Molly at five months

Five months old, with the longest wisps of dark hair on top and in the back, and the bluest eyes you ever did see.  She weighed in at about 15 pounds at five months old, and while she's still fitting into her 3-6 month clothes, it's clear that those outfits' days are numbered.  

She's my first baby ever to suck her thumb, which is, as you might have anticipated, the cutest thing ever.  She doesn't do it continually or regularly manage to find it when she wants to soothe herself, but she does it often enough that I think we might have a genuine thumb-sucker on our hands.  

Princess of the 40 Minute Daytime Nap, and instigator of 2:00 or 3:00 am middle of the night parties lasting an hour and a half or more, this sweet babe is leaving her mother less than well-rested.  {My own tendency for insomnia to rear its ugly head once I'm awakened hasn't been helping matters any!}

But she has so many smiles for us all day long, and flaps her arms with glee, particularly enjoying the feel of scratching her fingernails against her own diapers and any other interesting surfaces they may encounter.  And she has the best laugh.  And she's even begun reaching out to grab my face from time to time.  

So, sleepless wonder that she can be at times, we'll keep her.

She's learned to easily grab whatever is within her reach, and grab things she does, usually for the purposes of putting them straight into her mouth.  So we've brought out the baby toys for a third go around, and Molly explores them with glee.

This sweet wooden rattle was made for a baby Nell about five years ago by Grandma and Grandpa.

Her drooling abilities could test the limits of any bib known to man.  I wipe, and wipe, and wipe that chin and neck, and moments later you'd never know the child had anyone to care for her hygiene, poor thing, and she sometimes gets a rash in her neck folds despite my best efforts.  {Isn't it glorious how one can talk about a baby's neck folds?  I have a feeling if I developed a rash in my neck I wouldn't talk about it quite so openly.}

She vocalizes loudly in squawks, squeaks, coos, and forced little croakings that seem to amuse her the most of all.

She's stopped protesting diaper changes, and instead views them as a highlight of her day, a particularly fine time to grab her toes and shove them into her mouth.  {This classically babyish trait has made a few conversations with a certain three year old necessary about how no, you may not put your toes in Molly's mouth, yes, I know she puts her toes in, but that's quite different, because her toes are cleaner, yes, even though you just had a bath, it's still different, because it just is, and GET YOUR TOES OUT OF THE BABY'S MOUTH RIGHT AWAY PLEASE!}

In a sweet vintage bonnet given to her by a friend. 

Dear Molly,

You are sweet as sugar, did you know that?  

Your sisters adore you, and I'm grateful for that numerous times a day when you can turn their frowns upside down with one smile, or even a bestowed glance in either of their directions.  

Your Daddy proudly calls you "the best baby yet" {never mind that he felt equally proud and biased about each one of our girls as babies!}, and is pleased as punch that sometimes when I'm trying to settle you down, all he has to do is hold you in his lap for you to calm right down.  He can put you to sleep bouncing you gentle in the Ergo in the evenings as he watches a Red Sox game, and I'll hear him say to you as he buckles you into that carrier, "Ok Molly, it's the top of the fourth and the Sox are leading..." and you happily grin up at him as if he holds the moon and the stars.

My dear daughter, a forty minute nap three or four times a day is not enough time for me to get anything done, really, and furthermore, since it's not enough rest for you, you awaken too cranky for me to do anything in between these short naps, either.  I love you a hundred million billion, as I've always said to each of my girls, but Molly Moe, let's see if six months can be a turning point for longer naps, shall we?  I'd like that a lot.

In any case, you sleep pretty well at night {even when I don't do so well at going back to sleep!}, sometimes only waking once or twice, which, while not as glorious as the days when you were three months old and slept through the night, are still pretty glorious, I say. 

You just took a -- you guessed it -- forty minute nap as I was typing this blog post, and now you're up again, so I shall end this here and go snuggle you, you sweet little girlie.  We love you.

Lovelovelove,

Mama

doting kisses from Ree

silly faces all around