An afternoon with Mollie

This afternoon, Mollie and I had some mother-daughter bonding time while Brad, Natalie, Sheila, Matt, Kara, and Elizabeth went to the Western Heritage Museum.

Here are some photos of our beautiful baby girl . . .

Mollie Grace

So it wouldn't be far from the truth for me to say that I've been looking forward to taking photos of Mollie since I found out that we were having another baby! It has taken me several attempts, but I finally have captured quite a few photos that fit with the ideas that I had in my head. Here are my favorites:

(Both of the adorable hats in the photos were purchased from bluebirdsboutique on Etsy).

Word Explosion

Well, not so much just a word explosion, but an EVERYTHING explosion - that's what Natalie seems to be having. We can't believe all the new things she says and does! Her memory blows my mind - she's always recalling things that we told her in passing or without thinking much of it. She has about a million words (ok maybe not quite that many), and uses lots of simple sentences. As for adapting to life with Mollie, we're all adjusting, but all in all, I think you'd have to say that she's doing the best that an almost 2 year-old really can do!

Here are some cute little things she's done in the past day or two:

• Natalie was eating an apricot for her snack yesterday, and she put one of her many baby dolls on the table next to her. She didn't realize that I was watching her, and she held up a piece of apricot to her doll and said, "Want some? (pause) OK." and pretended to have the doll eat the fruit. :) Then she turned to Mollie, who was in the Baby Papasan chair on the floor and said, "Want some? (pause) No? OK."
• She was supposed to be telling Mollie and I goodnight a couple nights ago. Mollie was in the Baby Papasan again, and Natalie reached down to hug her. Instead, she kind of put her arms around her like she was going to pick her up instead. She said, "Daddy, look!" Brad said, "What is it?" She said, "I got a baby!"
• Earlier today, I was taking pictures of Mollie with my faux-studio setup. I wanted to get a shot from a different angle, so I stood up on a kitchen chair. Natalie was right in the mix of things, and started to stand in a chair also. We have had to tell her a lot lately that she cannot stand on chairs. So she stands up in her chair, Brad tells her she can't do it, and without missing a beat, she says, "Mommy stand?" Ooops!
• She can count to ten all by herself! She just started doing this out of the blue. She's been interested in counting for a while, and we'll say, "One" and she says "two" and then we alternate like that, but now she'll just start counting on her own. Although she does skip the number 4 pretty much every time. I think she thinks 4 and 5 are the same since they both start with "f."
• A couple days ago, she put her pink bear into her baby doll stroller and started loading it up with other random things. She told us she was going to the zoo (her favorite place!). Then she stopped, asked the bear, "Want mik (milk)?" ran back over to her toy shelf, picked up a cell phone, looked across the room at the bear and said, "This? (pause) No? OK." Then she rooted around some more, found a bottle, looked back at the bear and said, "This? (pause) OK!" and ran back over to the bear with the bottle.
• She was watching a video of herself dancing in only her diaper to the music on what we call her Princess Mobile riding toy. When the video was over, she ran over to the toy, started playing the music and dancing, then came over to me and wanted me to help her take her clothes off, I'm assuming because they were off in the video!

Well, I'm sure there are a ton more, but these are ones that I've taken mental note of lately to pass along.

Here's a quick pic of her saying "cheese" and wanting me to take her picture yesterday afternoon.

10 Days

Mollie is 10 days old today, and I can hardly believe it! I have a feeling that I'll be saying that A LOT. I'm sure I always said it when it was just Natalie too. We've had a pretty good week here at home. My mom has been lots of help, but she went home yesterday, so I kind of feel like we're just now getting a taste of what life is going to be like now!

Here are just a few photos from the past few days. I took some fun ones of Mollie today, and I'm looking forward to getting those posted soon.

Natalie and Nonny making French toast.

Miss Nat totally sacked out on Daddy's shoulder after refusing a nap!


Miss Mollie

Mollie having some alert time.

My precious girls. We are so blessed!!

One Week

Here are some pictures of sweet Mollie from this morning. I cannot believe she is one week old already! Where does the time go???

Things are going really well at home. Mollie is nursing well and gaining weight like crazy! We have had some rough nights, but they haven't been insanely bad. I think we just got spoiled by our two first nights at home that were pretty much perfect - just had to wake her, change her, feed her, and she went right back to sleep. Now she has not been going right back so easily. :-/ I'm sure it will get better with time though, especially when we're able to keep her up more during the day. Natalie is testing us more, but who can blame her? We are really aware of how difficult it is for her and give her lots of attention while playing down the whole Mollie thing. ;) Still, dealing with her fits is not fun. We have to believe this will get better with time too. We're all learning to adjust to a new version of normal! Keep us in your prayers! :)

A visit from Gram & Opa

Gram & Opa were in Oregon when Mollie was born, so they met her for the first time on Sunday!

Attack of the Kisses

Natalie still loves kissing Mollie a million times a day. She likes to really plant wet ones on her, and she aims right for Mollie's little lips most of the time. . . pretty cute! :)

Natalie

Here are some cute pics of Natalie over the past couple days. She is learning new words every minute, it seems like. We can't get over her amazing memory and recall! It's lots of fun just watching her interact with visitors. Last night, I would have paid money to share just a tiny bit of the energy she had after her bath. Sheesh! She's like a crazy person running around sometimes! :)

Funny Faces

Wanting Brad to make her go "this high!"

With her adored (and adoring) Aunt Kimme - that she usually calls "HIM!!"

Watching Mollie sleep with her Nonny.

Wearing her honeybear hat.

Miss Natalie

Here are some pictures I love of Natalie. These are all actually pre-Mollie, but I didn't get a chance to post them. They are from the two days prior to Mollie's birth.

In the middle pics, Natalie is eating (and wearing) spaghetti. Natalie eats spaghetti almost naked because she does love to wear it as well. Brad is holding her up on her way from the kitchen table directly to the bathtub. Then in the following photos, Brad let her dress herself after the bath. ;)

The last ones are of Natalie and Aubrey playing together outside (Nat's FAVE!) soon after Aubrey arrived. They had SO much fun together!