Round one

Before heading up to Maine for the holidays we opened a few presents under the tree at home.

Surprisingly, they were all for Molly.

She got a Baby Einstein toy from Uncle Steve and Aunt Lauren. As you can see she's already begun an intense and in-depth study.

Molly's also begun to practice her "Stay away from my presents or I'll cut ya" look.

She also received assorted wooden blocks from Uncle Steve and Aunt Lauren, although I'm not sure who was more interested in them: Molly or Katie.

Molly has also started to figure out the whole present-opening thing. She's not the best, but is a quick study and will have more than enough practice over the next few days.

While it might look like a face of terror, this is actually a face of extreme excitement. See, it's not every day your great-grandmother gets you a book of lullabies from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC.

This is just a snip-it of what she's received and what's to come. Hopefully everything will fit in our house. While she can't quite verbalize it in words we can understand, Molly sends a big thank you to everyone for all the love and presents she's received over the past eight-plus months.

What you've missed

The camera cord that connects to the computer went MIA awhile ago so we haven't been able to upload any pictures. We finally got around to replacing it and realized we didn't take too many pictures either. Most of the stuff we captured over the past few months has been with our cell phones. There have, however, been some shots with the nice camera.

Molly has continued to enjoy rooting on the Patriots. She would like to have a chat with whoever schedules the Patriots' games though. The whole Sunday night or Monday night thing just doesn't work for her and she's like to have that fixed.

We took a walk or two at Ft. Hunt National Park to enjoy what little foliage we have.

Molly was appropriately bundled.

We took a trip to the National Zoo with Grammie and Gramp P. The lion was so thrilled to see us he gave a little show (he's in mid-bellow in this shot).

In what's become somewhat of a tradition, Molly donned a shirt from Aunt Ellete on the appropriate holiday (in this case Thanksgiving).

We were thankful for many things this Thanksgiving, one of which was the ability to spend it with family.

Molly's a bit confuse as to why a) there's so much good food out again (thanks to Grammie and Gramp P. for cooking most of it the week before for our pre-turkey day dinner) b) why she can't have any and c) why I'm wasting time taking pictures instead of enjoying the meal.

We also enjoyed the annual Scottish Walk in Old Town. Nearly every day we find another reason we love the location of our house. In this case it was the ability to walk to the parade and not have to deal with parking. It was a bit cold, but thanks to a hand-me-down from Hazel, Molly was able to stay warm enough to enjoy the bagpipes (one of the many bagpipe bands had just passed by in the above shot).

This is what Molly was looking at. Pretty neat.

Santa Claus was even able to make an appearance, dressed appropriately of course.

While Harry stayed home (we took him the year before and let's just say he wasn't a fan of the muskets being fired), we did get to see a fair number of greyhounds in the parade.

All in all, it's been a pretty hectic few months.

p.s. we don't have non-cell phone pictures of this, but the other big news is Molly is now able to stand on her own. Right now she's only upright for a few seconds, but pretty soon she'll be able to stand for a good stretch of time...

and then she'll be able to walk...

Uh-oh.

...I'd better get baby proofing!

All Hallow's Eve

As it's been for the past 29 years, today is Halloween and Katie's birthday. Unlike the past 29 years, this year included trick or treating with Molly. Well, when you have a six and a half month old there isn't really too much asking for candy (somehow every knows she's not actually going to eat it). But we did manage to get her a costume (courtesy of Grammie P) and enjoy a bit of the atmosphere in our neighborhood.

I give you...

Little Red Ridding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf!

Okay, so maybe Harry isn't exactly the scariest thing in the world. Still, they make quite the pair.

We had the wrong lens, but this should give you some idea of how intense people get with Katie's birthday here. One street over is blocked off for a good six or seven blocks and all the neighborhood (and non-neighborhood) kids come out to trick-or-treat. It's pretty amazing.

We also had to use Molly's 'First Halloween' bib. This is the before.

This, is the after. I'd say the bib works!

In closing, I'd like to wish my wife a happy birthday.

Rally to Restore Sanity, Fear, and/or Molly's Naptime

Yesterday we ventured out to the National Mall in an effort to either regain our sanity or maintain our fear. Unlike most people, we weren't focused on the political, 'who-we-are-as-a-nation' aspect of the rally; our fear/sanity was solely focused on going different places with Molly.

What do we have to fear you ask? Well, since the Rally was scheduled from noon to 3pm, it was smack dab in the middle of Molly's afternoon nap. So there was definitely a fear of a tired baby who isn't sleeping.

Thankfully Molly decided their was enough fear in the world and was, for 95% of the time, really good (there were a few instances of being stuck on the Metro with hundreds of other people crowded into the car where she wasn't too pleased). Speaking of the Metro, this was Molly's first Metro ride. Overall she was a doll. Whenever a train would come, well... let me just show you:

Molly was out of it for most of the time we were in DC. Thankfully though, she didn't scream or fuss that much.

Eventually she even went to sleep.

A view from the Capital steps.

This is as about as close to the main part of the Rally as we could get. As you may have heard, it was packed. Thankfully we were able to stay on the periphery and avoid getting mobbed.

Yeah... lots of people.

Regardless of your politics, it is pretty amazing that, on multiple occasions (and especially this close to an election), tens or hundreds of thousands of people are allowed to gather at the country's base of power to express their views. Even more amazing is the non-involvment of the government in having these rallies and the lack of an overbearing military or police force attempting to intimidate said gatherers. I don't think many Americans realize how fortunate we are to have this ability.

For those of you who were not able to attend the Rally/did not feel like attending the Rally/disagree with Jon Stewart's politics/etc., the below video is from the final minutes of the Rally and really should be viewed by everyone. The message Americans need to remember is that we're exactly that. Americans. We're not conservatives or liberals. We're Americans.

Oh, and don't forget to vote on Tuesday.

Fresh Air

It was a beautiful day today so we went to the park for some fresh air.

There was some mother/daughter bonding time (mostly Molly looking skeptically at Katie).

Harry stood guard to ensure nothing happened to his pack.

...okay, so he was actually a little freaked out by the sounds of high-pitched little kids, blowing leaves, and the possibility of another dog seeing him.



Eventually the day took a turn for the weird and Molly decided time was better spent making faces.

Seven years and six months

Today is Harry's seventh birthday and Sunday was Molly's half birthday. A few updates.

Harry is still around 70lbs (very close to his racing weight). He sits, goes down, stays, and goes to his bed on command (most of the time). He is still very food motivated and loves to go to the park. When at the park he'll mostly just trot around and sniff, sometimes interacting with other dogs. Most of the time he'll find the nearest human and politely suggest they fawn over him. Every once and awhile he'll go crazy and take off at full speed, zooming around the park and just have a blast running. This is usually when other dogs attempt, unsuccessfully, to catch him and other dog owners' jaws drop in amazement. At home he is still the relatively spooky dog we adopted two and a half years ago, though he is much, much more used to things like buses and other random loud noises. So far he has been amazing with Molly. Her screaming has never phased him and we think he enjoys being around her. He's even let her pet him (under extremely controlled circumstances). It'll be interesting to see how he reacts when she becomes mobile.

And that brings us to Molly. She had another round of vaccines today and wasn't too pleased about that. All in all though, she was a trooper and only cried/fussed for about two to three hours. Some vital stats:
-16 lbs, 6 oz
-26.5 inches tall
-head circumference of 16.3 inches

Molly can sit up by herself and roll around with the best of them. We're finally at the stage where wherever we put her down will not be where we pick her up 30 seconds later. She is quite the talker and enjoys exploring what her vocal cords can do. She enjoys going on walks now that it's cool enough to do so for more than 10 mins or so. Molly has taken quite an interest in the animals and loves to just sit there and watch them. She hasn't learned to crawl yet, but once she does the cats had better watch out. Molly's spitting up is still unfortunately with us, but hopefully she'll start to out grow it soon. We've started her on solids as you've already seen. Perhaps most important, Molly sleeps like a champ (for the most part). She goes down to bed between 6:30 and 7 and we rarely hear another peep from her until 6 am. Encouraged by our nightime sleep training success, we've got her on a fairly consistent nap schedule as well. Life improves exponentially for us all when Molly has plenty of rest.

Solids and assorted other things

This post is gonna be a doozy. As you know we're not the best at uploading photos and then adding witty comments on a semi-regular schedule. So to make up for that, here are some things you've missed over the past few months.

As those on Facebook know, Molly started solid food the other day. At first it was just oatmeal and with some formula mixed in. Appetizing, I know. Well, Molly wasn't a huge fan of the taste and that, coupled with her lack of knowledge of how to actually eat made for a bit of a mess and not much in the way of nutritional meals (don't worry, she's still getting plenty to eat).

Well, today we had two big first for Molly.

"What's that? I get to have bananas?!? Awesome! I don't even know what those are yet, but I'm sure they taste better than that bland old oatmeal... And what exactly am I sitting in? Oh! It's my brand-new booster seat? Cool! Now I can sit at the table with you big people and talk about grown up stuff. So what are you guys talking about? Cleaning the bathroom? Yuck! I thought grown-ups led interesting lives and talked about cliff-diving, saving the world, and traveling to distant planets. This is boring. Anyway, so about those bananas..."

"Umm... not too sure about this. You sure Mommy didn't sneak something nasty in here like onions or mushrooms?"

"Let me help you with that spoon."

"Alright, these bananas aren't half bad. In fact, if I ever actually learn how to eat my food instead of just wearing it, I might actually enjoy this whole process."

"Yeah, still hungry. Gimme some more! ...please"

Molly also recently graduated to the big girl portion of the stroller. No more infant car seat for this lady. Now she gets to ride around in style. (we also replaced the car seat and Molly seems to like it a lot more than the first one we had. She's a little more upright and we think that bothers her stomach less. At least with this new one she doesn't spit up in it within five seconds every time.)

This is just one of the many, many rose blossoms we've had over the past few weeks. As you'll see below we had our back patio redone this summer. One of the new plants is a climbing rose which has approximately ten buds ready to burst right now.

Many thanks to Mike for water-proofing our new storage shed and new fence.

Part of Molly's New England Tour was stopping by to see great-grandma Janet. As previously noted, Molly did her best to impress (this picture was taken early in the visit and Molly had just been screaming for the majority of the past five hours so she was a little out of it).

As baseball season comes to an end for the Red Sox, Molly has this to say.

Aunt Ellete wasn't too sure about the sounds coming from Molly...

Molly was a little shocked at those sounds too and immediately blamed them on Uncle Nate.

So now you're relatively caught up. We'll leave you with one of our favorite pictures from our photo shoot with our engagement/wedding/family photographer, Samantha Warren.

and then there were three

It's already been three short years. In many ways it seems like yesterday we were both anxiously waiting until 3:30pm so we could finally be married. In other ways, it seems like we've been married forever (in a good way). That's probably because we've packed a fair amount of life events into those 1,095 days.

Over the past three years we:

bought a house...

adopted Harry...

remodeled the house...

got pregnant (well, Katie did at least)...

and had Molly.

It's also important to remember what we agreed to that day three years ago.

Andy's vows to Katie:

Katie,
You are everything I could ask for
In a friend, a woman, and a wife.
You are my best friend and the love of my life.

I promise to be there to celebrate your successes
To laugh with you in times of joy
And comfort you in times of sorrow.

I will encourage and support you,
Honor and love you.
I will respect our differences
And do my part to work through
All our challenges.

Katie, as I stand here before you
In front of our friends and family
Know this:
You have my heart,
You have my soul,
I will be yours and stand by you through eternity.
You are my love.

I love you.

Katie's vows to Andy:

Andy, I knew from the moment we met that you were important to me. It wasn't long after we met that I realized you were my best friend. I spoke and you listened; I laughed, and you laughed with me; I cried and you supported me. From the earliest days of our friendship, I was never afraid to share my deepest thoughts and feelings with you, because I knew that would be there for me, no matter what. And that trust has never faltered.

As our relationship developed, I discovered that you are not only my best friend, but the love of my life. And I stand here before you today, Andy, because I am the happiest -- the luckiest -- woman in the whole world, because I cannot wait to spend the rest of my life with you.

I promise to stand beside you in moments of joy and moments of pain, to be your pillar of support as you have always been for me.

I promise to take care of you in sickness and in health, to never leave your side in times of weakness.

I promise to be the best mother I can be to our children. I want to nurture in them all the qualities that I admire and adore in you.

I promise to be faithful to you and honest with you. There is nothing in this world worth risking the trust that we have in each other.

I promise to be your best friend. Always. I promise to love, honor and respect you even when we disagree, because that is what best friends do.

I promise to be your partner in all things, large and small. Apart we can succeed, but together we cannot fail. Together anything and everything is possible.

I love you with all of my heart, Andrew Magoun. Today and every day for the rest of our lives.