Happy Birthday Pa!

We're down in CV this weekend celebrating Pa's birthday. Molly got to celebrate a little early when Nana & Pa stopped by and took her to the park. Molly showed them how she likes to go down the slide on her belly. Head first.

You may also notice that Molly has a "big girl" haircut with bangs. The other day I realized that not only was the hair in her face presenting "hair management" issues for us - Molly was probably even more irritated than we were with the hair! Several times when she was waking up in the middle of the night she would be crying and at the same time saying "hair! hair!" and trying to get the hair out of her eyes and mouth. Yuk.

I quizzed Zach on his feelings about bangs and he felt he couldn't really offer much of an opinion, seeing how he's never really done much hair management (the long hair in college doesn't really count since it was never really managed, per se). So I asked Paz what she thought one day and she was agreed that it was well past time to do something about the hair in the face. In fact, she went and got scissors and helped me figure out how much to cut.

Trick or Treat?

Molly dressed up as a train engineer this year. She preferred to wear her hat backwards and enjoyed dancing with Nate, the firefighter. Later, we all enjoyed some Snoopy (and the Great Pumpkin) projected on our neighbor's garage (courtesy of Zach) while handing out candy to the neighborhood kids.

planes, trains, and automobiles

Yes, these are some "older" photos. By "older" I mean they were taken in ... August when we took that crazy trip south, east, north, and west. Too much traveling all at once. As I said then, Molly was a super sport, and even offered to help drive when Zach and I got tired!

Speaking of Zach, he's promising pictures from their trip to the pumpkin patch this weekend. I'm as anxious as you are to see them - while they were frolicking in the pumpkins with Nate, I was taking a prep course for my upcoming licensing exam - the first of five. Zach promises he'll show me the pictures, as soon as he gets them off the neighbor's camera.

the Fish on the Bus Go...

We've been singing "The Wheels on the Bus" song a lot these last few days. At first it was just about having fun with the hand motions, which Molly enjoyed. Then, we started asking Molly "what's next?". She would specify "up-down" for "the windows on the bus go up and down", and "babies" for the babies on the bus go wah-wah-wah", etc. And then she started breaking out of the mold. One of her favorite requests now is "fish", as in "the fish on the bus go splish splash splish" (or whatever we feel like making the fish do at the moment). I guess if Dr. Seuss can put three fish in a tree (fish in a tree? how can that be?) Molly can have fish on a bus, right?

Opa's visit

Opa had a mostly wonderful visit last week (the first few days were a little rough for him since he had a tooth pulled the day before he came). He got a lot of quality babysitting time in with Molly. And for at least a day after he left Molly would occasionally ask "Opa?" (as in, where is he?).

Here they are taking a careful walk down the stairs.

Lake Sonoma

Last weekend we went camping with our friends Robin and Betsy, their daughter Lucy, and Betsy's mom up at Lake Sonoma. As usual, Molly loved it. We hiked in a short way - just over a mile - and camped out on the shore of the reservoir. The weather was perfect, and there was hardly anyone there since it's apparently "between seasons" (ie. after the summer camp-out season and before the winter fishing season [?]). There were a few loud waterskiers, but even they couldn't take over the entire lake. And the moon was amazing. 13% brighter than usual, according to some sources. :)

last Sunday's Pictures

Molly does some sidewalk painting with Oscar across the street; Molly practices nose picking; Molly's family walking in the redwoods; Molly.