"Me!

We were on vacation last week with the entire Brooks' clan up at Mountain Springs Lake Resort. I'm still going through pictures & will post on our vacation soon, but in the meantime, I thought I'd share one of the many things Molly learned last week.

Grandma & Grandpa Pintor come to visit!

This past weekend grandma and grandpa Pintor came for a visit! We all had a nice time & Molly definitely enjoyed the added attention.

Friday night we went down to the Columbus Food Truck festival & enjoyed a Philly cheese steak (not quite a "true" cheese steak but it wasn't bad), a pulled pork sandwich and gyros-style tater tots all from local food trucks in the city. The tater tots truck must be a Columbus favorite because I think Jeremy literally waited in line for 20 minutes to order and than another 30 minutes to get the tots. But honestly, they were worth the wait! Molly really enjoyed the tots too.

Saturday was Molly's last swim lesson for the season, so we all went to cheer her on! Here are some action shots from the pool & afterwards (can you see how blue her lips are??).

Saturday afternoon we went for a walk at the Park of Roses, which contained no roses actually. Rather a lot of duck poop!

After that it was back home to play "doll's with grandpa.

Sunday morning we went for a nice hike at High Banks Metropark and went along a new trail, which we enjoyed, even though it was a bit humid.

Superstylin' Molly in her cool new shades...

And finally, peek a boo video with grandpa on the porch... Proof that Molly had a great time with grandma & grandpa!

Alligator, alligator...

This past Saturday, Molly had her last swimming lesson for the summer season. Jeremy's been taking her every Saturday for the last 6 weeks & she's progressively gotten much more comfortable in the water, which was the goal. One of Molly's biggest achievements was jumping in the pool (into daddy's arms). To encourage the kids to jump in, they sing the song "Alligator, alligator stand so tall. Alligator, alligator jump off the wall!". For the past 5 weeks, Molly just enjoyed clapping along to the song, but seemed very uninterested in jumping in herself. But this week, she finally jumped in on her own! It was really fun to see & a great way to end her swimming lessons for now. Here's a little clip, along with another clip of one of the other activities they do in the pool, "London Bridges".

These feet were made for walking!

For about a week now, Molly had been primarily walking to get from place to place rather than crawling. Of course there are a number of stumbles in her step, but overall we think she's doing really well. It's opened up a whole new world of opportunities in many ways. There's a lot more she can do at the park now, a lot more to do at COSI (the children's science museum here in Columbus), more she can do in the backyards, etc...! We're definitely really proud of her, although I still can't help but be a little anxious waiting for a major fall...

Here's a clip from last weekend of Molly taking a lap around the house. You'll see at the end that she's pretty proud of herself & gives herself a round of applause!

"More Humpty Dumpty"...

I think in a previous post I talked about how we have been trying to teach Molly some basic signs to help her ask and us understand what she wants or needs. It took a while since they don't sign with Molly at daycare, but for the past month or two she's been pretty consistent with using certain signs. She's also done a great job with figuring out that she can transfer signs to different contexts. So we largely taught Molly the sign for "more" when she's eating, but now she uses it in a lot of other situations that have nothing to do with food. For example, she'll sign more when she wants you to read a book again, or when she wants you to sign another song. Or she'll sign "all done" when she's wants to be taken out of the swing outside or this morning when she was all done sitting for a nebulizer treatment (no major problems, the nebulizer is just to help with a cough Molly's had for the last few weeks).

In the last week, she's started putting signs together which has been pretty cool to watch. For example, she'll sign "more" and "eat" to tell us what she wants more food. Here's a little clip of Molly pointing to Humpty Dumpty and then signing "more" to tell Jeremy to sing Humpty Dumpty again. She actually loves when Jeremy recites Humpty Dumpty right now, so poor Jeremy has to recite it quite often lately!

Sit & Spin...

Molly had many ways of expressing her excitement for something. Of course she'll smile, laugh and screech much to our cat's strong disapproval. She'll bob up and down, which is also one of her "dance moves". She'll wiggle and kick her feet, often when she's waiting in her high chair for her meals. But she also will spin when she's happy about something! For example, if she's excited for a drink or her snack when she's out of the high chair and sitting on the floor, she'll often spin in a circle once she receives it. Kind of strange, but equally cute in our opinion!

Wash, wash, wash...

We're not sure where she figured this one out, but lately Molly's been enjoying "washing" things with a wash cloth. She typically washes the floor, but sometimes washes her toys and then unfortunately follows washing the floor with washing her face! The cloth is dry, so hopefully no harm done. Our guess is that she's seen us cleaning the floor underneath her high chair or something similar at daycare. But it's always interesting to catch Molly doing something new and wonder where she picked it up from. It's also kind of funny to watch how particular she can be about the cloth. She likes to spread it out first before putting it on the floor. Here are a couple of clips of Molly "washing"...

4th of July & swimming...

We took a short trip to Champaign-Urbana, IL at the beginning of the week for Jeremy to work on a grant proposal and me to work on a manuscript with colleagues of ours at U-Illinois. Of course, it also allowed us to see some of our friends as well! On Monday we stayed with our good friends, Katie and Matt and their two little boys, William & Theo. Not only did William and Theo make for great entertainment for Molly, but she particularly enjoyed their super friendly and very tolerant pets, Cosmo & Monte (black lab mixes) and Pontouf (the wonder cat!). She squealed in delight every time they'd come into the room & got even more excited when they let Molly pet them.

Here's Molly with William (left) and Theo (middle)...

 The next night we stayed at a hotel with a pool, which allowed Molly to "practice" her swimming skills! Jeremy's been taking Molly for swim lessons at the YMCA on Saturday mornings. She's slowly warming up (both figuratively & literally because the pool is cold!) to the pool during her lessons, but at the hotel pool she had a blast along side the ladies doing their aqua-aerobics. Here's are a couple of video clips. The first is Molly practicing jumping in and the second is of Molly working on her kicks.