Happy Halloween!

Molly's first Halloween. She dressed up as her favorite toy: a rubber duck! (although, lately she's lost some interest in the duck... but we decided not to dress her up as a remote control or a roll of toilet paper). Courtney and I came home early from work and went with Molly and Fran (yay!) to the neighborhood Halloween parade.

Looks a little chaotic, yes? We thought so, and left before
everyone got their act together and started the parade.

Also, this weekend we had snow! Apparently the earliest since the 1860s. Here are a few pictures of Molly out in the elements.

New Moves

As you'll see in the post below, Molly is moving a lot more these days... the free hands that used to take lots and lots of pictures and the free time that posted to this blog are now pretty full keeping track of our increasingly mobile little one. I feel like a war correspondent who had to drop his camera and pick up a rifle... so my apologies for the lack of reporting from the front lines.

As Summer wound down, we took one last trip to the beach. Molly seemed to get it a little more this time and lounged on the towels and played in the sand.

Loves chewing on books.

We spent a nice day in the park with Angie and Tim.

Told you.

Since the last post Molly has picked up a few new moves. I think she was only just pulling herself up to standing and crawling a bit)... well, now she's crawling like a champ. A bare-assed example:

And she can pull herself up in a heartbeat and even do this (you'll may have to click on it to make it large enough to see what's going on):

This is super fun and cute... she looks out the window and screams and waves at people... and she likes to put her favorite toy, her rubber ducky... or, as she calls it "duh, duh, duh"... in the window.

As cute as it is, it's also treacherous... she's taken a few spills when she misses the bench with her foot... we have to watch her like a hawk whenever she crawls into her room.

Then she started cruising:

I was under the couch taking some pictures of her chubby little legs while cruising...

... and she caught me.

And then, (although I'm getting ahead of myself in the timeline of the post) a couple weeks ago, the big one... she started WALKING!!! 

She only does it when prompted... and when we stand her up away from furniture to hold on to... but she still gets really excited and starts clapping and smiling. It's only a matter of time before she's careening and stumbling around our apartment... and I'm finally convinced to add all those ridiculous-looking childproofing foam to our furniture.

A few weekends ago, she started taking swimming "lessons"... despite all the teaching going on, it just a cheap way for us to take her swimming. 

And in case any of you were worried about the cleanliness of the Depression-era facilities at the East Midwood Jewish Center, where Molly takes her lessons, I present the following signage to assure you of their commitment to hygiene:

A couple weekends ago, our friends Kelly, David, and their son Jin came up from North Carolina for a visit... a great time was had by all. Here are a few pictures from the subway, Lower Manhattan, Red Hook, and Prospect Park.

On the Water Taxi from Manhattan to 
Brooklyn... Molly's first time on a boat!

Chewing on my lens cap.

Molly and her buddy Abi playing in the kitchen the other day.

And one last one of our little tiger (2010 was the Year of the Tiger) checking out a sign in our old favorite Vietnamese place in Philadelphia on a trip there a few weeks back.

Next post will be a fun one... Halloween!