite self-invented games is the Molly-version of "Kick the Can", which she plays with pretty much any toy that she can push, roll, or slide. She'll take a block, car, or ball and push it a few feet in front of her and then crawl after it. She pushes and chases the toy around the entire room, which'll occupy all of 3 minutes before she moves on to something else.

• Molly has recently become a total "mommy's girl". If I'm holding her and someone reaches out their arms for her, she'll turn her head and cling to me for dear life. If someone else is holding her and I walk by, she'll claw her way over their shoulder like a monkey to jump into my arms. I could hardly even take a shower today. As soon as Molly saw me heading for the bathroom, she started crying and crawling after me. As soon as I came out and picked her up, she was fine! I feel bad for poor Eric. He spent WAY more time with her during the school year and now she treats him like chopped liver. Poor Daddy! Consequently, anytime I'm trying to get anything done in the kitchen, I can look down to see this:
  
• She needs to have anything you're drinking. She'll stare at you intently as you pick up your glass and then make a grab for it, but if you offer her a sippy cup, she'll refuse it. She's recently become so obsessed with my travel mug of coffee that I can't even have it out around her. To solve that problem, Molly now has her very own travel mug to pretend with.


• Molly is becoming quite the talker. She talks to us with a series of bwahs, jas, blahs, das, and bas (no "ma-ma" yet). I could just listen to her adorable little voice all day long, couldn't you?
  
  
  

With a trip to Pittsburgh, the end of the school year, and traveling to NY for the wedding, it's been pretty crazy around here (hence the long dry spell on my blog...sorry!). Therefore, we have LOTS of recent pictures that have barely found their way off of our camera. Here's just a few:

Playing it cool with GG.Mmmmm. Blueberry and yogurt smootie!Funny faces with Aunt Jennene.

Balloon fun at Aunt Joy's wedding.

New baby chicks! About 2 seconds after this picture was taken, Molly started beating on the poor little chick's head rather harshly! Guess we need to practice "gentle".