Molly at 18 months!

Today is Molly's year and 1/2 birthday. 18 months has gone by so fast and in just 7 1/2 weeks we will have little Daniel here with us as well. Anyways, I thought you might be interested in an overview of Molly so here ya go!

Mobility- She started walking at 10 months but now she runs and even runs on her toes. She is in Tumble Tots which is basically a kids gymnastics/balance class. This has really helped her alot. She is able to walk on balance beams, climb towers, climb up monkey bars (not totally coordinating moving her hands and feet together but getting very close). She jumps on trampolines, climbs up on any chair by herself.

Eating- She is a great eater. Her favorites are pizza, yo baby yogurt, eggs, grapes, oatmeal, peanut butter and jelly sandwhiches and anything that we are eating. We have started introducing her to lots of different raw veggies lately which she has taken to pretty well, especially raw broccoli, she loves that. And she likes red peppers surprsingly well. I will probably do olives next. She likes almost any and all fruit. Everyday on the way to playgroup she eats an apple by herself. I don't even peel it, just give it to her and she goes to town. She is able to use her fork and spoon all by herself! She ate oatmeal squares cereal with milk this morning for breakfast and only spilled minimally on her bib. She eats her own yogurt cup each morning and an applesauce cup for snack. She doesn't like us to help her unless she is so hungry she can't get the food in fast enough. She even holds the sppon properly and sometimes sticks her pinky up like a little prissy thing.

Play- She is involved in two 'mum and tot' playgroups, a total of three days a week. One is on base(tuesday and thursday) and the other is at our church(monday). She is getting to know all of the children and moms really well and starting to explore. She was doing especially great my second trimester but has started to get really clingy to me again. I think she senses something is different and it makes her a little anxious. Her favorite things are books (especially the elmo ones from Becca), her little tikes car and balls. We have been working with her on flash cards and she can almost identify any animal you show her and lots of other stuff (clothing articles, transportation, etc). Cows and dogs are her favorite and we see them almost every day since so many of them live in our neighborhood :)

Verbal- She talks NONSTOP, however, most of it I cannot understand. She does have quite a good vocabulary though. Her favorite words are daddy, dog, duck, sticker, chip, cookie, dirty, bath, and NO!!!

Sleep- She sleeps 10-12 hours a night depending on when we get her down. Since Bryon's car went kaput last week, we have been taking him to work at 8am every day. So now we put her down around 7:30-8pm and she gets up around 6:30-8am. She takes about an hour nap during the day, on most days. It is usually in the car driving home from our daily activities. The newest sleeping development is her new cribmate. She now sleeps with a stuffed puppy dog. Mom and dad, this is the dog we accidently took from Scotland (and later paid for once we realized it was packed in our bag). She takes a bath, brushes her teeth, gets lotioned up and dressed, reads two books and goes to sleep snuggling her puppy. It is really cute. We see her chatting with the puppy and nuzzling him in our video monitor.

Physical- She has all but two teeth in. Horrah! Her hair is getting really curley and growing fast (finally). Poor little thing was bald for so long and now she has a good bit of cute curls. She even lets me put pony tails in and hairbows. She is a size 5 shoe, size 18month clothes and size 4 diaper.

Personality- She is a complete prissy girl. She hates being dirty, likes to carry around a purse, likes to wear my jewerly and my shoes, and eats with her pinky stuck out. I was planing seedlings the other day and she saw my hands, pointed at me and said "dada, dirty!!!" She wouldn't touch me until I washed my hands. She is a very affectionate and loving child. She would sit on my lap, give me wet kisses, and snuggle with me all day if I would let her. She is also empathetic and caring, if another child around her cries, she will cry too. She will usually go over to them and pat them on the back or give them a hug/kiss. If someone takes her toy away or is mean to her she just looks at them and blows them a kiss. If she is really tired or sick, she may scream "NO" and take it back but that is very rare. She usually will go find another toy or just come sit on my lap.

That's all I can think of for now! Have a great weekend everyone!

Hmmm

I just realized a scary thought today. If Bryon was born around 33 weeks (right Gram?), and weighed 5-ish pounds. Then playing that out, my son could weigh like 9 pounds if he takes after his daddyand makes it to 40 weeks! Please make it not so! Scheduling a c-section is starting to sound really nice..

First family walk of the year!

The crocus is in bloom, Spring is coming!

Bryon, Molly and I took advantage of this first sunny day to go on a walk and play on our village playground. There aren't a lot of sunny days in England without rain and you have to take advantage of them because you never know when you'll see another.

In case there were any doubts that I'm pregnant.. here ya go

Molly's favorite animal, cows.. We have lots of cows across the street from out house and on this path we frequently walk down.

The village playground. This is a block or so walking distance from our house and is free to use anytime. Molly is quite the slide daredevil. She will go up, down, face first, sideways, any way possible. The other day she even tried to dive down the slide in our backyard. Fortunately, Bryon caught her, whew!

I think she's enjoying being outside. Cabin fever has definitely set in and as great as Elmo is, even he can get old.

Unfair weight advantage here..

Molly has become so much more adventurous since joining Tumble Tots. She will do things such as walking this obstacle course that she would never have considered doing two months ago.

Dachau Concentration Camp

I debated whether to post on our visit to the Dachau Concentration Camp during our trip to Germany but felt that I could do so tactfully and let you see a glimpse into one of the camps.

I felt sick almost the entire day at the brutal carelessness and disregard for the sanctity of human life. I pray that we have learned our lesson and I am thankful to the American soldiers who so bravely fight to free enslaved people like the prisoners at this and other concentration camps. It was amazing reading all of the tributes to the American soldiers and military throughout the museum. I apologize if any of this is offensive to you, please don't view this post if you think you will be unable to handle it. There are no graphic pictures but some descriptions.

The writing on this poster says, "Prisoners welcome the American soldiers, April 29th, 1945". If you are able to zoom in, the faces on these prisoners will bring you to tears.

The famous Hitler saying, "Work will set you free" on the door entering Dachau. Hitler used to tell his prisonrs that if they worked hard enough they would be set free. Rarely did this occur but it gave them some hope.


Walking alongside the special prisoner cells and the museum. The museum had a 20 minute video that we weren't allowed to see because of Molly. Children under 12 are not allowed to view the graphic images. The museum was great because it showed the history leading up to Hitler taking over and on how any human being could possibly follow such a ruthless man and do the things that were done in these camps. I also learned a lot about the horrible medical experiments carried out on the prisoners and just how much they contributed to modern medicine.

We were also able to go into the barracks and see the disguisting conditions there. These are the bunk beds. Initially, there was 1 person per bed but by the end, they were cramming 3 and 4 into each bunk.


As you can see, the beds are about the width of two-three benches. Hardly room for 3 people.

This picture is of the doorway leading into the gas chamber. For those of us who don't speak German, it says 'shower'. The Nazi's told the prisoners that they were going to be sent to bathe and then they sealed them in and executed them. The room beyond that is the incinerator where they burned the bodies and the last room in the building was where they stacked the bodies once they had been killed. This building was absolutely the most appalling thing I have ever been in. I won't show any other pictures but I felt you couldn't truly understand how horrific the whole place was without a glimpse into this building.

This is the famous memorial that you've probably seen in text books portraying the days of the Nazi regime and concentration camps.

This memorial was positioned in the center of Dachau and powerfully states, "Never Again". I pray that nothing this horrendous never happens again.

Germany and Austria, part two

The children's movie corner at the lodge. They had movies playing 24/7 and there were always kids watching, well except maybe in the middle of the night. This was Molly's favorite hotel activity. We had to drag her away to eat meals.

Molly joining me in my favorite hotel activity, rocking in the wooden rocking chairs in front of the huge fireplace! They had these little chairs for the kids that they could pull up right next the adult chairs.

Having tea at a Bavarian Bakery. The last day we were going to take a chair lift up one of the mountains but the snow and fog were so heavy you couldn't see anything. So, we decided to opt for deserts and a heater :)

Bryon had an apple pie and I had cheesecake, plus hot chocolate and coffee. Sooo good!

Molly fell asleep on Bryon during our walk back to the hotel after our bakery trip. A comfy and warm place to sleep in the cold snowy weather.

Daniel at 22 weeks

I finally scanned the pictures from Daniel's 22 week ultrasound, sorry it took so long! Who does he look like? Bryon says it is hard to tell but I think he looks more like Bryon than Molly did in her ultrasound pictures. I guess we will soon see! 30 weeks down and 10 or less to go!

Germany and Austria, part one

We arrived at Munich Airport and were informed that because there are so few automatic cars, we would be upgraded to a Mercedes! This car was totally awesome, as you can see. So, if you go to Europe request an automatic :)

We drove from Munich Airport to Edelweiss Lodge which is near Garmisch, Germany smack dab in the middle of the beautiful Bavarian Alps. It was an hour of driving through this scenery. Can't beat that!

God's greatness displayed. How can you see beauty such as this and doubt there is a God or that God loves us so much that he chose to give us such beauty to behold...

The view from our room. We had a little patio but it was too cold to really enjoy it.

We visited the "Disney Castle" on Friday. This is the castle that the castle in Disney World was built based on. It was a beautiful 1 hour drive from our hotel, most of which was driving through Austria. Then out of the blue we saw this magnificent castle on the mountain.

In the nature of magical castles, Bryon took Molly and I on a horse and carriage ride up to the castle, so that we wouldn't have to do the 45 minute hike up the hill. Molly adores horses so this was the highlight of the trip for her.

As we took off, Molly got a little anxious and came with me in the back of the carriage but by the end she was up front with Bryon leading the way.

Family shot in front of the castle

Princess and her castle.

We stayed so long in the castle the horses were put up for the night so we hiked down. It was a nice walk though, especially for Molly. Bryon's neck still hurts from her excited bouncing but it was well worth it :)

Germany here we come!

Edelweiss Lodge and Bavarian Alps here we come!!! We are leaving VERY early in the morning and will be back Sunday evening from our vacation to Germany and maybe Austria (depending on the weather). Hope everyone has a great weekend. I will post pictures when we get back!