Week 38 – The Equinox

The Molloy family is very excited that spring (and spring weather) is finally here. Elise loves being outside, so the past seven weeks of being cooped up in the house have felt extremely long. A lot has changed since we began our winter hibernation – Elise is like a whole new baby. She is going to sleep easily, sleeping through the night consistently, she is crawling, pulling up, eating finger foods...none of which she was doing when it first turned cold. The most interesting thing to reflect on this week is that our little baby is turning 39 weeks old, so she will have been out in the world for just as long as she was in the womb! It’s so strange to think of length of time in those terms. It feels like an entire lifetime ago that I was pregnant and another lifetime ago since she was born.

We did, however, get an ever so brief glimpse of what it was like back in those infant days this week. It is time again for Ellie’s monthly cold (it’s like clockwork!) but this month all the congestion and coughing also came with a fever (her first) and a whole lotta poo.

It all started last Sunday when she pooped eight times in 12 hours (just like when she was an infant), even waking up in the middle of the night because of the diarrhea. It made us realize how rare it is these days that she wakes up in the middle of the night (my how things change!) and took us back to the bad ol’ days when that was the norm. It’s funny how all you talk about is her horrible sleep patterns, waking up every single night (sometimes several times) and the next thing you know you can’t even remember the last time she didn’t sleep through the night. You become spoiled so quickly!

Elise and her great-grandmother Wolfe (Nanny)
Everything returned to normal – sleeping normally, but bad congestion. Then she was acting a little funny on Thursday night, but we thought she might just be overly tired. She doesn’t really nap well at daycare and often comes home completely exhausted. Friday morning she was a little grouchier than usual, but she’d woken up earlier than usual (around 5 am) so we figured she was still as tired as we were! I got a call from the daycare at 11am that our little one was acting lethargic and had a temperature of 103.5 degrees!


Rationally, I know that a fever in babies is very different from one in adults and that 103 really isn’t anything to be too alarmed about. However, as a worrier, I panicked and made a doctors appointment, just to be sure. Sure enough, the doctor said that she had a virus and that there was no medicine to give her - it would just have to work through her system. Give her Tylenol every 4 hours and nurse a lot so that she doesn’t get dehydrated and hold off on the solid foods for a few days since they are harder to digest.

Of course, Ellie fell into to the “nurse frequently” order very well, so well that she even woke up a 4am on Friday night for a snack. Not cool Elise. Not Cool.

Luckily, that was just a one-time thing and she’s feeling much better. She’s a healthy 98.6 degrees, and has begun her newest party trick: climbing stairs. Oh boy, Spring just keeps on springing.

Week 37 – Gimme an O!

Yet another exciting week in the life of our darling 8 month old: she has officially entered the wacky world of finger foods! This week our baby indulged in Cheerios, Sweet Potato Puffs and tiny pieces of banana, all of which she gobbled up gleefully. I am not sure whether it’s the taste or the process that she likes better, but it equal parts fun and hilarious to watch her try to pick a Cheerio up, and then get it to her mouth, then chew and then swallow. Sounds simple for those of us that have been mindlessly munching away for years, but it’s quite a process for our daughter, let me tell you. Endless entertainment!

The biggest obstacle (other than actually picking the thing up) is when the Cheerio gets stuck to her sticky, drool covered finger, which prevents it from ever quite making it into her mouth. Even when it doesn’t reach her mouth, she starts chewing as though it’s in there and she is savoring that whole grain goodness. She is quite the little actress already! Maybe she has a future as a mime. Now that she’s getting into the solid food thing, she has begun to get the concept of eating and now covets whatever we are eating. She watches intently as we chew our food, waiting for her bite, sometimes licking her lips a little and leaning in like a greedy little monkey. We’re taking things slowly though, holding back on the more adventurous foods for later. For now, we are all enjoying the Cheerio phase.

In the talking update, it looks like Marty wins the competition we discussed last week (I think he was bribing her with interesting food, that’s why she’s always licking her lips when we eat – she knows what she’s missing!) as Ellie has begun to indiscriminately chatter “dada” along with “blah”, “rah” and “ahh”. It was a close one, but I tip my hat to the competition for his hard work. He was much more consistent with his “dada” repetition than I was with “mama”.




One last update: last weekend we were visiting friends who have a 2 ½ year old daughter, and they brought out all of her old toys for Ellie to play with while we were there. Ellie got the biggest kick out of the baby “walker”, as she was finally able to fulfill her lifelong dream of walking without the aid of her parents. She walked back and forth across the room for nearly an hour, never tiring of the activity (we did!). At home, she is cruising around furniture with ease and gaining steadier balance every day. She still REALLY wants to walk (and still continues to forget that she can’t and therefore continues to take many a nose dive) but has also realized that crawling can get her to where she wants to be in record time, so she is crawling a lot more too.

That's it for now. Aside from Ellie's depression over her Terps getting bounced in the second round, she is all smiles, motoring along.

Week 36 – Blah, Blah, Blah

Elise has been cooing and “chatting” since she was a few weeks old and “scream-talking” since she was a few months old, so the blabbering thing is nothing new. However, all of the noises that she makes have been vowel sounds until a few weeks ago. Now, consonant sounds may not seem like anything exciting if you do not have children or your children are 3 years old and never stop jabbering on, but this is a very exciting milestone for our little one.

About a month ago, Elise said “Ba” while we were in BJ’s (obviously she is a genius as she was trying to communicate that she knew we were in “Ba”- Jay’s) and we acted like she’d just scored perfect on her SAT’s and said nothing but “ba” to her for like two weeks, but “ba” must have been a fluke because she didn’t really do it again. She continued with her screaming vowel coos until about two weeks ago when her “ahhhhh” turned into a very distinct “blah”. It is the cutest thing, watching her move her mouth like she’s having a conversation with you, saying “blah, blah, blah, blah” in a conversational rhythm. When we say “blah, blah, blah” back to her she says it back to us, as though having a very serious discussion, perhaps about her preference for applesauce over squash or her fondness of bath-time.

Who knows what she is trying to say, but she’s trying to say something. It is times like these I would love to know what is going on in her little head. What does she think about? What does she dream about? What is she trying to say? We are still waiting with baited breath for her to say “ma-ma” or “da-da” and we have a slight competition going over which she will say first. (Her Oma has thrown her hat in the ring too, prompting Ellie to say “Oma” constantly, but I think that one is a little harder and less likely).

In other news, last week Elise had her 6 month wellness check up (only two months behind!) and is growing well. She is up to 16lbs 10 oz (28th percentile for weight) and 26 inches tall (48th percentile for height) and is on track with her development. The doctor said that it was ok to cut out a bottle and add in a solid feeding, which is exciting for me because it means less quality time for me and the pump.

So now she is eating milk 4 times a day and solids 3 times a day so it feels like she is always eating! She has recently taken a loathing to bibs, so the whole time she is eating, she is ripping her bib off and throwing it unceremoniously onto the floor. This results in us searching on the floor for the bib and trying to put it back on through protests. This whole process also results in a colorful smattering of sweet potatoes and bananas all over her clothes. And I think that the daycare workers have completely given up even trying to put a bib on because the whole thing is such a hassle, so everyday we pick her up she looks like a grubby mess. It is starting to get embarrassing to take her into public! I can feel the stares of strangers thinking “If you can’t afford laundry detergent you shouldn’t have a baby.”

But, what can you do? We have started to use bibs that snap instead of Velcro, so she tugs and tugs and screams but can’t get the bib off – so she may be mad but is a little cleaner. The jury is still out on whether all the fuss is worth it.

Week 35 - Goodbye, Baby, Goodbye

This was an incredibly sad week, as we had to find a new home for our beloved two-year-old kitty, Ridley. Ridley has always been a fairly aggressive cat (we like to refer to it as overly playful) but he has done a pretty good job of keeping his aggression away from the baby. In fact, since he sniffed her in her car seat the day we brought her home from the hospital, he has pretty much just completely ignored her for the past seven months. However, about three weeks ago, Ridley was sitting on the coffee table watching as Ellie played with her blocks on the carpet and out of nowhere - BAM - he swatted at her head and scratched her on her helpless little bald scalp!

Of course in the aftermath of Ellie hysterically crying, me screaming and Marty chasing after Ridley like a madman, I think that he got the point that he did something REALLY wrong. And quite frankly, since then he has behaved like a perfect angel - even running away anytime she crawled anywhere in his vicinity so as not to get in trouble again. Unfortunately though, he pretty much sealed the deal and wrote his walking papers by attacking her unprovoked. He may have "reformed" for now, but it is just too dangerous to have this unpredictably aggressive animal near our baby, especially now that she is mobile and more and more interested in him. The time was drawing near where she would be chasing him around, trying to pick him up and sticking her finger in his eye when pointing at him. I can only imagine how he could react if actually provoked. And we just can't take that chance. It would be irresponsible of us to wait and see – we would never forgive ourselves if Ellie really got hurt.

I feel incredibly guilty. I hate to be one of those people that has their beloved pet and then has a baby and ignores the pet and can't follow through on the commitment for caring for it. For two years, Ridley was our baby - we took a million pictures of him, talked about him like proud parents, played with him (he played fetch!) and cuddled with him to our hearts content. Of course things change when you have children, as obviously your helpless baby needs you more and trumps the family pet – at least for a while - but we still loved him like part of the family.

We ended up finding a nice college student to take him, and we are confident that Ridley will love it in the spacious apartment, on a very busy street in Center City with tons of interesting things to look at through the window. She has the time and energy to make him her number one baby and I know that he will love being the center of attention once again. We know that it was the right thing to do, but that does not make it easier, or make us miss him any less.

I think that Ellie will miss him too. She smiled whenever he came into the room and laughed when he walked by, swishing his fluffy tail in her face. She was always watching him, finding whatever he was doing (licking a plastic bag, trying to crawl into a box 3 times too small for him to fit in, chasing after toy mice?) incredibly interesting and funny. We are also trying to reassure Ellie that we will not get rid of her if she is mean to any subsequent children we may have, but really it is a lesson that she should keep in mind. (haha)

So it is with heavy hearts that we say Goodbye Ridley, our first baby! Our house is emptier without you - and you will be missed.

Week 34 – Evel Knievel

Elise is the new Evel Knievel. Now she’s not riding any motorcycles or jumping cavernous holes in the ground, but she is fearless and she could well have a future as a stunt double. Last Wednesday in daycare we arrived to pick her up and what do we see, but Elise with a bloody nose, a gash and a bruise. She was a mess (but you should’ve seen the other kid.) Actually, it wasn’t the fighting Irish in Elise; it was the daredevil. Meredith was worried (of course) and a bit aghast, and while I wasn’t the picture of composure, I must say that there was more than a twinge of pride in me when I heard the story.

Here goes: So it’s been a couple of weeks now that she’s been mobile and that means freedom in a place like daycare. Think, 16 with the keys to the car and a full tank of gas. So she has quickly made a new friend, named Olivia who is a 13 month old and walking around. So Elise has been following this older woman all over the joint, up over obstacles, pulling up on furniture and she even followed her into the playhouse. The playhouse has a small slide which is about a foot in length and Elise even managed to follow her in her own way) down the slide.

As you can imagine, Ellie’s confidence is pretty high at this point. So she’s holding onto the side of the house with Olivia when Olivia walks off to retrieve another toy. Elise naturally follows her. One problem though – she can’t walk! I picture it like the cartoon character that walks out into thin air… looks down and realizes, uh-oh. Elise comes crashing to the floor and is so upset that she then digs her face in the carpet rubbing her nose to the point of rug burn. So on top of the blood, she’s aggravating it with a rug burn. It’s funny, she is already, at such a young age, so frustrated when she can’t do something, I try to tell her not to be so hard on herself, but she doesn’t listen. I don’t know where she gets it.

While she is MUCH more interested in standing and walking, she does occasionally give in crawling, and she is getting to be quite speedy. She is generally a happier baby now that she is on the move, free to explore. She is the most excited about pulling up (it always comes back to her bizarre love of standing which she developed at two weeks!) and has become quite a pro at pulling herself up, particularly using Meredith’s pant leg.



I have a feeling that this newfound Evel Knievel status is going to stick around for a while… she doesn’t seem to be learning the lesson that certain actions cause pain and therefore you shouldn’t do them. For now, it just requires us to hover over her a little more than necessary to make sure that she doesn’t do something that will require her to get stitches or a cast. Boy do we have a long road (full of cavernous holes) ahead of us!