Beach Please, Hold the Ocean

The Molloy clan spent the past week in Bethany Beach, Delaware with almost all of Marty's family - his parents, brother Kevin, nephew Nathan, sister-in-law Rachel, and even his sister Amy and her friend Laura flew in from California for the family vacation (we missed you Tom, Abby and Scott!). We stayed in a gorgeous, huge house with all sorts of entertainment (including a pool table, ping pong table, community pool, fitness center and playground) located about a mile from the beach. Marty's parents also brought along their Wii, which provided hours of entertainment for the whole family - and even Ellie wanted in on the Wii fun!

Amy has not seen Ellie in nearly two years, so obviously Ellie was much different than the drooling 5 week old that Amy last visited! Ellie has identified Aunt Amy in pictures for a long time now and was very excited about her being on the vacation. Likewise, Amy was thrilled to be able to finally spend some quality time with her niece. Ellie has had this bizarre stranger anxiety for a while now, so we were a little worried that she would take a while to warm up to Amy, but it turned out that it was definitely NOT a problem. Ellie warmed up to Amy within an hour (maybe less) - then the two of them were nearly inseparable for the rest of the vacation! In fact, every time that we went anywhere without Amy, Ellie literally cried the whole time "I want Amy!" and on the last few days, Ellie was saying "I love you Amy!" completely unsolicited. We were so happy that the two of them had a chance to really bond and get to know each other, and now we are going to work on convincing Amy that she needs to move back to the east coast! I think that Ellie will be first in line.




It turned out to be a pretty HOT week, with temperatures in the mid-90s and the humidity making it feel in the hundreds almost every day. We made it out the the beach really early a few mornings - trying to get there before it was too sweltering to bear and the sand too hot to walk on. Again this year, Ellie was terrified of the ocean ("I don't like it! It's too loud!") but enjoyed playing in the sand. Aunt Amy also brought her endless bucks of ocean water to play with in the sand, so she did get a taste of the ocean without having to actually go to the scary shoreline.


While she was scared of the ocean water, she really took to the pool this year. The complex had a baby pool (9 to 18 inches deep) and a regular pool ( 3ft to 5 ft) and it took her a little bit to get comfortable with it, but by the end of the first day, she was running back and forth between the two pools playing and having a blast. In the baby pool, she loved walking in the water, sitting with Mommy and throwing her sand toys in and then retrieving them. In the big pool, she loved walking on the stairs (by herself - "I don't need help!") playing motorboat with Mommy and Daddy, swimming on her tummy while kicking her legs and riding on Mommy's back.

Another exciting highlight of the trip were the rides. We went down to Trimpers Rides (one of my favorite childhood places!) at the end of the boardwalk in Ocean City one night and it turned out to be such a hit that we returned two more times during the week. She went on the Merry-go-Round, airplanes, dog ride, and drove a bus, but her favorite was the teacups ride. She probably went on the teacups 5 times - once by herself. She had a blast and it was so much fun to watch her enjoying all the rides I loved as a kid.

We had a wonderful and relaxing vacation and Marty and I both feel spoiled from spending so much time with Ellie for the past 10 days. We are going to miss her so much when we go back to work on Monday! Marty pointed out that it was the last vacation we'll take as a family of three - its' so crazy to think that next summer we'll be a family of four with a 3 year old and a 9 month old! That will certainly be an adventure.

Bethany Beach 2008

Party of Four: A Trial Run

When our friends Christine and James asked us if we could watch their 7 month old daughter, Milan, for the weekend while they were out of town, we thought it was a perfect opportunity to have a little test run of what life is going to be like everyday in the Molloy household in three short months. Marty and I have already been thinking about how everything is going to work logistically with the second child - how are we going to get everyone ready in the morning and get out of the house on time? How are we going to do bedtime with Ellie in the middle of newborn madness? How is anyone in the house ever going to be able to get a bath or shower?

Well, what better way to start to figure some of these things out than to actually do it? The plan was to meet Christine and James on Thursday evening to get Milan, then head over to Marty's parents house to pick up Ellie, and take both of the girls back home (ideally while they smiled and cooed at each other in the backseat - and/or slept.) The first spoiler to our master plan was that I had a big grant due at work on Friday and was unable to get it finished early enough on Thursday to go with Marty to pick up Milan and Ellie. So, Marty cheerfully took on the task by himself saying breezily "What's the worst that can happen? They cry on the way home? Big deal - I can handle crying for an hour."

So you can imagine my surprise when Marty pulled into the driveway that night, handing me my screaming child while pulling the other screaming child from her car seat, ranting about how he just experienced the worst three hours of his life. Turns out that Ellie was really not in the mood to share her Daddy with someone else. When Marty showed up at his parents house with Milan, Elise was instantly jealous and started acting like a complete maniac. She didn't want Marty to touch Milan, look at Milan or have anything at all to do with any child that was not herself. Ellie completely regressed - stopped using her words, cried about everything and generally acted like a monster for the two hours that Marty was at his parents house. Then came the car ride...Ellie screamed and cried the entire way home. Milan, who was being perfectly wonderful and pleasant during Ellie's earlier tantrums, was trying to sleep and got extremely cranky that this little two year old would not stop screaming in her ear and let her sleep. In fact, Ellie seemed to be purposely trying to keep Milan awake, because whenever Milan started crying, Ellie stopped. Then when Milan stopped crying Ellie started whaling again.

Dealing with all of the crying and terrible traffic for an hour might have been the worst torture Marty ever experienced and I think I actually saw steam coming from his ears upon their arrival. Once Milan was happily in bed, Marty tried to talk to Ellie, who kept saying "No Daddy, go away. Go be with Milan!" When I was putting Ellie to bed a bit later, trying to explain to her that Daddy and Mommy love her even if we have to give our attention to someone else, and babies need more help than she does because she's a big girl and can do thing for herself, she started crying. I asked what was wrong. Does something hurt? "Milan hurts" Ellie cried. It hurts that Daddy was paying attention to Milan? "Yeah" she sobbed. Oh boy. We are in for it.

After both girls were safely asleep Marty detailed the horrors of the day and suggested that we go ahead and plan to give Juan up for adoption because there is no way that we can handle two children without killing one of them, killing ourselves and/or divorcing. "There are tons of people in this country that would love to adopt our baby!" he encouraged. I promised him that Ellie was going to get used to it after a brief adjustment period and asked him to hold off on signing the adoption papers. Then I crossed my fingers and prayed that I was right.

Luckily for the entire Molloy family, I was right. Both girls got up the next morning around 6:30 and from the very start, Ellie was a completely different child than she had been the night before. She was extremely helpful and loving with Milan - handing her toys, running to get things she thought she'd like, trying to share her meatballs...it was like some sort of miracle happened overnight and Marty and I felt a huge wave of relief. We all had lots of fun all day - we hung out at the playground, crawled around on the ground like lions trying to teach Milan to crawl and even played with our neighbor Miles in his baby pool for a while.

At one point, I decided that I should do a quick vacuum of the living room rug if Milan was going to roll around on it (she kept rolling off the blanket) so I asked Ellie to help me clear off the other things off the rug. Once we'd finished clearing the rug, all but for Milan, I pulled out the vacuum cleaner, and Ellie cried "No! Don't roll over Milan!" because apparently she thought I was going to vacuum the baby up. Since Ellie would have been a fan of this idea the night before, I felt very encouraged that she was suddenly so protective of her new friend.

I had a trip planned and had to leave on Friday night, so I left both girls in the capable hands of Marty and his brother Kevin, who successfully held down the fort until Christine came home on Saturday afternoon. We are both feeling a lot more confident that we can, in fact, handle two children and that Party of Four won't be such a nightmare afterall. We are just keeping our fingers crossed that Juan is as laid back and easy as Milan. And it would help if Juan comes out as a 7 month old.

Learning Update

I thought that this week would be a good time to give a quick update on all of the things that Ellie is doing lately that I have failed to report. She is learning so much, and picking everything up so quickly that sometimes I forget that most of these things are relatively new! It's hard to believe that six months ago we were counting the words she was saying and now we have entire conversations!

First of all, Ellie is counting really well these days. While she's known her numbers to an extent for quite a while, she now easily counts up to fifteen (which she calls five-teen) and points out when there are two of something, etc. When she climbs up stairs, she counts them (one stairs, two stairs...) and in general it just feels like she's gotten the hang of counting.
Ellie playing with her BFF Miles
She has also figured out her colors. She has had a mild understanding of some colors for several months (like when she was like 20 months old and pointed out that Marty ran a red light and he was supposed to STOP at a red light), but in recent weeks it seems that something has clicked and she completely "gets it" now. She points out the orange truck or the purple flower - calling out the colors without even being asked.

In the last month, Elise has also learned how to sing her ABC's and she can point out a few letters. Granted, her ABC song does not actually demonstrate knowledge of the alphabet (like how she sings "double-ex, y and z") but it's her favorite song at the moment (she sings it constantly) and she usually includes all of the letters (funnily enough, she often skips "e") and loves alphabet books too - our personal favorite is Chicka Chicka Boom Boom.

Finally, in the realm of new interests, Ellie absolutely loves puzzles. She has had several wooden peg puzzles that she's enjoyed playing with for about a year now, but in the past few months, she's started absolutely loving it. She likes to dump out all of the puzzle pieces from all of the puzzles and mix them up, then put them into the right puzzles. A few weeks ago, Marty got her a few jigsaw puzzles, which are for ages 3 and up and really seemed like they were going to be way too hard for her. They were too hard at first, but she is nothing if not stubborn, so she's kept at it and has gotten the hang of putting the jigsaw puzzles together once you get it started.
Ellie and Grandpa
That's all I can think of for now. In the first year of her life, she developed so much and things changed very quickly physically. Now we've seen that in the second year she has developed so much and things change very quickly cognitively. I am curious to see what her third year will bring.

Two Year Check Up: A Birthday Adventure

Nurse: We were getting too many false positives with the finger prick, so now we're drawing blood to check for...

Ellie: SCREAM!!!!! OOOOOWWWWW! OOOOOOWWWW!
Marty: Ellie, she hasn't even done anything yet, that's just the alcohol swab... and
Nurse: She's got great veins, this should be no problem

Ellie: sniffle, sniffle, wimper... WWWWWAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!! WWWWWAAAAAHHHHH!!!!
Marty: (straining to keep Ellie's arm still) It's okay honey, it's okay. (thinking : Seriously lady just stick the needle in the vein, that is your THIRD time missing my daughter's arm, one more and I'm gonna stick you!) It's okay honey.

Happy Birthday Elise.

MARTY: Elise had her two year check up appointment with the doctor this week, and while doctors visits are never the most fun thing, this one took the cake for most disastrous visit ever. First of all, appointments at this practice are generated by going on-line and designating your preference for the day of the week, doctor and time (morning, afternoon, evening). When Meredith made the appointment six months ago she went ahead and checked evening thinking that Ellie would probably be going to bed later (she's not - still gos to bed at 7) and it would be nice not to have to leave work early or go in late to take her to the doctors (bad idea). So the appointment was made for 6:45pm. On June 30th. (Her Birthday) Even though it was her birthday, we really celebrated on Sunday so we thought that the fact that it was her birthday would be no big deal. Now we see that these are the kind of things that Ellie is going to rant about in her personal memoir entitled, "I survived despite my parents."

Before even leaving the house, Ellie and our neighbor Miles got into a large skirmish about who should be opening the birthday present that Miles brought over for Ellie. Miles thought he should open it and Ellie thought she should. No compromises could be made and the situation escalated into an epic battle that resulted in a major meltdown on Ellie's part - she completely freaked out. Rightly so if you think about it, I mean afterall, it was a gift for her and she has become pretty good at accepting gifts. After plenty of time and separation from Miles, she finally calmed down and, alas, it was time to head to the doctor. So basically this whole evening started off on the wrong foot. On the walk over to the doctor office Ellie said "I can't cry at the doctors." We have no idea where on earth she even get that impression, and I told her that it was okay for her to cry if she felt like she needed to. Little did we know how readily she'd take us up on that offer.

Once we were in the exam room, she was settled in to Meredith's lap and the nurse came in. Ellie got shy, but seemed generally okay until the nurse put the tape measure around her head. Ellie completely lost it, essentially telling her that if she touches her again she'd chop off both her arms (or something to that effect, it gets a little garbled in translation.) The threats continued however and proved empty as she cried the rest of the time the nurse was in the room measuring her and weighing her. She stopped crying as soon as the nurse left.

There was a pleasant lull as we explored the room and Ellie's sense of security rose as she thought the worst must be over. I mean it was her birthday right?

ELLIE: Mommy and Daddy wouldn't subject me to torture from strangers on my... who dat?! Once the doctor walked in, the crying welled up in me and the threats of bodily injury to the doctor once again beamed from my mind. Daddy picked me up and tried to soothe me to avail. The doctor was more cautious than the nurse and took her time to let me see that she was just going to type on the computer and talk with Mommy and Daddy and see, nothing going on, see no one is going to bother Ellie, just look at the pretty pictures of all the children that have survived, I mean been seen here. See, Ellie there is nothing to be frightened of... until the cautiousness ended and with the speed of a platypus and the traitorous Daddy as her assistant, they ganged up on my poking and prodding with their instruments. FINE! If they want to push on my belly then I will destabilize them with my fearsome, WAIL OF TERROR - no adult ear stands a chance against it.

MARTY: Once the doctor left, Ellie again regained her composure. Little did we know that the test of lead in her blood would be the perfect end to the worst birthday ever. It is now over an hour past her bedtime and they are going to attempt to draw blood from a tinnie, tiny little vein (unsuccessfully the first two times - shouldn't they be a little better at sticking tiny veins at the pediatricians office?). I held Ellie still in the chair and the children in the waiting room heard the tortured shrieks of terror from the exam room. All of them will be scarred for life having heard it. Ellie on the other hand got a really cool boo-boo sticker (band-aid). In fact, it's amazing what a band-aid and a long term memory that has not yet developed can do for turning a bad birthday into a good one. Ellie has been taking her dolls and stuffed animals to the doctor ever since.