'Twas the Night Before Christmas

I can't believe it's almost here. Our first Christmas with our daughter - YAHOO!!

She is quite the champ. We went to a neighbor's party this evening and Molly was a big hit with all of the kids. She had 7 or 8 kids crowded around her all oohing and ahhing and trying to get Molly's attention. She was a big fan of all of the focus being on her.

We put her to bed at the party and she fell asleep like a champ. We have now come home and put her back to bed and it seems she is back asleep and happy as can be.

I am so excited to have our first Christmas as a family. We just realized that we haven't yet wrapped any of her presents. I think this is the only year we will get away with that!

Merry Christmas to All!

Dada!

It's official... she is now, without question, calling Jim "Dada". Hooray! She is quite excited about it as well. She has been working on a lot of "D" sounds and been saying dada for a while, but now it definitely seems deliberate when she sees him. I know my time will come. She so wants to be saying more, but it seems to be a bit slow going for her at the moment.

I have been talking to her about what different animals say and she listens intently, but hasn't been able to produce any of the sounds. I have tried several different sounds for dog and finally tried a dog panting and she latched right on. For the rest of the book she "panted" at each page - adorable!

She continues to progress with her sitting and sat today with nothing to help support her without much trouble. I look forward to her getting to a point where I'm not right there worrying so much.

Happy Times at the Sullivans

We had a nice weekend here with Molly. It is amazing how good things can be when there are two adults to get things ready throughout the day. Thank goodness for weekends! I can only imagine how exhausting it must be to be a single parent.

Molly has started saying "nanana" when she wants something (generally food). She is also demonstrating how much she understands. I can tell her to roll over so I can pick her up and she will. She also smacks her lips if we say eat and can look around in the appropriate location for lots of different things. You can ask her if she wants a particular thing to eat and she will shake her head or not.

She has become even more interested in Howie and he is now allowing her to pat him for a moment or two before he has had enough.

Wrestlemania Here We Come!

Molly has some new tricks up her sleeve these days. She has taken to head bashing me with her forehead. When I say "No" in my sternest voice she laughs. It is so hard to keep myself from laughing, which she has learned rather quickly. Hopefully this will be a short lived phase.

She is getting stronger and is able to sit unassisted for short periods now. She is also rather vocal and is saying a lot of Na na na na and Da da da da. She has said Dada to Jim a few times now and it seems to be deliberate. I can also ask her questions at mealtime and she can answer by shaking her head or giving me the sign for "all done". It is so nice to have some two-way communication happening.

She is getting good at feeding herself and more and more of her food is in the form of finger foods. I'm hoping that we are moving towards a new part of her development that will make life a little bit less challenging.

Sitting and Playing

We have been working on sitting with Molly and she is already close to being able to sit all on her own. She's definitely on the accelerated program!

We are working on hitting more of her milestones. She is a bit delayed, but I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that she hasn't been sitting, standing or crawling. At least she is happy :).

Molly has been having fun playing peek-a-boo lately and really seems to enjoy the game. You can see her behind the toy delighted with herself and the game and then she energetically pops out from behind - ADORABLE!! Here is a video of her playing peek-a-boo CLICK HERE.

There is also a video of her sitting CLICK HERE.

We seem to be back in the world of separation anxiety, I hope this is another short-lived phase! I can't take more than 3 steps away without her breaking down in hysterics! As my Dad would say... "This too shall pass" :)

She continues to be happy and full of spunk!

Infusion #7 - Mission Accomplished

We are back from Molly's 7th infusion and happy to have it behind us. This one did not go quite as smoothly. We shaved the same spot on her head and they got the IV in. They took too long to get the medication up to us (4+ hours) and the vein blew and we had to do a new IV. We generally have the IV Specialty team put her IV's in, but it was after 5 and they weren't around. Fortunately, we found another vein on the head to work with. We shaved a spot on the other side of the head and they got the vein without a lot of trouble. She was crying so hard that she started sweating and then there was an issue getting the tape to stick to secure the IV. It was a rough few hours watching her get so upset. I was worried she was going to get physically ill from getting so upset. They ended up pulling a bunch of hair out when they removed the IV, so it was upsetting that we had to go through that part twice. Thankfully the second IV worked until 5 am. We had gotten enough of the medicine (we missed 2 hours worth) so we didn't have to go through another stick.

So, the infusion was over at 5. The IV was removed at 7 (once she woke up) and the blood work was sent down. It then took them until 11:45 to finally release us. We paged the doctor and she agreed that we could go, but someone in the hospital didn't think we should leave yet, so they kept us there for 4 hours more than we needed to. I was going crazy. I know that there are much worse things, but when you have a baby that needs to nap it is frustrating to be stuck there for no good reason. In the end it all worked out. We got the medicine Molly needed and nothing bad happened. That's about all we can ask for.

We are very fortunate that Molly recovers VERY quickly. Within a few minutes of crying/screaming hysterically she is back to her happy self. She is one happy little girl and NOTHING is going to keep her down for more than a minute or two!

Photos Galore

Here's Molly in the hot tub and having a ball:

Here's Molly covered in food when I let her try and feed herself:

Here is Molly in her "peapod" that we used while in New England instead of a Pack n' Play:

Jim has uploaded a great deal of photos to the Picasa website. CLICK HERE and look at the 9-12 month folder and Thanksgiving Folder to see new photos.