Mollie's first visit to the zoo!

We went to Tucson over the weekend for our Niece's wedding.  While there we wanted to take Mollie to the zoo.  Despite it being very warm and humid it was a lot of fun.  Mollie had so much fun that she was crashed by the time we got out of the parking lot.

One of the highlights is we got to feed the Giraffes.  That was really cool.  They really are amazing animals and Mollie of course wanted to pet them but we couldn't.  According to the zoo people "they do not like to touched so don't try and pet them..."  Ok, will do!

Enjoy the picture overload.

And last but not least.....

Independence Day

I remember last year hoping I would have a 4th of July baby but no go, she wasn't ready to come out yet.

This yr was great with lot's of fun, food and of course family and friends.  I'll let the pictures do the rest of the talking.

Special thanks to our awesome friend Kyle Gardner for snapping some pictures for us including this last one which is my absolute favorite!!

11 Months

This is my last monthly post before Mollie's first birthday....

what. the. heck..

What a month, it flew by just as fast as the last.  Looking back I can't even remember what the heck happened.

Except for the last week.  Yes, I remember last week, that is a week I definitely will not forget.  Mollie had the flu the entire week and it was bad! Bad, bad.  I felt so sad for her she couldn't keep hardly anything down, it was coming out one end or the other.  I'll spare you all the nasty details.  She is finally getting back to normal but she basically didn't eat for a week, luckily though we finally got rid of her fever and were able to keep liquids down her.  She lost a lb, which isn't a ton but she is already small as it is, so we had the Dr check her out yesterday and despite all of that she looks good and healthy and the flu is finally passing.

**Somewhere in that 6 days of her having the flu I managed 2 showers!!  TMI?**

Changes since last month are:

She has another tooth on the bottom.  2 teeth total now.

She is pulling herself up on everything and cruising along the furniture.  She can also walk by herself while pushing her walker.

She claps her hands and can wave bye bye

She is starting to say some words like kiki (rocky), dada, oh (uh-oh), and yay (which she does while clapping her hands) she also sings the "EIEIO" part of Old McDonald.  At first we thought she was speaking Navajo, I kid you not, because there's a word "Yeeyah" (means scary) that sounded exactly like what she was saying, but we figured out it was EIEIO when she started singing with the song on one of her Baby Einstein movies.

She also went swimming for the first time a couple weeks ago.  We have been a few times since and she seems to like it more and more each time.

Now we have something planned every weekend until her 1st birthday! Oh summertime......

Mollie meets Horses

Last Friday we had the opportunity to go to St Johns to hang out with our awesome friends, the Pulsiphers, (so glad they moved closer), and let Mollie ride horses for the first time.  She LOVED the horses and that made me happy since I have always loved horses.  We also got to take a drive out on their ranch and feed the cows and see all the new baby calfs.  Mollie was pretty impressed with the cows too.  Every time we "moo" at her now her eyes get all big and she looks around for them.

Mollie  meeting "Denny"

Sitting all by herself (with the help of Laurie who ducked out of the picture, lol!)

Riding with Mommy

Taking a break to observe the Horses

"Roach" coming in to check her out

I love that she wasn't afraid

Her look is priceless

Lorin and Chad are always talking about buying a 3-wheeler together and how they are sooo much fun (Chad has one since he was a boy) so Lorin was more excited to go ride the 3-wheeler then the horses.

Boys and their toys

We had so much fun and can't wait to go back.

10 Months

Every month has gone by fast but I swear this last month was super fast.

Super, super fast!

**Lorin hates her headband but I LOVE it!**

At her 9 month check up (a couple weeks late) she was 15.12lbs and 28in. long.  She is still in the very low percentile for her weight but she is healthy as a horse, just petite.

-Lots of changes in the last month-

So in my last post I wrote about how I thought she was teething but it turned out to be a cold, well I lied, it was teething....she has a tooth finally!  It came through about a week after the symptoms and its so cute.  We call her snaggle (*sp*) tooth since she just has the one for now.  Overall she did really well, I know its harder on some babies then others, so I'm happy she did good.  But due to recent attitude changes I think she is working on another.

Also in the last post I talked about how she would crawl a little but mostly army crawled?  Well she is full blown crawling now, all over the place.  I kid you not one morning I put her down after she drank her bottle and off she went, like she had been doing it all along.  And she hasn't stopped since.  She is into everything now!  I'm learning how un-baby proof my house really is.  And just this last week she has started pulling herself up onto things too.  For now she is just getting up on her knees but once or twice she has gotten to her feet.  Crazy!

I have been introducing her to all kinds of new foods.  I try to give her a little of everything I eat.  So far she loves waffels, rolls, muffins, bread and jam (true Christensen right there), peanut butter, potato salad, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, grilled cheese sandwiches, and this strawberry angel food dessert that I make.  She still doesn't care for any kind of meat or eggs but I give it to her anyway.  Most of the time she just drops it on the floor and watches Rocky eat it.

With her being more mobile she has all kinds of new things she loves to do.  She pulls all the movies out of our entertainment center 100 times a day, she plays in a container I have in our office that has spools of ribbon in it, of course she gets into the cupboard with the pots and pans, she loves swinging and playing in the grass at Grandmas house, and her latest and funniest thing is chasing balls (or anything that rolls) all over the kitchen floor.  She will do this forever.  A lot of times she will chase a golf ball around and Rocky gets in on the fun to and ends up stealing it!  Lol!    

She is showing all kinds of personality changes and emotions.  She laughs when we laugh, rambles on and on like she is having a normal conversation, screams at the top of her lungs (ear piercing) for the heck of it then laughs,  goes from happy to crying to happy in seconds, tries to imitate silly sounds that we make at her, waves "bye bye" and claps her hands, a little backwards with one palm on top of the other hand, but its clapping.  Another thing she does is she yells at Rocky when he barks.  We always tell him to be quiet so now she will seriously start yelling at him when he barks and its HILARIOUS!  I was in tears earlier this afternoon laughing so hard cause she was doing it.  Funny, funny girl!

Here's to 10 months!

9 Months

I have now almost officially had Mollie out of my belly as long as she was in...  She was born when I was 39 wks and 5 days prego and tomorrow (the 17th) she will be 39 weeks and 5 days old!  Just a little fun fact.

But at this moment she is 9 months.....already....

I'm finding it harder and harder to get smiles out of this girl while taking pictures.  She smiles all day but the moment I whip out the camera or phone she stops smiling and starts being more curious and wants to grab everything (sticky fingers).  So I take what I can get.  At least this time we had more with her eyes open instead of shut.

I really don't know what all to say.  I feel like I repeat myself all the time with how amazing and fun she is and how much I love her.  All of that is still the same.

I'm not sure of her 9 month stats.  She has an appt. on the 25th so we will get the info then.  The last time I weighed her she was about 15.4lbs.  Still petite but healthy.  She is a good eater.  She eats breakfast like a champ, lunch is good somedays and not so good others, and for dinner she is usually good.  

Still no Teeth!  Every time I think she is teething nothing comes from it.  Just last week we thought for sure she was but I think she just had a little cold, which she got from me, cause there are still no teeth.  Oh well they will come when they come.

She is crawling, well mostly army crawling but getting better about regular crawling, and lately has been perfecting her tummy, to crawl, to sitting position. She does this all the time and its so cute to watch her stop whatever she is doing and practice it.  But when she sees something she wants she goes for it and there is no stopping her.

So my first real "bad mother" moment happened....she fell off the couch!  Yep flat onto her back, knocked the wind right out of her.  I felt wonderful....not!  I knew it was going to happen one day cause I am dumb and change her diaper on the couch and will leave real quick to wash my hands before I get her fresh diaper put on.  So I did this the other day and sure enough she rolled right off onto the floor as I was running to catch her.  Yep not so proud of that one.  Thankfully I know I'm not the only one this has happend to.

This last picture cracks me up.  Although it looks like she is crying I actually caught her right in the middle of a big sneeze.  Aaaaachooooo!!

Easter

Easter is up there with my top favorite holiday's.  At first we were not really going to do anything for Easter, we both feel Mollie is to young to really know what's going on with Holidays anyway, but I made the decision to change that and start celebrating.

So I took it upon myself to be the Easter Bunny this yr.  Even Lorin was surprised to wake up and find an Easter basket for him (secretly I think he LOVED it).

I loaded Mollie's basket with books, plastic eggs (for decoration purposes), bubbles and some new PJ's.  She also got two new outfits one of which was her Easter outfit.  Lorin and I both got new movies and candy.  Peanut M&M's for me...YUM!

Mollie had fun playing with the eggs, and bubbles.  But the thing she loved the most was the grass...of course....  Here is my little bunny:

And then of course our family:

Hope you all had a "hoppy" Easter  :)