Jabber jaws...

So clearly I need to put a post together on Molly's 1st birthday, but while I compile pictures and get a post ready, I thought I'd share a little video of our chatty Cathy. Molly is anything but quiet these days. Still her only real words are "that" and "da" for Daddy, but she sure knows the names of things and is getting really good at following commands. In this video, Molly was working on figuring out the straps on her high chair, something she does multiple times daily and just talking away! Or maybe she was singing??

Molly vs toast....

We have no idea why, but Molly has been very determined to pinch her toast in half some mornings. You think she was trying to break a piece of metal with how intense her face gets. It took a lot of effort to not burst out laughing while she was clearly working very hard at breaking apart her piece of toast! We didn't want to distract her & this video opportunity. At first you'll see she gives up & resorts to blowing on it, just like mommy did before I gave it to her (I was trying to cool it off). But then eventually is able to break it in half...
Maybe these things aren't as funny to all of you reading this, but to us, this was hilarious!

Signing...

For several months now we've been trying to work on teaching Molly some sign language. Just the basics like "milk", "more", "food/eat", "water" and "all done". We just thought it might help avoid tantrums until Molly starts to talk more and can actually tell us what she wants. We've tried hard to be consistent with signing during meals, but I'll admit, it's difficult! But we've kept at it as best we could.

Lately I've started to wonder if she's ever going to pick any signs up, mainly because they don't use signs at daycare. So she's only getting the reinforcement at breakfast & dinner and not during lunch & snacks. She's known the sign for "milk" for some time now and will occasionally sign it back to us. But that's been about all... until now! Finally, Molly's started to show us the sign for "more" when she's eating! She's still not consistent with it and at times, I think she's just simply clapping, but still it's really encouraging to see Molly starting to sign back. She also clearly understands "eat", which has been really helpful in showing Molly that we don't throw our food on the floor, but rather we eat it! Here's a little video clip of "more" from lunch about a week and a half ago...

Sliding like a big girl!

Molly's teachers have been telling us how much she enjoys the slide in the gym. Given how cautious Molly is, we weren't sure whether to believe them when they said that she went down the slide by herself. We just thought we misunderstood them, but turns out we were wrong! This weekend, we went down to the park. We put Molly on the slide like we normally do, just basically holding her off to the side and guiding her down. Then we put her at the top of the slide to crawl around (the platform is fairly large) and Molly went straight to the slide, turned around and slid down on her belly like a pro! We couldn't believe it until she proceeded to do it over and over... The funniest part is that she gives no indication of whether or not she's actually enjoying herself! Rather it was more like she was seriously practicing and perfecting her sliding skills in prep for the "slide Olympics"! Of course, in typical Molly style, she slid down cautiously on her belly.

Slide away, Molly...

Climbing the stairs...

Molly's new favorite past time is crawling up and down the stairs. She actually does a pretty good job with the stairs and is quite cautious about it, especially when she's going down the stairs. I'm not sure we really even had to show her to turn around and go backwards down the stairs. She just naturally did it. Same is true with when she's on the couch, on our lab, on her horse, etc. She fortunately always turns around and starts to slide off feet first and on her belly.

Apparently at daycare, Molly & her partner in crime, Katie, are quite the climbing pair and love to climb up the slide and slide down on their bellies. 

Here's a little clip of Molly climbing the steps... If you listen closely you'll hear her chatting all the way up the steps. It's pretty funny, I think. I wish we could know what she was trying to say!

A good day for COSI...

Saturday was a rainy & overcast day, so we headed to COSI in the morning. COSI is Columbus' Center of Science & Industry & rated the #1 kid's science museum in the country by Parents magazine. It's really quite an awesome place! They have a great little kid space that's exclusively for kids kindergarten age and younger, i.e. no older kids allowed. While I think Molly will get more out of it once she's walking, there's still plenty for her to explore and play with. She gets really excited when we're there & definitely enjoys herself!

Here's Molly exploring the world of body sounds... Can you recognize the sound Molly eventually fixates on?? She gets that from her daddy...