Saturday, March 17, 2012

Best Year Ever

On March 7th, our litte Molly Ruth turned the big ONE! It is so hard to believe that our fragile newborn has blossomed into a sturdy toddler, seemingly overnight.

At the age of one, Molly Ruth:

- Has 7 teeth. Four on top and three on bottom.
- Has curly blondish brown hair. (Yay for curls!)
- Crawls and walks along furniture, but hasn't started walking independently yet.
- Sleeps 12-13 hours each night and takes one nap (which varies from 1-2 hours) during the day.
- Loves to watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. We don't watch too much TV but she gets so excited when they do the "Hot Dog" dance that I can't resist!
- Wears glasses with a prescription of +4.5 and +4.0. She has a blue pair and a pink pair.
- Says mama, dada, baba, dog, moo, no (which comes out do most of the time)
- Can point to hair, nose, toes, light (her favorite!), cow, and dog
- Still takes 4 6 oz bottles a day, but with 3 meals in between. Meals consist of baby food, yogurt, and/or grown up food. She really likes fish!
- Wears a size 5 diaper, 12-18 month clothing, and size 4 shoe. We go to her 1 year well visit appointment in a couple of weeks so I'll know her exact height and weight then.
- Makes us laugh all the time. Molly is so funny and silly. She is constantly making silly faces, loud squeals and screams, and bouncing and gyrating out of delight.

This journey into parenthood over the past year has been, undoubtedly, our best year ever. I love being a parent more than I ever imagined and I love having Matt as my parenting partner. It's scary and challenging at times, but mostly, it's a whole lot of fun.

With that, I'd like to share what we did on Molly Ruth's birthday.

On her birthday morning, we walked into her room singing happy birthday and gave her a special birthday balloon (which she loved!)




We then had a special birthday breakfast of pancakes and eggs! She loved the eggs but the pancakes...not so much. Molly Ruth's pancakes were in a special shape and she used the plate that was daddy's when he was a little boy...


Notice the little fingers reaching for the plate. "Mom, quit taking pictures of my food and let me eat!"

During the day she played and napped as usual, but that evening we had some cake and opened a few presents. It's our little family tradition to have a Baskin Robbins ice cream cake on your actual birthday, so, in Scott birthday tradition, she had her very first ice cream cake with World Class Chocolate ice cream and white cake.




Those previous two pictures were taken while we were singing to her. The face in that last picture has become her "signature" Molly Ruth face. She does it when she's happy, excited, or surprised. Like I said, she's pretty funny.


She was pretty excited that she got to touch the cake but it was hard for her to dig into it since it was still frozen (but don't worry, she got to experience the messiness of a smash cake on her party day).


This girl loves her ice cream. And opening presents...



Cousin Joan was visiting and was sweet enough to give Molly a fun book called Peek-A-Moo. It goes through all of the animals and says the corresponding sound each makes, after unfolding each page. Very cute and interactive for a toddler! Thank you Joan :)

And finally, a little gift from mommy and daddy.



Happy First Birthday, baby girl. Thank you for giving us indescribable joy and abundant laughter every day. Our cups runneth over.

PS Pictures from her birthday party will be up soon. Promise!