Molly

At one of Rex's basketball games

Molly is all kinds of crazy lately. A few little examples:

I took her to nursery for the first time today. You expect this to be a story about a little girl falling apart and not wanting to stay in nursery, right? It's not that story. She went in, ate the snack, and started playing. Within the space of about 20 minutes, she pulled a kid's hair and scratched his face; she stole a girl's binkie four separate times (until the girl just started running away any time Molly came near); she persistently intimidated a girl who was competing with her for time on a slide, by just grabbing a handful of her shirt and holding on permanently until I would come break her grip; and she kicked a sweet little girl with Down Syndrome twice, making her cry. All of these kids are much older than her, some by as much as a year. All of this happened with me about five steps away, watching her constantly. And most surprisingly, none of it was done in a way that suggested malice or anger. It was more the bemused detachment of an evil genius that just wants to see what crazy things the humans will do when you introduce a little chaos into the system. (Why . . . so . . . serious?) Pretty wild day in the nursery. (By the way, because I was on her like a hawk, the leaders didn't seem to notice, but eventually I'll leave her there for them to
handle, and who knows what will happen then).

I have no idea what's going on here

The thawing weather we've had the last week or so has been an absolute revelation for Molly. She's such a wanderer and an active kid. She's never had the chance to roam around outside, not having started walking until the winter set in. Having the chance to run around outside is almost blowing her mind. We walked home from church today and she would stop and walk up the walkway of literally every house, and most driveways. She had to stop and examine every change in terrain and run down every slope and kick through every pile of leaves. It was really fun to see. But the best was the trees. Lucy was running ahead of us most of the time, and she would often hide behind a big tree and wait for us to come. When we would get to the tree, Lucy would jump out and roar to scare us. After she did this a few times, Molly wanted in on the action. So every tree we passed after that, she would stop, climb up the little mound at the base, lean her face in close to the tree, almost like she was kissing it, and then roar loudly at the tree: WAAAAHHHHH! I guess she just thought Lucy was roaring at the trees that whole time. Molly roared at every tree on LeGrand Street, from an inch away. When we went for a walk several hours later, sure enough, she stopped at the first tree and WAAAAAHHH'ed at it. It's exciting to think how much fun she's going to have running around outside this Spring.



Lots of talking lately too. "ope!" for "open this bag for me!". "Upff" is a combo word, it means "get me up" (like onto a chair) or "take me off" like off the rocking horse. She has combined up and off into one word, which is pretty innovative. She now says "gay-coo" whenever you give her something ("thank you") and "he-go" whenever she gives you somethig ("here you go.") When you ask her to do something and she says no, if you ask her "why?" she'll say "cause!" And if you tell her to do something she's up for, she'll always say "okay!" She is also very good at running interior errands. She will fetch kleenex, take anything to Rex or Lucy, or get you a book or whatever else you ask for. I think we're very close to the ultimate goal, which is having her take out her own dirty diapers.

With a nice little goose egg she got from jumping on the bed with the older kids

Anyway, we're having a lot of fun with Molly.