One Year Ago Today...

I can barely believe that at this time one year ago today I was in labor, a few short hours away from meeting Elise Lawler Molloy for the first time. In a way, it feels like the time has flown by...I can still remember all of the little details like it was yesterday. I remember that Marty and I were watching Kill Bill 2 and had just finished eating dinner (Bocca Burgers, fries and broccoli) when my friend Shoshana called, and when she said "How are you doing?" and I said, "I think I might be in labor. How can you tell?" (there was no mistaking that I was in labor a little later in the evening). I remember how genuinely surprised I was when the doctor said I had a baby girl. Holding her for the first time, the slimy little naked baby, warm and soft. How tiny she was...those long skinny fingers. The way she looked around the delivery room right after she was born, like she was checking things out - so alert - full of curiosity even then! How I couldn't even think about sleeping, even though it was the middle of the night and I was exhausted from labor, because I had this rush of adrenaline and the need to keep my eyes on her, relishing every single second of her presence.

And yet in some ways I can hardly believe that she has only been a part of our lives for one short year. This time, one year ago today, I had yet to lay my eyes on her: this person who my life has revolved around for the past 12 months. I didn't know anything about her personality or what she would look like. I didn't know that she would love bouncing and bananas and peek-a-boo. That she would have sensitive skin and be allergic to everything! That she would have red hair or that she would be practically bald and nearly toothless when she was a year old. That she would never stop moving and love to be the center of attention. I didn't even know she was a she! I can't even really remember what it was like before I was a mom; before I had this precious little person in my life who brings so much joy.

Sure, I'm being sappy and sentimental, but how can I not be? We have been through so much together this past year and she has changed and grown in so many ways. But in some ways she is still that warm little wide-eyed baby I pulled on to my chest at 2:12am one year ago tomorrow.

And now I truly understand why we celebrate birthdays.

Picture Time

Grandpa and Gram (Marty's parents)















Meredith's family: Jason, Debbie, Oma, Opa, Kate and Aaron















Laughing at Daddy















Puffing her cheeks out















Pushing the car at the playground















Making elephant noise















Gram and Grandpa Stauffer's dog (and Ellie's pal) Bentley

The Stuffed Animal Craze

Even before Ellie was born, she started receiving stuffed animals as gifts from family and friends. For the past year, her ever growing collection -now about 15-20 - has been serving as decoration on a shelf in her bedroom. The only stuffed animal she has shown any interest in (other than Affie the hand puppet that she loved when she was an infant) is her Flat Elephant, though I am not sure that it counts as a stuffed animal because the only thing that is stuffed is the head. Anyway, she actually has two Flat Elephants that she received as gifts from two different cousins of mine - one is pink and one is green (they are cleverly named "Pinky" and "Greeny") and she is completely obsessed with them. You are not supposed to put blankets or stuffed animals into the crib with an infant (because of SIDS), but Ellie really needed something to hug and suck on to comfort her to fall asleep. So we started putting Pinky or Greeny (since it is small and flat and we thought hard to suffocate in) in her crib to help her fall asleep at about 3 months old. She has cuddled and sucked on her Flat Elephants at nearly every naptime and bedtime since. Because the elephants are so near and dear to her (and they signify sleeping time), we keep Greeny in her crib at all times for night sleeping and Pinky goes to daycare/in the car for naps.

Two weeks ago, we sent Pinky to daycare with her for naptime, as usual, and when I went to pick her up, they casually mentioned that they could not find it. (First of all, how does something get "lost" in a one room center? Better yet, how does something get lost in a crib?) I think I nonchalantly told the Director to let me know if it turned up, but in my head, I started completely freaking out. Of course we are lucky enough to have two of these elephants that she loves so much, but the idea of only having one worried me. What would we do if she lost the other one?! She may never sleep again! I wildly started calling my cousins, doing Internet searches and generally acting like a crazy person. Thanks to my fabulous cousin (thank you Louie!) a new Pinky is on its way and the crisis has been diverted. I feel slightly embarrassed to even relay this story because who gets this insane about a stuffed toy? But she adores it! Ah, the lengths we will go for the happiness of our children.

Back to the stuffed animals. So, about three weeks ago (before the Elephant incident) Marty went in to get Ellie when she woke up in the morning and she started grunting and reaching for the stuffed animal shelf. She grabbed one of the stuffed animals (a purple Hippo) off of the shelf and proceeded to hug it and carry it around with her all day. Thus, the stuffed animal craze began. Until that morning, we didn't even think she knew the stuffed animals were there. She went from not even being interested in them to being completely obsessed literally over night! She wants to carry them (yes, all of them) around with her all of the time and every morning she reaches out to her new pals on the shelf, excited to choose a new friend for the day.

Pianos and Pools

This Saturday, the Molloy family took a small jaunt out to the suburbs to visit friends, Christine and James, and the visit resulted in two new and exciting firsts for our little one. First up was Ellie's first experience with a real instrument. Sure, she rhythmically shakes the heck out of her egg shakers and tambourine, and bangs on an old coffee can like she was Ringo Starr, but that is nothing compared to the joy she had playing on a real piano. James demonstrated how to push down the keys, and then we plopped her onto the stool and she went at it, banging away like a pro with a huge goofy grin on her face the whole time. Ok, so there wasn't any semblance of a melody or song, but she had such a great time, we may have to start saving up for a piano! We are pretty sure that she is going to be musical, as she always dancing and singing and everyone at day care comments that Elise enjoys music class more than any of the other kids.

After music hour, we headed over to the community pool where Ellie had her first "cold water" experience. (As a side note, you wouldn't believe the horrible time I had trying to find a one piece bathing suit for our 11 month old. Practically every infant bathing suit at every store was a bikini. Maybe I have turned into a prude in my old age, but seriously how is it a good idea to put an infant in a bikini? Particularly for my baby who is just about as pale as they come, and should probably be in a full body suit out in the sun. Anyway, I did eventually find an adorable bathing suit at Children's Place.)

Ellie's first pool trip came with mixed reviews. She did not particularly like the cold water (her only experience to date was warm baths) so she spent the beginning of the trip crying every time we put her feet in the water. It took a while, but she eventually got used to the it and enjoyed walking around in the (Very shallow) baby pool. However, she was still completely uninterested in sitting in the water or swimming. I took her into the adult pool for a little while, swimming around with her, but again, I think that she was cold and didn't really like it. Despite Ellie's distaste for the cold water, she was a trooper and we are proud of her adventurous spirit. We hope that she will acclimate to the cold water thing soon, because we have a lot of beach and pool trips planned in the coming weeks, and it's going to be a long summer for mom and dad if she hates the water!

The Wheels are Turning

It really shouldn't be a surprise, but when it happens, it just blows you away. There are these little moments that just shock you. Elise did these two crazy things recently that just showed us that the wheels are turning up there in that tiny head of hers, completely on their own.

The first evidence that Ellie is slowly but surely figuring out the world happened on Tuesday. Elise has this little truck that she ordinarily stands behind and pushes. It has been a wonderful toy and we credit it with helping her to learn to walk on the early side. She still loves pushing it, even still, though she can walk just fine without it. (she likes to put things in the seat and push them around) Well, to spice things up, Meredith put Ellie on the back of the truck and pushed her (another use for this toy). Ellie was so fascinated with sitting on the truck, that she became completely fixated with figuring out how to climb on it by herself. She literally spent the next 25 minutes practicing getting on and off of the truck by herself: figuring out how to balance on one leg, throw her leg over the truck and slide on. The process involved falling, getting on the truck backwards and sideways, and a few frustrated grunts, but in the end, she got it! And when she figured it out, she was SO proud of herself, she couldn't stop smiling and bouncing with joy on the back of the truck. Now she can get on and off the truck with ease, and it is her favorite new trick.

The other moment was just a simple little thing that showed us that she is more aware of what is going on and being said than we realized. I'm standing in the kitchen on Wednesday and Elise starts playing with something over in the corner she wasn't supposed to. So I said to her, "Elise, where is your ball? Go get your ball and we'll play catch." She turned, stopped playing with the big bag of flour, walked past me into the dining room searched for the ball, found it under a chair. Picked it up, brought it to me in the kitchen and then threw it to me to play catch! Seriously, it was the coolest thing.

She knew her name

She knew what a ball was

She knew to throw it to me.

We have the coolest daughter.

Some Changes

Meredith and I started this blog for three reasons:
1. To keep those that we love informed about the goings on in Elise's first year
2. To avoid the annoying email-clogging that pictures, upon pictures, upon pictures creates. That way people could just check in and get a cute baby fix whenever they wanted
3. To keep a record that Elise could look back on someday and say, 'yup, my parents were insane.'
To be honest, if you had asked Meredith or I if we would have blogged about Elise every single week for the first year of her life, we both would have said you're crazy. Fact is, we're pretty lazy and have a hard time sticking with a television show, let alone writing and posting pictures for a year. But, we didn't realize how much fun it was going to be for us. So, for those hardcore Ellie blog readers reading this and thinking, no! it can't end... no worries. It won't. But our posts are going to change.

Meredith and I realized recently that Elise does so many new things so rapidly now that the posts once a week are missing too much stuff. So, we are going move to a more traditional blog. The blogs are going to get a lot smaller with fewer pictures, but we will be posting more often with little tidbits on our ever changing little one. And every now and again - maybe weekly or bi-weekly, we'll be posting some monster picture only blogs.

We hope you like the changes... but if you don't you can always leave us a comment.

Week 49 – Fun to be One (almost)

We had been in the car for less than 30 minutes when the traffic on 95 came to a complete standstill. Sensing that something was different, our sleeping baby began stirring. Sensing that something bad was on the horizon, we also began stirring. It wasn’t until the ambulances and police cars roared by with sirens blaring that the inevitable happened. She was awake. Wide awake. She did not want to be awake, (we did not want her to be awake) nor did she want to be confined to that car seat, (nor did we want to be confined to the car.) As she is unable to verbalize these wants quite yet, she conveyed her displeasure the only way she knows how: hysterical crying. Our verbalization came in the form of constant cursing of the ambulances and sirens that awoke our cranky baby. We still had more than 90 miles to go. Needless to say, the weekend did not get off on a good note.

Riley Keohane, Ellie and Regan Sumy
We staggered into Marietta battered and bruised, but it was a lovely day and Ellie perked up right away. I think she sensed that she would be able to play with others, have attention showered on her and be the belle of the balls. (All the kids got a chance to play in a large inflatable ball pit that the Sumy's brought over.) This is a fantastic toy for all you parents out there. It had this magnetic pull on all the children to run into it at full speed, diving in head first. It kept them all mesmerized for hours - which is no easy task. That is except for Ellie, who has the attention span of a gnat. She was wandering here and there, running into the ball gym and then running to play with something else after a few minutes. There's Daddy, asking every few minutes 'has anyone seen my daughter - oh over there, wait no, over there...'

Great Grandmom and Pop Meredith
The picnic was a celebration for many exciting family occasions, including two 40th wedding anniversaries, about tons of birthdays, including Ellie's (albeit a few weeks early.) It was great to be able to celebrate Ellie’s first year of life with so many our family and friends, and frankly, our little limelight junkie wouldn't have it any other way. She took all of the people and attention in stride, never showing any signs of being overwhelmed by it all - unless you count crying when we sang "Happy Birthday". We really hope that is not a trend throughout her life. Actually, it's quite possible that she was crying, not because of the attention, but more from the bad singing. Whatever it was, she got over it quickly. I made a dairy-free cake for the occasion and she happily gobbled it up, loving every second of her first taste of refined sugar (big shock!) Overall, she had a great day running around the lawn (where her parents got married nearly six years ago!) playing with her older cousins Emma and Cory, and older pals Riley and Regan, much like at daycare trying to hang with the "big" girls. But she also had fun showing her younger pals Brandon and Lauren the ropes.

On a side note, we feel it is important to pass on this little tidbit: while feeding your little one any one food she loves, it is important to limit the amount to several hundred not thousand. Turns out, Elise will never stop eating blueberries if you give her the chance. Seriously, she also ate so many blueberries over the course of the day, that she was pooping whole berries into Monday. I know that's too much information, but it was seriously gross especially since her poop smells of blueberries even still. And there are few things that smell worse than blueberry poop. We have certainly learned a very important lesson about limits!


Elise crashed out that night from pure exhaustion from the crazy day. She even slept in the same room as her parents that night and had no problems, even though she is usually a very light sleeper. She still got up at her regular time (6:00am every day like clockwork) even though she really needed some extra shut eye to rest up after her hectic, virtually nap-free Saturday. Oma took Ellie to church to show her off to all of her friends, which meant more car time. That is, more car time and then confining Ellie into a pew for an hour. There is no way she could do this. She can't even sit still for five minutes when she is well rested. We started off with a repeat of the day before (though much shorter!) as she refused to sleep in the car and screamed the whole 30 minute trip. There is no way she could do this. But, even as busy and active as she is, and as tired as she was, she was actually really great in church (She did it!). She sat still, taking in the music and watching the ceiling fans for most of the service. I can't believe she did it!
Brandon Blum with Ellie and Meredith
After church (a sleepy ride home, thank God.) came family picture time at a portrait studio, and we were pretty positive that she had reached the end of her rope and would melt down the second we got in front of the camera. But it seems we underestimated Ellie's ability to rise to the occasion when people are once again showering her with attention. So it was quite a pleasant surprise that Ellie smiled and hammed it up for the camera in all of the family pictures and in her own shots. It makes us wish we'd tried the professional picture thing sooner!

All in all, it was a long hard weekend for our little girl, but we are so proud of her for how well she handled it all. If we can just get her to deal with that car seat, we'd be all set.

Week 48– Stooge Auditions

Throughout my life, I have heard parents say that they wish they could bubble wrap their children to protect them from the world. Now that I am a parent, I know what exactly they mean. There is nothing worse than seeing your child in pain and I would do absolutely anything to protect Elise from harm. When people say that they can’t believe that I have given up dairy and soy for so long, I say you’d do it too if it meant that your child could be pain free. If you saw the way she arched her back and screamed in pain when I was still on diary, you’d swear it off to protect your little one too, no question.

Elise and "Aunt" Audra

At first, protecting your child from pain is relatively easy. You feed her when she’s hungry, steer clear of gassy foods to keep her belly happy and try to make sure that your bear mobile or whatever potentially dangerous infant distractions you have do not jump out and strangle her. You put her on her back to sleep to protect her from SIDS, hold her head until she’s steady enough to do it on her own, and try your best not to get shampoo in her eyes when you’re washing her hair. These things are all cut and dry and relatively easy to carry out and they give you a false confidence about how great you are at protecting your baby from harm. The worst you have to deal with is watching your baby get a vaccine shot, because you have to sit there and watch and basically cause the pain she’s going through. And that's not even so bad, because you are ultimately doing a good thing.

But when your child becomes mobile, the task of Protector becomes a little more challenging. When she started crawling, we “baby-proofed” the house by doing the standard baby gates, covering the electrical outlets and hiding the breakables. For the most part, those things worked and Ellie remained relatively pain-free. But now that she is walking, it appears as though we have started a whole new ball game. I have come to the realization that there is nothing that you can actually do to protect your child from harm. You can take all the precautionary measures you can possibly think of, but short of confining them to a playpen or putting them in an empty padded room, your child is going to experience pain. And lots of it.

Elise’s life has become a comedy of errors; a slapstick comedy; a DVD extra gag reel; a Three Stooges Skit – only with less laughter and more hysterical crying. Even with all of our baby-proofing efforts, Ellie finds some way to hurt herself at least ten times a day. She trips and falls from an uneven surface. She bangs her head on the coffee table/chair/slide/swing when she tries to stand while her head is under it. She stands with bare feet on the toy she just threw on the floor. The rams her head into the edge of the dining room table. She shuts her fingers in the drawer/door/toy lid. She tries to stand on a ball…and takes a faceplant. In fact, the latest word that Ellie has picked up saying is “Whoa” because every time she falls, slips, bonks her head or otherwise hurts herself I say “Whoa”. I say it a lot. It’s gotten to the point now that she purposely falls to the ground and says “Whoa” like it’s a game.

Speaking of pain, Wednesday, Elise went in for her 9 month check up (we’re still two months behind). She now weighs 18 lbs 6oz (18^th percentile) and is 2’5” (73^rd percentile) In addition to two vaccine shots, the doctor also wanted her to have blood drawn to check her hemoglobin count. Apparently when they draw blood from a baby, they prick their tiny little finger and then squeeze drops of blood into a vile. This is a very long and seemingly painful process. It was also a messy process, as Ellie is freakishly strong and kept yanking her hand away from the lab tech and getting blood all over herself, the lab tech and me. It looked like a war zone in there. The lab tech said that Elise is a “good bleeder”- in a way that implied that that is a good thing – because she couldn’t get her finger to stop bleeding and had to put together a makeshift bandage with gauze and tape to stop the profuse bleeding. With this new injury trend, I am not sure being a "good bleeder" is a good thing. In fact, we should probably go buy some band aids.