Molly Turned Me Into a Zombie

It is hard to express how exhausted we are! Molly has decided not to sleep for more than two to three hours at a time and outlaw napping entirely for almost a month. At first it was manageable, but now it's really starting to get to us. John has even slept on the couch a few nights in the hopes of getting a bit of shut eye so he could function at work.

Poor Molly is in the throws of teething and being on the verge of crawling which apparently makes sleeping impossible. Overall she's pretty happy until about 5pm when the lack of sleep really catches up to her. I am doing the best I can to hold on and can't wait for Aunt Maura and Aunt Kate to show up tomorrow to give some much needed help.

Despite the lack of sleep, she still has a good time with her big sis Delaney.
She was having a lot of fun bouncing around.

Self Feeding

A few times a week I give Molly a bath right after breakfast so she can practice feeding herself. It's quite a messy affair, but she really seems to enjoy it.

It's strange how such a small bowl of food can make such a big mess! Here she is scraping the bottom of the bowl for more brown rice porridge with butternut squash puree.
"Oh, come on, there's got to be more here somewhere. I'm not nearly messy enough."
Even though she hasn't made much progress actually feeding herself, I think it's obvious how much fun she has and isn't that what it's really all about?
Molly is also getting some practice with her sippy cup. Here she is after a considerably neater meal.

Darby's 15th Birthday

We had a great time celebrating Darby's 15th. It started out with a birthday brunch consisting of french toast and homemade overnight cinnamon rolls. (I must say that it was quite a process, but the result was well worth it! Thank you Alton Brown.)

Then Darby opened up his presents, not a bad haul. He got a lot of clothes from Vans, some music magazines, a backpack, a track suit from Nana and Pops, cash from Luke and Barbara and Grandma and Grandpa Pitts and lots of birthday callers sending birthday wishes.

Molly was excited watching her big brother open up his presents.
Waiting for cake with Laurie.
After a dinner of Zachary's pizza, it was time for cake and then Darby and the boys watched District 9. All in all, a great day.

Mobile?

Molly is on the move but she is not crawling per se, she is moving backwards! She gets on the floor and pushes herself backwards. She seems to enjoy herself and can really cover some ground when she wants to, especially on the hardwood floor.
Here she is in action. Her next move is to drop to her chest, move her hands back and then straighten out her arms while pushing her body backwards. It's pretty funny to watch actually.
Here is the little beauty smiling away.
We joined a program called Farm 2 Table where we get locally grown organic fruits and vegetables twice a month. This is a sampling of our first weeks haul. Since I am making all of Molly's food, I thought it would be worth going the extra mile and getting the best stuff possible. Molly didn't get much out of this batch, just the squash, but little by little, she'll start eating it all.
You can really see Molly's two teeth these days when she's laughing or screaming. I attempted to get a picture of them and came out with a lot of pictures of her tongue and this one, it's the only one where the teeth are actually somewhat visible. She has a new one sprouting up top that should be arriving in a week or so. I'll keep you posted.

Sunday in the Park

The rain has finally let up and we had a beautiful day on Sunday so we took advantage and walked over to a local park.

Molly didn't have much of a reaction going down the many slides. First we sent her down on her back, then she went down in daddy's lap. I think she didn't know what was going on.
She did, however, like sitting at the end of the slide and standing up holding onto it so that's a start I guess.
We were bummed to discover that they didn't have the basket baby swings, so Molly had to sit on our laps. She seemed more interested in the girl on the next swing who was having a lot of fun counting off her swings.
Molly is sitting up like a champ these days and really seems to enjoy the view.
She can also lean down to reach for things and then sit back up without falling over. Exciting stuff.