take a hike

The other day (a few weeks ago, really) we went for a hike in the redwoods. Zach found this great clearing where we could lay on the ground an gaze waaaay up into the tall tall trees. Which was nice for a minute, but then the little pooper trooper wanted to get moving. And who could blame her? We have places to go, things to do!

The trip back east last weekend was quick, but nice. I remembered many things I miss about the east coast (the green, the smell of green, fireflies) and a few things I don't (the sweaty, heavy humidity). All things considered, Molly was great. She was exceedingly patient... for a 15 month old. Sleep during the day was hard to come by, but at night she zonked. The plane rides were tough - and made tougher by some on-the-runway delays. I'd say newly mobile is a very tough time to ask a kid to sit for 6+ hours. We were fortunate enough to have had a seat for Molly (thanks Susie & Charly!), but even so, it was a serious juggling act.

For this flight we tried out a new car-seat gadget: wheels. In concept, great, in execution 90% great. (see picture below is similar to what we have, but our wheelz are a groovy bright orange, our carseat cover is a hip cow-moo-flage, and our baby is, well, awesome). And while I was dissapointed that the carseat didn't fit through security with the wheelz on, they did save our butts when Molly fell asleep while the plane was landing after stubbornly refusing to nap for the entire 6hr+1hr delay flight! We were able to lift her & the car seat out of the plane, wheel her to baggage claim, and wheel her out to the car.

We're off to the in-laws this father's day weekend. Hopefully, we'll remember the camera, since there will be 3 generations of fathers there!

Goose!

Home again, again

Unfortunately, we forgot our camera on the trip to NY/CT, but here are some recent pics from home. Hopefully, everyone we saw there who had a camera handy will share their pictures with us (hint hint!).

How to get what you want

1. Sign for "help"
2. You get to peek inside!
no screams necessary.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Molly's got her cool trike, cool cow leg warmers, and is just plain cool.

She also had her 15 month checkup this week. And all seems fine. Except we had to have more blood drawn to check her iron levels again. The blood draw is very much not fun. We basically have to pin her down while they stab at her with a needle to find a vein. Fortunately, this time the nurse was awesome - she got the vein, drew the blood, and even cracked some jokes about the decibel level of Molly's hollerin' all the while keeping it mellow and getting it done quicker than most blood draws that I've had.

And we're not too worried about her iron levels, seeing how she's been pretty good about taking the iron drops these last two months. We found that while she doesn't like the iron drops she does like the vitamin drops. We've been able to make it clear that she only gets the vites if she takes the iron first. Sometimes she tries to see if maybe just this once we'll give her the vitamins first. And the other day I thought she might have finally found a way around taking the iron by simply spitting it out, but that seems to have been a one time occurrence (knock on wood). Mostly, she just really wants to get to those vitamins. Hooray.

gloves, too

Gloves are cool, too.

Shooo

The object/word of the week is "shooo". She signs it, says it, and loves putting on the big-kid shoes. If we let her she'd clomp around like this all afternoon. Of course, we'd let her, but really she doesn't get far before she falls down. :)

Hello?

She's a busy girl, this one.

She's been getting very expressive - through her signs and her words (or, mostly the first syllable of words) she's communicating up a storm. Oh, and her kisses and hugs are to live for!

And Zach and I are more and more in love with her than ever. Every chance we get we trade stories to each other about how much of a person she has become. He tells me about driving in the car talking on his fancy bluetooth car connection and how she patiently listens to the whole conversation and then says "bye-bye" at just the right time. I tell him how she pointed at her right shoe this morning and said "shoe" (or rather "shhho") while roughly signing "shoe". And then pointed at the other shoe and repeated the word and sign.

And we laugh when her attempts to communicate with us fail miserably - like Sunday morning when she burst into tears because I didn't understand that she wanted me to put my pink sock on her. She had carefully pulled my pink sock out of the sock bin and carried it around for a while before presenting it to me. We chatted about what it was for a little bit (I repeated the sign "sock" while saying the word, pointing out her socks, and admiring the pictures woven onto the socks). Then I showed her how I could put my hand in it, how I could put it on Zach's toes, and how I could put it on her toes. With each demonstration she got increasingly excited. Silly me, I thought she was excited to see where the sock went. What I didn't notice was that she kept lifting one foot off the ground (in, what I later figured out was an attempt to get me to put the sock on her). By the time I got to putting the sock on my foot she threw herself on the ground in tears, only stopping when I put the dear sock on her. She then proceeded to walk around the house with one pink Sofi sock pulled up over her knee until I got too worried about her slipping and falling.

[ps. sorry about the confusion yesterday with the "Tabblo" entry. I was playing around with a new website that lets you post pictures. I got errors when I tried "posting to blog" so I assumed it didn't work and went to sleep. Silly me.]