3 months

Happy 3 month birthday little one! This by far has been the most amazing month so far. I feel like you are changing every day. I am not sure how much you weigh or how tall you are but I am sure you have grown. We will find out how much at our 4 month doctors visit. You are wearing 3 month clothes in Carters and 3-6 months in other brands. You are a little chunk, and I love all your rolls! You are still eating every 3 hours or so and taking short naps after play time. You love to sleep on my chest and I know it is a bad habit to start, but mommy loves the snuggle time! You go down for bed around 10 and then you are usually up at 3 and 6. I like to bring you in bed with me in the morning where you cuddle up and sleep til about 9. I am still rocking you to sleep and you are loosely swaddled. I think after the holidays we will start a little sleep training, lord help us! This pic cracks me up. It is such a great representation of your curious nature this month. Your head is always turning and looking at everything. Your eyes follow your daddy when he walks away and you have started noticing Jack too. I love it, but you also tend to do this when you are feeding, which makes for a very messy meal time.

You have always hated tummy time. It was torture for you and for me. But just yesterday, we actually saw some progress. I tried to capture it but the picture doesn't do it justice. You finally are lifting your head up and trying to prop up on your arms. Hooray!! All that torture time is paying off! You love rattles and your set of plastic keys. You grasp them and shake them. I don't think you really know what you are doing but you sure do like it! You smile and laugh often and you love to talk after a bottle. You will put your index finger in your mouth and just babble away! Your daddy and I fall more in love with you everyday! Love you baby girl!

Mollys newborn photo shoot

When Molly was only 6 days old we had her newborn pictures taken . We were so lucky to find a wonderful photographer here in Flower Mound. Her name is Jamie Rogers and she did a fabulous job. I would highly recommend her!!
www.jamierogersphotography.com

Here are just a few of the fabulous images!

Turkey Day

Well, we survived our first road trip! We decided to make the normally 4 hour trip down to Houston to spend Thanksgiving with The Brands. Molly really likes the car so we thought it would be pretty uneventful as long as we kept the car moving. We headed out on Wednesday late afternoon through Ft. Worth. The traffic was horrible!!! It took us almost 2 hours to get to Hillsboro! Molly did great and slept the whole way until we got right outside of Waco. She was hungry and so were we, so we stopped at Wendys and had dinner. It was quite interesting feeding my baby in the parking lot of a Wendy's in Waco but we managed! Luckily the rest of the way was traffic free and she slept again for the rest of the trip. I am so glad she is just like her mama, asleep before we can pull out of our driveway!!

Grandma and Grandpa Brand were so excited to see us, well at least excited to see Molly, Jeff and I are offically on the back burner! We had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner, lots of visitors, and we showed our support for the Aggies. Molly watched the game with Grandpa and mama in her maroon outfit! I think she is the good luck charm!

We left on Saturday to hopefully beat the crowds on the highway. We planned to stop in College Station for some Freebirds and a trip down memory lane. After an extremely fattening lunch we stopped by Aggieland Outfitters to buy Molly some more Aggie gear, she has already grown out of what she has! We also stopped by the brand new ZTA house! They had to rebuild due to structural issues. It was huge but beautiful. Lots of fun memories in that old house and I hope that Molly will one day make memories of her own in the new one!

All in all a wonderful holiday and a very successful trip!

2 Months

I can't believe my little girl is 2 months old! She has changed so much in the last few weeks and is growing like a weed! She is already in 3 month clothes! Here are her stats:

Weight- 12 lbs. 6 oz

Height- 22.5 inches

She did great at her doctors appointment and got gold stars for all of her achievements! I was totally freaked out about her shots so I made Jeff come with me for moral support. Poor girl had to get 3 shots and one oral vaccine. She was such a trooper, of course she cried but was easily consoled when Daddy picked her up. I think the silver sparkle band aids helped too!! Luckily she didn't have any reactions to the vaccines except she was a little tired. All and all a very successful doctors visit. I hope they continue that way.

At two months she is smiling and cooing all the time. She is the happiest in the morning, during bath time and on her changing table. She loves her Daddy's funny games and his baseball hats! Her arms and legs never seem to stop moving and she wears herself out pretty quickly. She is not fond of tummy time but we are working on it!

She was sleeping for a good 6-7 hour period at night until we moved from our bedroom in the bassinet to her crib in her room. It is getting better every night and hopefully we will get back to those long periods of sleep. Mommy would love that!!

We are taking our first road trip at Thanksgiving to see Grandma and Grandpa Brand. She loves the car as long as it is moving, so I pray for no traffic!! Wish us luck!

Halloween

Happy Halloween from our little pumpkin!! I decided that Molly was too young to have a full on costume so we were lucky to receive this adorable outfit from our friends the Chadwells! I added the flower headband for an extra touch! Molly spent the evening of Halloween with her Grandma and Grandpa Gassiraro and her Aunt Jenny and cousin Dylan. Dylan was a little ducky! Her momma added a bow to make sure everyone knew she was a girl duck! Precious!

Why did my little girl spend Halloween without her parents?? Jeff and I had tickets to the World Series! It was something we couldn't pass up! Although we ended up losing the game and the series, it was still an awesome experience!!

1 Month old

I can't believe that we are already at 1 month. The last four weeks have gone by so fast, even with the sleepless nights! Molly, here are your stats this month:

Weight: 10lbs 9oz

Height: 21.5 in.

You are growing like a weed and gaining weight like a champ! You love to eat and you are not afraid to let us know when you are hungry! I call you my little piggy because you like to grunt while you eat and sometimes just for the fun of it. You are having some trouble spitting up, and we both change clothes often. You love to be held and won't let me put you down during the day which makes for a very unproductive Mom. You love to nap on your tummy on Daddy's chest, it is when you sleep your best. On a good night you will sleep for 4 hours straight between feedings.

You love bath time and enjoy our short car trips. So far we have only ventured to the grocery store and doctors appointments but we are trying to get out a little bit more each week.

You have had many visitors and I tried to take pictures but didn't get them all! We love you sweet girl and love watching you grow!

She is finally here!

Molly Joan Brand arrived on Thursday, September 16th at 1:51pm. She weighed 8 lbs. 1 oz. and was 20 inches long. She has beautiful blue eyes (for now) and light brown hair. She has her mama's lips but we aren't quite sure who she looks like just yet! She is named after my Grandma Joan who is watching over this little angel everyday!

Anticipation

Nursery ready... check

Baby clothes washed... check

Car seat installed... check

Bags packed...check

Mom and Dad ready... check

Baby Brand ready... not so much!!!

At 39 weeks this baby is content where she is!! This mom-to-be is going stir crazy! All of my mom friends are telling me to enjoy this time, spend quality time with my husband and get lots of sleep before your baby arrives. Too bad, I can't sleep at all, my hubby is working hard to get things done before she comes and I can't eat anything I want without insane heartburn!!! So pretty much, I am more than ready for her to make her arrival!!
I have an induction scheduled for Thursday, September 16th if she doesn't come on her own before then! I think I can make it!

Finally finished...well almost

I have finally finished the nursery, with one small detail missing. There is a noticeably large blank space right above her crib. That is where her name will be hung with red lowercase letters! I have the letters for both names we are debating between and we will decide when we meet her!


Here is her crib and bedding with fun handmade flowers on the wall that will accent her name.




The red chair rocks and turns and comes with a bonus guard dog! :)
The hutch/dresser/changing table! I am really happy with the way it all turned out, now we just need a little baby girl to complete the look!

Practice makes perfect

As we count down the weeks and days until our little girl's arrival, I have had the pleasure of spending time with this precious girl!

My niece Dylan just turned 6 months old and is the happiest baby I know! I can only hope that our little girl will have this much personality!!

She has been a wonderful distraction to the Texas heat and keeping my mind off of my growing belly!We have been very busy. We spent time with our Great Grandpa Paul, he is really good at horsy rides! Dylan and I also had a chance to read some of our favorite books. Can't start too early!

Dyaln loves playing with her favorite dog, Jack, and he loves to lick her face.
I love this little munchkin and I can't wait for her to meet her cousin. I know they will be best friends!!
Nursery is almost finished, be patient!!! I will post pics as soon as it is done!

Mellow Yellow

Nursery planning for baby girl Brand is underway. When I was looking at bedding I was pretty open, but I knew one thing... I didn't want pink. I am not sure exactly why, but it just didn't appeal to me. So after some searching I finally found a set I fell in love with!

I just love the yellow and brown, and pops of blue and red. The furniture we ordered is dark brown and we decided to paint the walls yellow. Who knew yellow would be such a tricky color! After painting 5 different color swatches on the wall and completely frustrating the paint guy at Home Depot, I have finally found one I am happy with. Now we just have to move out the old guest room furniture and find some place to store it! It is all becoming so real! She will be here before we know it!

It's a girl!

I guess when a doctor tells you not to paint the room just yet, you should listen to him! That is what our doctor told us at our 16 week appointment. "I am almost positive it is a boy, but don't go painting the room!"

Well, 4 weeks later at our 20 week appointment with the sonogram tech, we got a little surprise.

Our baby is 100%, no doubt, a baby girl!!! We were totally shocked, thrilled, but shocked!

She is perfectly healthy and she even showed us how she likes to suck her thumb!

Here goes!

Bear with me friends, as I try my hand at this blogging thing. I have a strange feeling it will never be as good as my friends' blogs... but I will try my best! This is my attempt at keeping in touch and documenting the life and times of my little family! Happy reading!