Mollie- 8 months

I missed out on Mollie's 7 month post, so this one gets to be a little extra long to make up for it. Mollie is now wearing size 3 diapers. She is back to sleeping through the night most of the time. When she does, she tends to be leaking. We are at the stage where we need to buy overnight diapers since we're not ready to go up in diaper size yet. She is eating baby foods now. Mostly breakfast and dinner but she is starting to need something for lunch as well. She loves her puffs and while she's not so precise with the pincer grasp, she is pretty good about getting 2 or 3 in her little fist and opening her hand flat to push the puffs into her mouth. Sometimes she can get 2 or 3 in at a time, and that's a little scary. Mollie takes about 5-6 bottles a day and can hold her bottle but prefers not to. She is too busy with her hands to be burdened by holding a bottle.

  Have we ever mentioned her hands? Mollie seemed fascinated and involved early with her hands. She is such a grabber of EVERYTHING. The floor has to be very clean or she will find the smallest/biggest object and put it in her mouth. She loves her sisters' hair, mom's ears, and dad's beard until he shaved it. She's the kind you don't want to carry in a store because she'll reach out and grab things from the shelf. We really pushed the pacifier on her so she wouldn't be a finger/thumb sucker. Speaking of pacifiers, she only uses them to sooth and sleep. I dislike when kids have the paci in all the time.
 Mollie is a talker too. She reminds me a lot of Ashton that way. Always making noise. She loves to mimic clicking, "yelling", dada, and mama sounds. She also likes to scrunch her nose and breath loud. Ashton is so smitten by her. She thinks she is the most beautiful baby. In family prayer last night, she thanked Heavenly Father for making Mollie so cute and she tells us she loves Mollie more than anyone in our family. Mollie really loves Ashton back and tries to get her attention with noise when she walks into the same room. Both of the older girls are really protective of Mollie and make sure people know she'll choke on this or doesn't like that or needs this toy, etc. Shelby just really likes to put her feet in Mollie's face because she likes her to grab them. Drives me nuts.

 Mollie loves to army crawl, and fast. She will get on her hands and knees from a sitting position and sit there and rock, but as soon as she sees something she wants she drops to her stomach and army crawls over. We can't quite figure out why she doesn't just crawl when she holds herself up so well, but she must be content with the army version. When she wants me to hold her, she'll scoot to my feet and grab them and look up and whine until I pick her up. Which is often. She loves to be held. Her favorite spot is my lap. But she has to be playing and that can get difficult, so I sit her down. She plays for a few minutes and winds up back at my feet, whining, a few minutes later, and the cycle begins again:)
  I still rock her to sleep for naps and bedtime. I know a lot of people don't agree with it, but I want to cuddle my children as long as possible. It's hard when we don't have access to a rocking chair, but I still can't give it up. Babies are babies and need to be treated that way. The other 2 really didn't have a hard time transitioning to being laid down when they got older, so I don't see it as a problem. A mom was asking for advice on how to get her 4-week-old to lay down and just go to sleep on his own. It made my heart hurt. Ashton and Shelby are so big now, I have never regretted the time I spent rocking them.

  We love our Mollie Jo.