2 Posts in One Week!

2 posts in one week – I’m good!

It’s been a busy month since I last wrote my post. My parents came for a visit at Thanksgiving and Molly loved seeing her grandparents! They played and spoiled her tremendously. My dad taught her how to build skyscrapers from legos. She woke up every morning with a huge smile, would point to her bedroom door, and say “see Nanna, Grandad.” This continued after they left which made me sad to hear – she kept looking for them in every room – poor baby missed them!

Luckily we had great weather over Thanksgiving and during their visit, we went out for Thanksgiving dinner, took Molly to several parks, and went to the Fort Worth Zoo. We also went to the Dallas Arboretum with my friend Ann’s China travel group. They were celebrating their one year anniversary of Gotcha Day and were kind enough to include us in the celebration! It was great meeting all the beautiful girls and one special boy from Kunming.

Molly has had her first experience decorating cookies – she didn’t do that much better than me, but shows some promise. She also attempted to eat with chopsticks and let me just say, it is a good thing she is here in the US otherwise she would be starving in China – her chopstick skills are sorely lacking. Her friend, Jordan, though is a pro (first try)!

Sadly it appears that China will be closing its doors to single mothers hoping to adopt from China. I hope that they will reopen soon. I did have a slot for 2007 with my wonderful agency, but decided that the time wasn’t right for me. I enjoy the time I get to spend with Molly and don’t believe that adding another child to our family is the right thing to do yet. I know that I risk not being able to adopt from China in the future, but things may change (China may open again to singles, I could get married, or I may decide to adopt from another country – Vietnam has recently reopened). So, at least for now, Molly will be an only child.

One final Molly story before I go. Molly loves little dum dum lollipops. She gets them sometimes when she leaves daycare. I won’t let her walk around with them, so I decided to take her to Walmart for some final holiday shopping - I could shop and she could have her lollipop. After awhile, with all the excessive teething drool, the stick of the lollipop was so sticky and Molly doesn’t like to touch “sticky” stuff anymore. So she hands the lollipop to me. I assume that she is done with it, but oh no! She just wants me to hold the sticky stick while she finishes the lollipop! And what is worse, I stopped in the middle of Walmart to hold it for her! Is this a spoiled child or what??

Enjoy the pictures of some of the events I mentioned above (you can click on them to enlarge).

Pictures

More Pictures

Counting Toes - all 10!

Picture: Counting my toes - I have 10 (although sometimes I forgot to count #6!)

Sorry for such a long delay in posting (I wrote this before Thanksgiving!). My plan is to update again later this week (with many more photos), but until then, you can read my thoughts from almost a month ago:

While changing Molly’s diaper about 2 weeks ago (I was trying to distract her from “helping”), I asked her if she could count her toes. With no hesitation, she grabs her foot and counts her toes – all ten toes are account for!! I knew that she could count to ten, but didn’t realize that she had associated it with counting items (instead of just repeating words). My girl is so smart!

Molly has decided that she is no longer a baby and does not require a nap (yeah, right!) Mommy still thinks a nap is essential for her sanity and mine (mostly mine, but she does get cranky without a nap!) This past Saturday I put her in her crib and hoped she would sleep, she didn’t and instead babbled to her stuff animals and played relatively quietly for about 1 ½ hours. I gave up and got her out of bed (at this point she was jumping up and down in her crib). She was insistent that I find her socks and put them back on her feet. She had a lot of fun showing me where she had thrown her socks. Sunday, I was hoping she would do better with a nap. No such luck. We had gone to church earlier that day and she had seen Jacie and Brian – she really enjoys playing with them. We went home and I gave her some lunch and then we watch what I hoped would be a calming DVD. I then put her in her crib and she cried for about 5 minutes and then quieted down. I was hoping she would sleep, but then she started to call out for me. I was upstairs in my study and just yelled out to her “Mommy’s here, it’s nap time, go to sleep.” I could hear her lie down, but figured it wouldn’t last. This went on for about ½ an hour. She finally figured out that Mommy would not be rescuing her from the crib, so she starts to yell out Jacie’s name. Then a few minutes later, she yells for Jacie and Brian! She was desperate to get out of the crib and play!! I left her there for about 1 ½ hours, gave up, and went to the park. Then I had to run a quick errand. I look back in the car and there little Molly is in the carseat on the verge of falling asleep! Oh no, she was not going to get to sleep at 5:30 so I start loudly saying her name, tickling her knee, anything to keep her awake. I found these rattles from Kindermusik and I gave them to her and told her to play them loudly so mommy could hear. Poor kid spent the next 5 minutes until we got to the store, shaking the rattles with her eyes half closed! But she didn’t nap and went to bed about 15 minutes early!

Molly has also decided she loves the show Kipper. She watched it for the first time last week while I made dinner (she has never before allowed me to make dinner unless it has been in 3 minutes or less so this was a huge step). I wasn’t watching the show, but she was enthralled and watched two 10 minute episodes. The next day she runs to the tv and says “doggie” so I turn it on and start her on watching Kipper. She wants to sit in my lap so I watch Kipper for the first time. The first scene begins with a dog (not Kipper, but a little Scottish Terrier). As soon as this little dog comes on tv, Molly says “tiger.” I wonder why she is confused because this is obviously a dog, not a tiger, but figured that she was confused because the dog’s ears stick up like a cats. I decide not to correct her and continue to watch. For the next few minutes she keeps pointing to that dog excitedly and saying tiger! Well, it’s a good thing I didn’t correct her because after about 5 minutes I found out that the dog’s name is Tiger. Molly was right after all!