My sister told me not to tell my husband that when her husband came home from work the other day, Molly ran up to him yelling, “Daddy’s home!” It is kind of sad, but I know she was just mimicking her cousins, and when I did tell Eric (have I mentioned I’m a terrible secret keeper?) he was unfazed, and just said, “Yeah, James and I look alike, so what?”

He wasn’t upset because Molly’s love for her daddy is beyond obvious. One recent night the two of them spent a good 20 minutes standing in the hallway flipping the light switches on and off. Shortly prior, she amused herself by screaming in my face and laughing hysterically when I screamed back (which is something that I’m sure came from his influence). Frankly, I was surprised she had a voice the next morning.

I’ve decided I need to do this more (so hopefully it doesn’t bore you all) – just talk about her in general, and take random videos, because her personality and habits change so frequently and I know I’ll want to remember these small details one day. As it is, one of our favorite activities is to sit on the couch and watch old videos of her on my phone. The difference between a few months ago and now is extraordinary.

So here they are for right this moment, a few Molly-isms that I adore:

-She’s obsessed with apples. I think on one hand she’s excited about being able to say the word apple, but also she does insist on having an apres-dinner apple nightly, in addition to the apples I know she eats at my sister’s house during the day. I guess as far as vices go, that one isn’t so bad.
-Elmo is her homeboy. This is another word she can say, so that helps, but she also has a serious Sesame Street addiction and loves Elmo best of all. I know this is very common in toddlers but I can’t for the life of me figure out why.
-She is a big fan of going night-night (and yes, says night-night! Notice a theme here?). If she’s tired and I’m not getting the night-night process started in a timely fashion, she’ll lay down on the floor wherever she’s playing, or will toddle up to her crib, grab onto the bars, throw her head back dramatically and start yelling, “Nigh nigh! Nigh nigh!” So she has apparently inherited her father’s looks but her mother’s flair for the dramatic.
-I know kids like to say no, but Molly is just as content to say “Yeah.” Except she doesn’t just say “Yeah” when answering in the affirmative (You know, when you ask her if she wants an apple). She chants, “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!” complete with a little dance. Again… nothing halfway for her.
-She never stops talking, but other than the above few words I’ve mentioned, along with, “What are you doing?,” her endless stream of chatter is almost identical to what you’d hear in a Korean nail salon. Same inflections and everything. I’m half tempted to take her into one and see if someone will translate.
-She is obsessed with – and frighteningly adept with – her iPhone. Yes, my 1-year-old has her own iPhone… welcome to 2015, folks. It’s an old phone of Eric’s that we loaded up with kid apps and which I promised myself I would not use as a surrogate parent. But it’s amazing how quickly she figured the thing out. She can unlock it, go into her favorite app, choose and play different videos in the app, etc. And if she accidentally goes into the wrong apps (always likes to check the stock market for some reason) and can’t get back out, she’s smart enough to come find me and offer her Korean explanation of what happened, while also making gestures to indicate that I need to fix it. It’s amazing.

I’m sorry if this is all mundane. The truth is I’m just… happy. Happy, content, satisfied. Slightly stressed out about baby boy’s arrival, but really not even a lot. Eric cleaned his office so that made my OCD calm down a little. We still didn’t set up the nursery stuff yet but I mean seriously, that won’t take more than a couple of hours. I washed and folded a bunch of itty bitty blue onesies and stuff and it’s all sorted and ready to be put into drawers when we get them.

I had off for Columbus Day and spent all day today doing nothing. I had planned to run errands, etc, which is how I spend my weekends usually, but then I woke up this morning and was like, “Screw it, we’re staying in PJ’s and vegging out,” and that’s just what we did. Normally I like getting out, but today… I dunno. It felt good to just relax and do nothing. We baked, we napped, we watched Sesame Street. I definitely couldn’t do it every day but for today it was just right.

Over the weekend we went to a corn maze and visited a few farms in the area. The weather was absolutely perfect – not too hot but not too cold, sunny, fall-y. I’m sort of regretting not doing the pumpkin patch but we already had it planned for the 18th, so hopefully it’s not 50 degrees this weekend like they claim it will be. But even if it is… whatever.

Life is good.