Week 26 (Six Months!) – Cause and Effect

I know that every parent thinks their child is a genius or at the very least above average, but like all those children on Lake Wobegon, mine really is. For a few weeks now Elise has been dropping things from her high chair, or from the couch or from wherever. Now, you may be thinking that her grip is simply too weak or that she is destine to be clumsy. However, if you’ve met her, or have read our blog about the claw, trust me the grip is fine. (and I have the clumps of hair missing to prove it.) I think Ellie is experimenting with gravity. She has this triumphant look of, ‘cool, things fall… hey parents, did you know that?’

Okay, maybe she just likes to make noise, but what really is impressive is that she has learned that when she drops something it goes on the floor. She has learned that if I drop something out of my high chair on the left side, I will lean over and look for it on the left side and vice versa. This is the complicated concept of cause and effect.

As I write this, I realize that this may be another one of those moments where Meredith and I are far more impressed with something then most people would be. I think all parents do this sort of thing though, especially with the first baby. We read into everything. I can’t truly explain the roller-coaster ride that is reading the mayo clinic’s guide to the first year and comparing Ellie’s skills to what a six month old should be doing. For example, it says that by this time your child should be sitting up on their own for five minutes or more. No problem, she’s been doing the sitting thing for weeks now. My baby is so advanced. But it also says that a baby should be eating solid foods pretty regularly. Well, how come getting Ellie to eat cereal has been such a challenge? Is there something wrong with her? With us? Are we forcing it on her? Will she develop an eating disorder?

Honestly, Meredith is the worrier, but I have found that I am so much more protective and worried than I ever thought I would be. It’s so frustrating. The logic is that Ellie will do things in her own time and the books offer a rough guideline, but there is this lingering panic that everything you are doing is stunting your child’s development. So then are we overcompensating? Okay, see, I could go on like this forever. Basically, the gist of it is, you read what you can, you create the environment for Ellie to figure things out and Mother Nature will take care of the rest. Above Average, Average, Genius, it doesn’t really matter. I can’t believe I’ve actually turned into one of those types of parents. But whatever your baby can do, mine can do better. ;-)

Bonus Family Picture Post - Merry Christmas!

Gift from Oma and Opa













Grandpa and Ellie Christmas Eve












Grandmom and Ellie Christmas Eve














Molloy Family

















Grandmom, Grandpa and (Great) Grandma Stauffer












Nanny (Ellie's Great Grandmother Wolfe)











Ellie's second cousins Cory, Emma, and Kamryn, with my first cousins Robin and Sarah and (Great) Grandma Meredith












The Wolfe Family













Grandmom and Pop (Ellie's Great Grandmother and Grandfather Meredith)












"Aunt" Lauren (Ellie's first cousin once removed)

Week 25 – Rockwell’s Got Nuttin’ on Us

I have Christmas Fever. This may not seem like a big deal to some people, but to those of you who know me well, you know that I had become a bit of a Scrooge when it comes to this nation’s most overdone holiday. It’s not that I don’t like the idea of Christmas – I actually love the whole spirit of giving aspect. But I have been a strong believer in celebrating Christmas ON CHRISTMAS. That means: no buying gifts in July; no listening to Christmas songs except on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day; no obnoxious decorations put up the day after Thanksgiving. Marty and I have never had a Christmas tree before (we always celebrate the day somewhere else!) and we don’t get each other gifts (we usually just paid for our trip back east).

Actually, for me, Christmas had become synonymous with stress and exhaustion. For the past several years it meant flying back east for an intensely jam-packed schedule with family functions and visits with friends, rushing from one thing to the next, spending the majority of our “holiday” on the beltway and returning home completely exhausted and ready for a vacation.

Having a child, however, has breathed new life into my Christmas Spirit. Like so many things in my life, I now see things in an entirely new light. Ellie’s first Christmas was very exciting for me, even though she wasn’t aware that it was happening. We bought a tree, bought and hung stockings (over the fireplace even! how trite!), put up wreaths and other decorations (Christmas threw up on our house!) and Marty and I even decided to exchange gifts this year. I even caught myself listening to the All-Christmas-Music-All-The-Time radio station on numerous occasions that were not Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. If you’d told me this time last year that I would be listening to Christmas music I would have laughed until I cried. Why the change of heart? Well…I don’t know exactly.

Maybe it’s because it was the first of many Christmas’s that we will spend as The Molloy Family. While Marty and I have been married for 5 years, we weren’t really a family until now. At least, no one really considers you a “family” until you have kids – you’re just a couple. As a couple, you split time between your parents’ houses carrying out each others families traditions insisting that the way that each of you did things with your family is the “right” way to celebrate Christmas. So, this year we started a new tradition: The Molloy Family Christmas. We will spend Christmas morning at our house opening presents and eating Pumpkin bread and drinking coffee (well Ellie can’t drink coffee until she’s at least 4)…or whatever it is that we will do that will become our family’s way of doing things. We will do this so that one day Ellie will say to her husband “but in MY family we always…” and argue that her family’s way is the “right” way.

Our first Christmas with Ellie was as wonderful – she licked her presents (we wrapped up two toys that we already had) and was in great spirits all weekend, especially considering that we threw off her normal bedtime routine and put her in loud situations with tons of people for three days straight. We got to spend lots of time with each of our families, upholding many Wolfe/Molloy-Stauffer traditions, and we also got to have Christmas morning together as a family unit, starting our own tradition. It was the best of both worlds. It wasn’t stressful, it wasn’t rushed. In fact, I am already looking forward to doing it all again next year. What a difference a year can make.

There was one little thing that happened, that I need to document as well. At my parents house, Ellie woke around 4:00 AM crying in the next room over. Marty got up and went to her right away, fearing that since she was in a new place and not in her own crib, she might be a little confused or afraid. Well, by the time Marty picked her up and brought her into our room, she had fallen right back to sleep. So Marty, basically a lazy man ;-), decided that the effort was too great to get her back in the other room - so he laid down and we snuggled together as a family for a few hours. It was one of the nicest Christmas memories we will ever have to share.

Week 24 - Ten Good Minutes

Many people say that when they have children, their children teach them as much about the world around them as they teach the children. This is no less true for me. I see the world in such a different light since Elise was born. Something, a gift from Ellie really, that has altered every facet of my life is more ethereal and less concrete then a specific lesson learned. It revolves around time & philosophy.

Specifically, it is a new way of life I call, ten good minutes. It stems from the put-down method we use for getting Ellie to sleep at night. Invariably, Ellie falls asleep with Meredith feeding her at night, but when placed in her crib she wakes and cries. I do not need to re-chronicle our sleep issues. But what happens next has literally changed my life. After a few minutes of crying, I will enter her room and say ‘okay, sweetie, ten good minutes.’ I proceed to pick her up and rock her gently to sleep.

The timeline is as follows: in the first three minutes she calms down, the next two she falls back to sleep, the next three we spend enjoying the sleep and falling deeper into it and lastly, with the last two I prepare her body to be placed in the crib and actually complete the placement. This works every time… almost. See, sometimes, I break the rules and then it doesn’t work.

The rules are very specific. There can be no cheating, it must be at least ten minutes, longer is okay, but never shorter. It starts from the moment you see the time on the clock. If you don’t look at the time for a few moments when you get in the room, you cannot guess. You must remain focused on the task at hand. Allowing the mind to wander onto unrelated topics will distract you and you will transfer this to the job at hand. In this case, she will stay awake longer, or wake sooner in the night, etc.

As with any philosophy, there can be variations that are acceptable, like the way I hold Elise, but if I break one of the cardinal rules, like trying to put her down before the ten minutes have been reached, then it doesn’t work and the results can be ear-splittingly tragic.

From a broader point of view, we are inundated with noise from every place in our lives. Often, I will seek out media, be it music, or podcasts, or the television that basically keep me from myself and my thoughts. It’s much easier to hear a news story than to examine ones situation at that moment. But in those ten good minutes, I routinely spend with Ellie, I’m in a dark room with nothing to distract me. My thoughts are focused on her, our lives, the future, etc. Feeling her breathe deeper as she falls asleep on my chest cause me to focus on this fleeting and precious moment.

For several weeks now, I’ve been applying this to other areas of my life with varying degrees of success. Meredith doesn’t call me ‘ADD-boy’ for nothing. I have the attention span of a dog that is not looking at food. I am still learning this philosophy, but, it does work when applied correctly. Try it!

If a situation has you riled up:
Take three minutes just to calm down (Ellie like to go from crying to a soft whimper here)
Take the next two minutes to find your center and your rationality (Ellie falls asleep here)
Take the next three minutes to delve deeper into the issue (Ellie goes into a deep sleep here)
Take the last two minutes to prepare yourself to reengage the world (Ellie is dreaming here) and take the first step forward again.

If I package this right, I think I might have the makings of a self-help program here. Ooh, and don’t you think Guru Elise Molloy has a nice ring to it?

Week 23 - Whoop, There It Is!

From the time we are infants, we are given a bazillion vaccinations to prevent us from contracting all sorts of diseases that you don’t hear of anyone ever actually getting in this country anymore. I am not suggesting that we should not get vaccinated to potentially lethal illnesses, but no one actually gets these diseases, right? Well, turns out they actually do! A little boy named Michael in the infant section of Ellie’s daycare has come down with pertussis, aka whooping cough.



Whooping cough is a bacterial infection that inflames the lungs and airways and brings on a persistent, violent cough. A baby with whooping cough will typically cough for 20 or 30 seconds nonstop and then struggle to breathe before the next coughing spell starts. During coughing episodes, baby's lips and nails may turn bluish from lack of oxygen. As I have mentioned before, I am a Worrier. (Marty would say, "THE worrier) There is seriously nothing worse for a Worrier than for her child to potentially have a disease that causes her to turn blue from lack of oxygen. Is it just me or does this whole thing sound completely terrifying? Elise’s pediatrician, while concerned, didn’t seem to think Elise’s death was imminent so I have relaxed a little (I stress little). Apparently it is not completely bizarre that someone at daycare got whooping cough. I did some research and it turns out that this disease is making a comeback and there are thousands and thousands of reported cases all over the country. Who knew?

Ellie has had one vaccination to this disease, but it is a series of 4 shots, given over the course of a year, so she is not vaccinated to it yet. Because it is an extremely contagious disease and Ellie has been exposed to it, her pediatrician put her on antibiotics. Hopefully these antibiotics will either prevent her from getting it, or (if she already has it) will reduce its severity. There is nothing else that we can really do at this point. So for now, we are just giving her the antibiotic and having a minor panic attack every time she sneezes or coughs.

In other medical news, Ellie went in for her 4-month check up this week (we are a month behind). She weighed in at 13lbs 11oz, so she’s just barely shy of doubling her birth weight. She is still a skinny-minnie – only in the 20th percentile for weight for her age. She is not continuing the path to becoming a giant either – this month she dropped from 68th percentile in height to 48th percentile. Guess we do not have a Lisa Leslie (or Diana Taurasi - Go Mercury!) on our hands after all. Looks like she’s destined to be average height like her parents. The pediatrician said that she was surprised that Ellie’s hair is still red – maybe it will stay that way! It doesn’t look like her eye color (“blueberry” blue) will change now either.

So, cross your fingers for us that Elise does not contract whooping cough or have any body parts that ever turn blue other than her eyes. Luckily, so far she seems happy and healthy and thinks her antibiotic is a fun tasty treat. Ah, to be young and worry-free!

Week 22 - The Claw

Sometimes I run around the house with Elise in my arms chasing after Meredith. Now, for those of you that know me well, you should see nothing odd in this behavior and for many of you who have watched me chase sheep at Mt. Vernon or talk in the silliest of voices at the oddest of times, you will feel pity for Meredith for she now has two children to contend with. But wait! It gets better. Allow me to explain the latest in Ellie's development.

Several weeks ago Ellie started reaching out for things and grabbing them. Eventually, she started bringing them to her mouth and we encouraged this, as it was a big step for her to recognize something and go for it. It should be noted that Ellie is freakishly strong. However, we never imagined that this cute development coupled with her kung-fu grip would turn into... The Claw! The tough part about it all is that the claw is unpredictable. When I'm holding her and drinking my coffee, the claw strikes and spills coffee. (Fortunately, time no longer permits me to have hot coffee anymore because I'm inevitably distracted by Ellie.) When we are
trying to feed her, the claw will ascend from below and grab the spoon. When I have Ellie riding high on my shoulders, the claw strikes and leaves with a clump of my hair. (I used to think that fathers went bald due to genetics or stress or they ripped their own hair out, but now I know... they had daughters... and their daughters had the claw!) Try putting clothes on our angel... she waits until you have the first arm through, then it is an hour later, you are exhausted but victorious... but you know the claw will return. Opening mail around the claw, forget it!
Back to our original scene, I will chase Meredith through the house encouraging the claw to strike and of course, when it could actually be used for good and tormenting those we love, it remains dormant. I always hoped that my child and I could gang up on Meredith and outnumber her. What a fool I was to think that I was not the outnumbered one by the females in the house. It’s a conspiracy.

Pretty soon, as Ellie outgrows things, we will spread them out on the floor and invite our friends over who have young children. I will hold Ellie in my arms and people will pay us to move throughout the toys and clothes and when they are ready, we will bend down and see if the claw was able to win them a prize. ;-) Can you say college fund?

Week 21 - Firsts and Seconds

Happy Thanksgiving! We obviously have so much to be thankful for this year and Week 21 was a week of firsts (and seconds) for our Little Turkey.

Ellie’s first Thanksgiving went incredibly well. She did great on the car trip to my Aunt and Uncles house in Maryland, slept during the meal so her Mommy and Daddy got to eat without distraction, and did as well as could be expected around all of the new people and strange atmosphere. She also did well at her second Thanksgiving on Saturday with Marty’s side of the family. Again, she did well in the car, slept during the meal and was a champ around all the new faces. She even got to enjoy some quality time with her cousins.

With the weekend focused on food, we thought we’d get Ellie into the action by introducing her first solid food! We have been preparing her for this moment for several weeks now. We set up her high chair about a month ago and have been “practicing” having her sit there while we’re eating dinner so she can watch us and get used to the chair. We have been going back and forth about whether to start her with solids now or hold off until she is six months since she has a tendency to have allergy problems. All of the hemming and hawing was starting to get annoying, so on Friday, we sat Elise in the high chair, mixed up 3 teaspoons breast milk and rice cereal and just went for it. Perhaps all of that practicing paid off! Our little baby acted like she has been eating off of a spoon for her entire life! She opened her mouth every time the spoon came toward her, moved her mouth like she was chewing the cereal (even though it was so runny it wasn’t really chewable) and she even leaned in with her mouth open, asking for more! She barely spilled a drop. (we have an eater on our hands!) You would’ve thought she’d just gotten into Harvard with the way Marty and I were beaming with pride. Who knew that a child eating off of a spoon could be so exciting?!

Unfortunately the week was not full of strictly positive firsts and seconds. This week also brought a negative first – her first illness. She started with a little runny nose on Thursday and it progressed into a full-fledged cold by the end of the weekend, complete with cough, runny nose and horrible congestion. She is having trouble nursing because she can't breathe through her nose well, so it's been pretty frustrating for her, especially considering her love of eating . So for the past few nights, we have been doing a lot of nose wiping and nasal aspiration – as well as a lot of hoping that this will end quickly. I am not sure if she made me sick or vice versa, but I am suffering from a similar ailment, and it’s no fun. As you may know breastfed babies supposedly never get sick so this is yet another debunking of the myths of breastfeeding!

Another negative second – for the second time in five months, the prospect of having a nanny was once again dangled in front of us by our neighbors and then rudely yanked away. As we discussed last week, our neighbors broached the subject of sharing a nanny and after weighing all of the options and assessing our current situation, we decided to go for it. Unfortunately, they had a friend who volunteered to watch their baby and they chose to go with that option instead. We are mostly disappointed because the assessment made us realize we weren’t crazy about daycare and we probably wouldn’t have even realized that we weren’t crazy about it had we not over analyzed it in trying to decide if we wanted to get a nanny. So basically nothing has changed, we're just slightly less happy with the situation.

At the time of this writing, at 8:30 on a Monday evening, Meredith and I are struggling, as we always do, to get Ellie to sleep. Meredith has been upstairs on the computer writing this post after feeding Ellie and making the first attempt to get her to sleep. Through much of this writing, Ellie has been crying since we are sticking with the pick-up/put-down/10 minute cry method. (this is a hybrid of several methods that we've had the most success with.) Anyway, my point is, with as tough as it can be sometimes raising a child - struggling with the worry and the frustration- there is nothing in this world as wonderful as your little girl falling asleep in your arms, listening to her breathe through a stuffy nose and realizing there is no place on this Earth that you would rather be - with her little hand on your arm... falling gently, deeply asleep. So, this Thanksgiving, we are most thankful for the little moments, appreciated, but lost as she grows bigger each day.

Week 20 - Finding Balance

This week, Ellie has been trying to find her balance with sitting up on her own. Currently, she will struggle and sit up for a few seconds, then tip over. With each day though, the seconds she spends up on her own grow longer and longer. It’s quite an achievement for her and fun to watch and encourage. Ellie’s parents are also trying to find the right balance – but for them, it’s between nurturing and independence. Whether it’s getting Ellie to sit up on her own or soothe herself to sleep, each day is a push and pull of wanting to help her and letting her struggle a little bit so that she learns to do it on her own. It can be agonizing sometimes for everyone involved.

Like all parents, we want the best for our child. Knowing that we want her to be the happiest, healthiest, strongest, smartest baby she can be – that’s the easy part. Figuring out how to do that for her is the hard part. When we put Ellie in daycare two months ago, it was based out of financial necessity. However, times have changed (that was quick) and we reignited a conversation with our neighbors around sharing a nanny. Their little boy, Miles, was born two weeks after Elise and starting in January will also need childcare three days a week. The timing is perfect, as we need to decide by December 1st if we want to enroll Ellie in daycare through August 2007.

There are pros and cons to both daycare and a nanny that we’ve explored in this blog before when we were agonizing about this decision a few months ago. But now that Ellie has been in daycare for a few months, it’s not as simple a decision as we once thought.

Wednesday night went over to have dinner with Miles and his parents, John and Karen. We set to work through the decision-making process and to see if the four of us were all on the same page with the needs of our respective families. It was a very interesting evening as we compared our two children who are similar in age but so different in personality and development. While Miles weighs in as a heavyweight at 16 lbs, Elise is a mere featherweight at 12. Ellie is much more agile, active and coordinated then her buddy too. For example, Ellie stands in our laps, can sit up (with our help) and remains quiet and engaged for long stretches. Ellie grasps and holds onto toys, often putting them to her mouth to suck on them. Miles in comparison is more laid back, literally and prefers to cuddle with his mom. Miles was having a fussy evening and has not reached milestones like reaching for and holding onto toys yet. Two weeks is a long time in their short lives, but Ellie has been doing her things for many weeks now.

Since the dinner, Meredith and I have talked a great deal about why there was such a difference between our two bundles of joy. While some of our questions lead us down a nature path like, is it that Ellie is a girl and females simply mature and develop faster than boys? Are some babies just born with different abilities? I mean, Ellie has been standing on our laps since day one and freakishly strong in her grip. On the other hand and for purposes on our daycare decision, we have questions of a nurturing quality. Can Ellie play more independently because of her time at daycare? Is she learning by observing the older children at daycare? Is daycare helping her advance? It’s probably a small combination of many things including items we are leaving out.

Our conundrum is that we don’t want to hinder our child’s growth and independence, nor do we want to miss an opportunity to give Ellie a more personalized and nurturing setting. After weighing the pros and cons, we’ve settled on sharing the nanny with our friends – we decided to speak again on Monday to finalize things for sure. It’s an emotional decision either way since she’s gotten used to the providers at daycare and we are stepping into the unknown with a nanny. After all, it is easier to stick with the devil you know. We just figure that Ellie is naturally an independent little girl and she will continue to be so, as Miles, (we expect) will be the higher maintenance baby for now. The allure of having one person to hold and teach and nurture Ellie is just too much to pass on. Our daycare stated that they provide a 3 to 1 ratio for the infants, but the reality is different in practice, as we have observed. The ratio is 4 and even 5 to 1 sometimes. With a nanny, we can be certain that it will always be 2 to 1.


Our hope is that a nanny will be more of an extension of the type of care that we would provide and we would have more control over the parameters of care. It won’t be perfect. There will be times when we have to compromise and we end up tipping over like Ellie trying to sit up. In the end, there is always going to be adjustments and compromises that have to be made so that we can all find our balance.

Week 19 - Ellie Finds Her Voice...and Her Feet

You wouldn’t know it from the way we’ve been whining, but Elise has been doing more than just refusing to sleep over the past few weeks. In fact, it might be from all that extra awake time that she has become quite the little Magellan - making new discoveries every day! In the grand scheme of the world, I suppose it is nothing earth shattering. Our baby has not discovered the cure for cancer or an economical, plentiful and environmentally responsible way to power vehicles. She has, however, made many discoveries that are exciting for a little baby!


First up: Ellie has discovered her voice. Not only did she come to vote with us last week, but she also discovered a new way to communicate. Now, while she has been cooing for months, these coos have been soft and gentle, through a peaceful half smile. It was very sweet and quiet and beautiful. Those days are over. A little over a week ago, we were at a friend’s house and Ellie was sitting quietly on my lap, when she suddenly screamed. Then she did it again. And again. It was hard for us to figure out what the heck she was doing – at first we thought she was crying, but she didn’t seem upset at all. Then we thought maybe she was trying to clear her throat – perhaps she was getting sick? Nope. Turns out that in that moment, she discovered her vocal chords. And the days of taking her to quiet places are officially over. Boy does that child love her newfound scream-talking! She loves scream-talking so much that this weekend she became hoarse. Though I feel bad that she’s worn out her little voice already, that little hoarse-squeek-scream is possibly the cutest thing on the planet.

Next, did you know Ellie has feet?! It did not even occur to us that Elise didn’t know that her feet existed until about two weeks ago. One day, while she was sitting on the changing table, she brought her legs up and grabbed onto her feet with both hands. Somewhere between shock and excitement, I believe that was the moment she realized “Hey these fun toys are attached to me!” And thus the love affair began. Every time she is lying on her back, she brings her legs up and cuddles her precious feet. When she is sitting up, she looks down, sees her little friends, and takes a nosedive straight for them. She has become a baby obsessed. In fact, her latest trick is to munch on her feet, as though proudly proclaiming to the world “My parents never feed me! I have to eat my feet for nourishment!”
Speaking of eating things that don’t taste good, Ellie has also discovered a love for sucking or chewing on pretty much everything that comes within 50 feet. From toys to fingers to the clothes she is wearing, she promptly soaks things within seconds, leaving a trail of wet everywhere she goes.

The most exciting discovery for us as her parents has been that she has discovered that she doesn’t hate books. For the first few months, every time we put a book in front of her, even when she was in a great mood, she started screaming. It made her parents, who are avid readers, worried that she was destined to be a math person (if she inherited our math genes, she is destined for failure that endeavor). But it turns out that her hatred for books was short lived. Maybe it’s just that she has developed the ability to sit still for more than 5 seconds (although still not more than 5 minutes) but she now devours books. Figuratively and literally (see above paragraph)!

And finally, while Ellie began rolling over from her back to her stomach at 12 weeks, she just started rolling over from her stomach to her back last week. She hates being on her stomach so much that she doesn’t usually get the opportunity to roll over because she is too busy crying. Now I guess she’s discovered that she needs be proactive - instead of waiting for her parents to get her off her tummy, she just does it herself. Hopefully she’ll be that proactive about getting out of diapers!