Mabel Molanphy

While clean­ing out my hard dri­ve, I stum­bled across this sweet video of mama feed­ing Mabel solids for the first time. Such a sweet gift to find, and a sad reminder of how much of her life I missed. 

One day after Mabel start­ed her school in San Fran­cis­co (Mis­sion Montes­sori), she came back talk­ing about a show/movie the kids were talk­ing about (Chee­tah Girls). Since she had nev­er seen it, she decid­ed to make up her own ver­sion of what it would be. In my opin­ion, her ver­sion is way bet­ter than any­thing Hol­ly­wood could ever come up with!

Mabel’s cre­ativ­i­ty is always inspir­ing to me. I have been play­ing Legos with her since she was a baby, and watch­ing how dif­fer­ent­ly she thinks about how to put togeth­er bricks is a fun win­dow into how she thinks. This is nev­er more read­i­ly vis­i­ble than when she sets up her Lego towns. They’re super detailed and very thought­ful­ly cre­at­ed! Here, she’s walk­ing me through every last detail—down to the Lego peo­ple’s expressions—of her last Lego town. 

This kid loves the beach! Well, in real­i­ty, she loves any­thing where she can jump in and get dirty, so beach qual­i­fies. Here, she con­vinced dad­dy to roll up his jeans and get in the freez­ing cold Pacif­ic Ocean. As I filmed this, I could­n’t help but con­tem­plate just how big she is, and how I wish time would slow down.

I don’t have specifics on how old she is here, but I’m guess­ing around 1.5, pos­si­bly 2. (Rebec­ca will know.) This video is one of our lost trea­sures that pop up here and there on old phones and such. Mabel still has this sto­ry­telling knack today. Fun times!