Christmas!

We're having too much fun in Atlanta!





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2nd tooth

Molly has been sleeping so well this week, through the night 11-ish hours three times! Except for last night, when she was awake from 1:30-3:30 am. Ugh. But I think I know why... I feel her second bottom tooth this morning!


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Daddy's girl

Just chilling on Saturday morning with dad!


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Early christmas

Molly slept through the night last night - 7:30 to 6:45! WAHOOOO!!
I woke up at 4:30, 5:30 and 6:30. At 6:30 I almost woke JC up squealing!!
We haven't been feeding her at night for a week now. She's been waking up just once and we've been comforting, just not feeding.
Who knows if this was a fluke or the start of a trend - we can hope for trend!

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Playing around

She is in such constant motion that it's hard to get a non-blurry picture of her smiling...


It's a lot easier to get her still when she is staring at something:)





What a little cutie!
Oh, and today she was starting to lift her hips off the ground... Crawling is in the near future!!

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some pics

Molly with her sippy cup:


We got a big (real!) tree this year!


Sitting up and grabbing at a toy - this jumper used to be mine as a baby!


Scooching closer and closer to "her" tree:


Eating green beans and rice yesterday:



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Happy thanksgiving!

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday with family this week! We had a great time with jc's family, in augusta, GA. I know, it's 3 hours away from my family and kind of weird we do all our holidays in Georgia, not texas. But it's a great part of the country, so it works for us!

We got back yesterday and it's kind of nice to have the weekend to recuperate and hang out here.


We are noticing daily changes with Molly! She has a full-blown, super-cute (not to mention sharp, yikes) tooth! She is sitting up really well, and scooching herself around with her arms. She's drinking water from a sippy cup (kind of) and eating avocado, sweet potato, rice cereal, and banana. That's in order of how she likes them so far. Rice cereal used to be a bit higher on the list but I started giving it to her with formula instead of breastmilk and she still sometimes shudders when I give it to her. hilarious!



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this past week...

This past week we've had some fun developments with Molly!

First, a little tooth is popping in -I wouldn't have noticed it, but she was gnawing on my knuckle and I felt it! It's very cute!

We tried avocado this morning and she seemed to like it - I only gave her a little bit, but she ate it all.

We started giving her a sippy cup with water in it. She knows how to suck the cup and get the water, but she doesn't actually want to drink it, so she spits it out. It's just a cool toy to her. Smart girl!



Perhaps most importantly (just kidding), she went shoe shopping at nordstrom with the Crawford ladies:)




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Molly's new friend

We had friends Corrine, Drew, and their son Brayden over for dinner last night. Brayden is 8 months old and a real cutie! We had a great time together and it was really fun seeing the little ones interact. I got a cute shot of them looking at each other!

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Baby food

Molly started eating sweet potatoes this past weekend! She seems to like them as much as her rice cereal, and today ate all the rice and sweet potato I fixed for her at lunch. What a champ!







So, I'm learning to make baby food. (Did you doubt I would?) Here are some of the sweet potatoes I made, and froze in heart-shaped ice trays. Kinda cute I think :) We're going to give her avocado in a few days, so that's the green goop in the background. (Soon to be all over her face!)




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cowboys game + Molly

JC set up a little compound for Molly since the cowboys game is on - it serves multiple purposes.

First, it prevents Molly from watching the game, which she would willingly stare at like a zombie, but it might turn her brain to mush. Second, she gets her tummy time without being able to roll over immediately. (Note the strategically placed pillows.) And third, she can play with her daddy!

















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True Love...

...is sticking your finger in someone's diaper at 3 am to see if it is poopy. And it is.


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Some of Molly's great grandparents

Here are Mubber and Poppy at their church's fall festival:


In case it's not obvious to you, Mubber is Hannah Montana and Poppy is a Pittsburgh Steeler. (He was going to go as a Jonas brother or Michael Jackson, but I guess the costumes didn't work out.)

Don't you LOVE this???

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Breakfast

We started Molly on rice cereal last Saturday! What fun. Except that it's really disturbed her sleep during the day AND at night. (Ahem, gas... Lovely.) Like we needed another sleep disturbance!!


Anyway, besides that, it's pretty cute and she seems to be injesting it.
Well, except for this morning (that's what the picture is from)!
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Crawford fam photo shoot

What started as JC's mom asking his brother Alan to come home from Baylor yesterday to take a Christmas card picture morphed into a full-blown photo shoot! Our good friend Mary Kathryn ended up coming over ... and we got the CD of pictures less than 24 hours later!

If you're in the Dallas area, she is a very talented photographer and also designs Christmas cards...
www. marykathrynwimberly.com


We'll use one of the pictures for our Christmas card - so I don't want to give too much away right now! :)

Molly's first football game...

Didn't go so well.


We went to see uncle drew play last night. When they forced a fumble and the parents all went crazy, she had a total breakdown!

We tried to tell her that she has to like football because we live in Texas, but she wasn't buying any of it. It's kind of sad, but her pouty face is just so cute!

pretty in pink

Molly's currently drooling all over my pillow. (It's my fault though, I took off her bib for some pictures...)





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birthday pics

Here are a couple pictures we took last night to document Molly turning six months!



Notice me holding down her hand to keep her from chewing it in the picture.


After she went to bed, we had some friends over to celebrate my 25th birthday... We even had a beer pong table. With a tablecloth over it. ("honey, these sawhorses are seriously ugly" - JC got a kick out of that) (oh the joys of marital compromise!)

Molly didn't wake up at all - we were so pleased! And we went to bed AFTER MIDNIGHT. Yes, we are WILD!!

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It's molly's half birthday!

Today Molly is six months old! It's hard to believe she's getting so old. Parenthood keeps getting better and better. We love this little girl so much!!
Right now she's playing in her bumbo seat:





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Hello from my iPhone!

Sorry it's been a few days... But I got an iPhone for my birthday and have just maybe figured out how to post from it?


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molly's "tongue thing"

here we are at mary's volleyball match!

pictures from our trip!

back in TX

We returned to Dallas Sunday afternoon and have been getting back to the swing of things. It was a great visit with family!!

Molly had some huge first experiences:

- Her FIRST volleyball match! Pope beat Marietta so badly in the state sectionals, it was rather boring. But my sister Mary played awesome. She leads the state of GA in kills and was already named all-area player of the year for the second year. I'm very proud of my little sis!
here's a four second shot of her*:


- Poppy drew buckets with Molly! (for the non-Hoey, this is a very important tradition. I'm sure there are a hundred babies that have pictures with poppy drawing buckets... but we one-upped them all and got a video!)

Pictures of our trip to come soon... (and more videos!)

*case in point - the game was such a blow-out I had time to fool around taking videos!

hello from georgia!

Molly and I are visiting my family for a long weekend. We're with Aunt Mary, Boo Boo, Paw Paw and great grandparents Mubber and Poppy!

Some exciting news: baby Sawyer Dean Scheffler is here! I got the text in the middle of the night. Doesn't this picture just warm your heart?! He's beautiful!!

I never knew I was so funny.

A note on Molly's hair: It is rather silly these days! Curly on top and straighter on the sides. With a bald-ish spot on the back where she rubs it in her crib. And it's all grown in blonde underneath but some is still dark. It looks like she has highlights (or lowlights??). That doesn't mean it's not perfectly adorable, of course (especially when tamed with a bow!).

It's about time for some pictures!

We had an appointment for the rest of Molly's four month vaccinations (we spread them out again), and got a weight update! Our sweet little girl is 13lbs 14oz after eating - almost a pound more than a month ago, so she is growing even if she's not a sumo baby! :) She got two shots - she didn't cry at all during the first one - so brave. This is her in her carseat afterwards.

Another highlight was playing with her friend Reese (and mom Anna) on Tuesday while I volunteered at the Free Market luncheon. She was thrilled to play with Reese (who calls her "MAW-EE!!"). (A big thank-you to Anna for watching her!) As you can see, she's very excited:














Here are some more pictures from this week:

five months!!

Molly is five months old as of yesterday. We love this sweet girl so much!!

a couple videos

For all of them, no matter how boring (I don't think they are, but I could see how others might, ha!) see the link on the right hand side of this blog.

Here she is playing and babbling. She's not incredibly happy, but you get a glimpse of her very new, extremely high-pitched squeal/scream. Sometimes it's a happy sound and other times it morphs into fussing, which is less pleasing. :)


And she loves this ballerina teddy bear - it makes her laugh everytime she looks at it! Something about it is very funny to her. Cute!


and in this I'm giving her thigh raspberries to make her laugh for the camera. Try to ignore me being ridiculous. I'm also trying to hold the camera at the same time, making it rather shaky. But you get the point.


On another note, last night molly went down at 8pm (cried until 9pm, though) and didn't wake up at all until 5:50am!! (after being fed she then went to sleep until 7:30, normal waketime) I think that might count as sleeping through the night for the first time!?!?

Update!

Molly is such a joy! This is definitely my favorite stage so far - she's just so happy, interactive and loves to play. She gets a kick out of playing "super molly" where we hold her up in the air and kiss her cheeks, the itsy bitsy spider, and checking out new things and people. She's pretty strong, too, holding herself up well and rolling over both ways.

She's eating every 3 hours or so and taking 3-4 naps a day (depends on how long they are, usually 45 minutes, but she's getting better at napping longer periods - 2 hours sometimes!).
Because she's not sleeping through the night, our pediatrician suggested giving her a bottle after her last feeding to see if she's getting enough to eat. So we tried formula for the first time - she absolutely hated it! She made the funniest, most disgusted face. We tried it a few more times, this time Dad tried and we knew she was very hungry - still didn't cut it. She just prefers the real deal, I suppose.

Speaking of eating, she's so active and interested in everything around her, it can be a real wrestling match to get her to settle down and eat. And even while she's eating she's flailing her arms and kicking her legs. Can be frustrating, but mostly it's just funny.

On sleeping, she has gone back and forth the past month. The last two nights, she went down by 8:00, woke at 4am to eat, and was awake by 7:30 or so - She's still small so I am perfectly happy with one feeding at night!! but it seems every time I report good sleep news I jinx myself. So I'm not sure why I am posting this. Oh well.

She had her first walk in her "big girl" stroller yesterday for the first time(see above)! She LOVED it. Some more of those pictures are below, of course. Thanks for reading this long post and keeping up with us!

almost rollover

I haven't been able to catch Molly on camera rolling over back to tummy yet, but here she gets close! You get the picture.

recent pictures!

What's new in the world of Molly...

She's rolling over back to tummy now!! She also loves playing with toys and grabbing everything around her. We love to make her laugh - which is more like a squeaking and/or a big "HAA!!" but we've gotten a few giggles, too. Either way, she is such a happy girl - smiling all the time!

Oh, and she had her first (non-family) babysitter last Saturday night while JC and I went to a wedding reception. Of course, we made sure she was sleeping first and she didn't even see Madeline the whole night :). But hey, it counts!

Here are some pictures - the first few are from our trip to Austin and the rest are at home.

Molly's new adventure

Okay, so Molly loves her "exersaucer" (thank you free market friends!!)!

This is a video of her first time in it... the dragon nibbles on her and she makes her great noise:



And this is her in the kitchen with me "talking":

golf weekend update

So, the intense, non-stop rain foiled JC's plans to take the Mid-Am trophy! There were tons of delays and in the end they cancelled the second round altogether. Couple that with Austin Country Club course being the most difficult JC has ever seen (If you know JC, you know that means a lot)...

So, the golf part didn't go as planned... but we rolled with the punches and had a great time relaxing together in Austin.

We got back yesterday afternoon and are just getting back in the swing of things! (No pun intended.)

big smiles, wide eyes, funny hair

From a couple weeks ago, when I went to get Molly from her crib.

mom syndrome and pictures

Okay, so this entire picasa album is from two different instances... but as you know, I like to capture everything. Call it first-time-mom syndrome if you like.

Other Symptoms of First-time-mom Syndrome (can anyone relate?!)

- Thinking everything about your baby is adorable. Examples: how she drools, fills her diaper, burps, etc.
- Asking yourself burning questions like, "should I shower before the second feeding, or after??"
- Keeping track of your baby's "output" every day*
- Celebrating after sleeping four hours in a row
- Doing a ridiculous amount of research online regarding best solid foods to start, when, how to make, etc.**

*FYI: if you consider this gross, that is reasonable, but you are not a mom.
**JC told me yesterday "this is why we make a great team." (Because he'd just mash up some taco bell or something.)

On to the pictures!

silly molly

Hello blog readers!
Molly and I are here in our hotel room in Austin as JC plays in the TX Mid-Am! We're so proud. (We're not actually on the course cheering him on because apparently random baby noises and golf don't mix, haha.)

Here's a video of Molly from last week or so... she always knows how to make me laugh!


Does anyone know what she's saying? Feel free to translate...

Saratoga pics

Here's a link to some of the pictures from Saratoga... Beautiful!

Or, if you're especially interested (i.e. you're my mom) you can view all the pictures.

another MP reference

check out the french knight in the middle of this clip and then watch molly....
any similarities?






"What a strange person!"

Four months old!

The time is flying by! This month has been really fun. Besides for the sleep thing, which has improved immensely!! She slept from 8 to 2 to 6 last night! I would like a later wake-up time, but I'm not complaining too much. :)

She loves eating her feet now, instead of just playing with them. And if her feet aren't in her mouth, chances are one of her fists is! She's drooling up a storm; which means we go through multiple bibs a day, and her hands and feet are very "drooly" as I like to say.

We just had her four month appointment! She weighed 12 lbs, 11 oz right before she ate, and 13 lbs right after. So, maybe the average of that is her real weight? 12 lbs 11 oz is in the 25%-ile. She was 25 inches long, so in the 75%-ile for height.

So... tall and thin, clearly she's going to be a volleyball player/model.

Over the last couple weeks, we went to friends Erin and Jordan's wedding here in Dallas and my cousin Josh's wedding in Pittsburgh. Molly went to five weddings in her first four months of life! And 4/5 of them, she sat (or slept) silently through the entire ceremony. What a sweet girl!

Here are some pictures! (As always, click on a picture to see a bigger slideshow/download pictures.)

happy birthday JC!

Today is JC's 26th birthday. He's the best hubbie and dad Molly and I could dream up!!

We love you, babe!!

P.S. In the spirit of full disclosure, the first picture is from when we were in college...

to hold you off...

Okay, so I'm working on uploading all of molly's recent pictures... (Between getting rid of all her red eye and the camera battery dying, it's taking me a bit) To hold you off - here are a few!

Her great new grabbing skills...

She cracks me up with all her faces! Takes after her dad...

Big smiles that brighten my day!


Oh, and congratulations to Suzanna and Nathan Ice, dear friends who just had twin boys Collin and Caleb last night!! Here is their precious picture - we CAN'T WAIT to meet them!!

breakthrough

So, the latest "sleep" book I've been reading in an effort to improve Molly's sleep habits suggests a crazy early bedtime to help correct sleep problems (5:30 sometimes!). So on Sunday we put Molly down at 6:30 p.m., and besides for the screaming fit from 7:45-8:15, she only woke up to eat at 1:40 and 5:40!

Well, you would be impressed if you knew her sleeping had regressed to the point that I was getting up every 1-2 hours.

Last night, we put her down at 7:15, and besides for basically screaming until 8:45 (yes, that's an hour and a half - not fun) she slept until 3:45!! (after that she didn't sleep wonderfully, but oh well) Stop the presses, she slept SEVEN hours in a row, meaning I slept six hours without having to get up - probably the most straight in four months. I think we're on to something.

Oh, and Molly's latest funny noise reminds me of this scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail where they're translating the writings on the wall of the cave and it says the holy grail can be found in the Castle of Auuuuggghhhhh.

"He must've died while carving it!"