Hello Stranger!

It is that time again.....time for the corral!

Molly is all over the place in the living room and it is hard to keep her in one spot so we have broken out the corral again! Since we took it down after Brody, we were using it as a gate on one side of his play room. It did serve that purpose but now, it is time to use it as originally intended. She isn't quite sure what to think of it, but it is nice because atleast when I leave the room, I don't have to worry about her getting into something she shouldn't. It should be interesting to see what Brody thinks of it when he gets home from school today.

It has been record temps here this past weekend and this morning, they said we will have a break....it will only be 90! Since when is 90 a break! But, it actually does feel a little better than it has for the past couple of days. It was stifling out there! I mowed the grass and weeded the front yard yesterday while Ted played Daddy Day Care and I was dripping before I even got started! Then, as my reward, Ted watch the kids, plus my neighbor's 2 kids, and she and I went to the movies. We saw Grown-Ups. It was funny, and had a nice message. Good times..... Today she is off work and is taking her kids to the beach and Ethan is going with them. It is so nice to have great neighbors!

Other than that, I am working today and trying to do a little housework in between. I feel like I can never get a hold of my house with 2 small kids running and rolling around. One day....one day! Atleast that is what I keep telling myself!

One more week until my sister gets here and then a couple weeks after that, she will be here for good! I am so excited! :)

Changes...Changes

Things are changing in our household. When I dropped Brody off at school yesterday, they told me that he would be moving up into the next class beginning August 2nd. That is the class where they will be working with him on potty training. We have been letting him try for a while now, but he has yet to really go on the potty. I figured since he is at school all day, I wasn't really going to get into it until he moved up. Well, that time is coming! I am hoping that it is not a real long drawn out deal. I know it will take some time, but I am hoping that by him seeing the other kids go, he will be more interested. I am happy that he is moving up, but I am sad to see him leave his current teacher. When she handed me the sheet yesterday, she had a sad look on her face. I think she is going to miss Brody! She says he is such a huge help and offers to do alot of things in the classroom. Such a lovebug! He is always wanting to do everything by himself, or do things for you. I hope that part of him stays as he gets older. I still can't believe that he is almost 2 1/2. Where does the time go?

At night, we have started letting him watch a little bit of TV before he goes to bed. We were noticing that when we would put him down at night, he wouldn't actually fall asleep until 1 hour a half later. In that time, there were a couple of times where he would get up and cry for us, but he would go right back to bed. We have a gate in his doorway, which I think we have decided that we are going to take down soon. I want him to start learning to stay in his room without having to barricade him in there. It worked good when we first started the big boy bed, but now I think he needs to be able to learn how to stay in his room, even if there is an opportunity to get out. We will see how that goes! Here is a cute picture of him that I took last week. I swear, this picture sums him up perfectly.............he is happy about 90% of the day and I love it!

Now, update on Molly. In my last post, I said she was starting to move around. Well, I think she is moments away from actually crawling. She gets up on her hands and knees and will rock, but then throw herself forward and use her legs and army crawl to where she wants to go. Well, she is now starting to move her arms forward, with her belly off the floor, but hasn't quite mastered how to move her knees. She can also now get into the sitting position from laying down. She has always tried, and I know she is getting a good ab workout, but she now has accomplished that task. Seriously, where does the time go? I can't believe my little baby girl can now sit up on her own and is super close to crawling. It is exciting and depressing at the same time! And to say she is happy all the time is an understatement! She is the most laid back, happy baby I have ever seen. I know it is hard to believe, and truse me, I have been waiting for the other side to come out, but it hasn't! She is always smiling and laughing............she has such an awesome personality!

When I went to the doctor a couple weeks ago, I asked her if I wasn't feeding her enough. It is so weird because with Brody, I was always worried about feeding him too much, and with her I worry that I am not feeding her enough. Of course, the doctor told me not to worry about it. She said that if she is content between feedings and doesn't seem to be hungry, then don't worry about it. Right now, we feed her some cereal and a half of Stage 1 fruit in the morning with a 4 oz. bottle. For lunch, she gets half a Stage 1 vegetable and Stage 1 fruit and a 4 oz. bottle and for dinner, she gets half a Stage 1 vegetable and a 4 oz. bottle (she hardly ever finishes that bottle completely, but we still offer it to her). Then at night, before bed, she gets another bit of cereal and a 5 oz. bottle. I know that is probably much more information than anyone else needs to know, but part of me is writing this so I can look back and remember. I know that at this point, I was feeding Brody much more than that, but I guess I have to consider that Brody was about 8 lbs. heavier than her at this age. Similar to what I have done before, I have posted a comparison of Brody and Molly at 7 months. They definitely look related, but look a lot different to me! Her head is much, much smaller than his, and their eyes are shaped different.

Ethan has been with us for the last month and a half and it has been great! I love having him around and also seeing him interact with his brother and sister. He is such a lovebug with Molly, and plays with her a lot. I have seen him pick her up more in the last month and a half than he has picked Brody up in his whole life! Brody and Ethan are already starting to bicker, and a part of me things it is hilarious. Ethan gets irritated when Brody goes in his room or gets things that he isn't supposed to, and Brody will tell Ethan to get away when Ethan starts bothering him. But then, they have these moments that really show how much both of them love each other. I am so glad that Brody has such a great big brother to play with! I only wish Ethan could stay longer, but I know that he misses his mom and I know she misses him so he will be heading back probably next weekend.

Which brings me to the fact that my sister is moving back home! I am so excited I can't stand it! She will be here next weekend and then will be moving a couple weeks after that. It will be great to have her so close again. And by close, I mean super close......atleast to my parents. She is moving into a condo in my parents neighborhood! She is literally in the next pod over from them. I told them that they should probably go ahead and change the locks because she will constantly be over there! (Just kidding Chris! I mean I really did say that, but you know I am joking with ya!) It will just be nice to have her home! I can't wait.

Anyway, that is enough for my long post. I guess I better get to work! Happy Friday All!

On the Move!

So, Molly is on the move. She is just about crawling and while it is not the traditional hands and knees moving, she is more of an army crawling. Needless to say, she gets where she needs to go. Here is a video of her doing it.



Also, she is saying Mama all the time! It makes me so happy because Brody didn't really start saying that until much, much later. He would mouth it but no sound would come out.

It is hot as the dickens here so once Brody gets up from his nap, I am going to take him and Ethan to the pool with our neighbor. Molly is going to stay with Daddy because I don't want to take her out in this heat!

Hope everyone had a good weekend!

Molly's Well-Baby Checkup

Molly finally had her 6 month checkup yesterday. She will be 7 months tomorrow, and it was originally scheduled for sooner, but her doctor has been on vacation. So, here are her stats:

Weight - 17.1 lbs
Height - 26.5 inches
Head - 16.25 inches

Her doctor said that she is in the 75th percentile for weight and height (which surprised me) and the 25th percentile for her head. I was searching on the internet and found 2 sites (one of which is my baby bible, babycenter.com) and they said she is in the 44th for weight and height, and 5th for her head. Either way, she is doing great and growing perfectly!

The difference between her and Brody are amazing! At 6 months, which mind you, her weight is technically at 7 months, Brody weighed 22.13 lbs, which is essentially a whole other newborn baby more than Molly! Her doctor checked her over and she is perfect. She is doing really good and right on target with her milestones. So, all is well!

She had two shots and a liquid and she did great. She cried one brief cry and then was good. I told my mom if she got fussy in the afternoon to give her some Tylenol, and my mom gave her some right around 3:30. Not sure if it was the shots or not, but she she was better after.

I thought I would post this really cute video of Molly laughing. I have been wanting to get it on video for a while and luckily, Tab was here and got a few laughs out of her. The sound of her giggling and laughing is such music to my ears....I wish I could bottle it up and keep it forever. Atleast I do have a video. :)

Lots to Post

Okay...since I haven't posted in a while, I have lots to post. I started this post originally last weekend and have been trying to upload some pictures on here, but it is taking forever, so I didn't post all the ones I wanted to. I need to figure out how I can somehow get all the pictures i want on here without it taking so long (or it is just that I don't have patience.....which could be the case as well). Anyway, here is what is going on with us.

I will start with Ethan's birthday. He turned 12 (yes, 12!) on June 21st and we got him a cell phone for his birthday. He has been bugging about getting one for a really long time, so after discussion with his mom, we decided to get him one and put him on our plan. Good thing, because we have unlimited texting and we definitely need it now that he is on our plan. Since it is summer, we didn't limit the amount he can text, but we did tell him that he is not allowed to text after 10 pm. Of course, the rules will all change once the school year rolls around, but for now, he is doing a good job following the rules. Plus, we had a talk with him about how he needs to responsible with his texting and that it is his job to keep up with his phone and not lose it or get it taken away. If he does...too bad, so sad! Here are a few pictures from when he opened his gift and from when we had his cake. Yes, the cake has a 2 candle on it but that was the only one I could find so we told him he had to add 10 to it! :)


Last weekend, we headed to Tab's for Mallory's first birthday party. We left Saturday morning after the kids ate and I swear, you would have thought that we were going away on vacation for a week with all the stuff we packed. We had separate bags for each of us plus the pack-n-play, plus Mallory's gifts (one of which was huge) and a diaper bag full of food for Molly. After getting everything ready and in the car Saturday morning, we were already tired! But, it definitely was worth it. Tab had a good turn out and I think everyone had a great time. Mallory go so much stuff....it looked like Toys'R'Us threw up in her living room. All the kids had a great time and Tab gave fabulous goodie buckets for the kids. Brody was having such a good time playing with all of his stuff, and running around. Also, one of Tab and I's friend from high school came the party and it was so good to see her. I haven't seen her since high school and we connected through FaceBook. She has a 15 month old boy and he is so adorable. It was interesting to see the three of us with our kids. It shows us how grown up we are now!

I think Mallory's look in this picture is hilarious!

Brody and Mallory sitting in her new wagon...

Mallory eating the awesome cake Kevin made....he is so talented!!

Other things.....Molly is trying to sit up more and more, but she hasn't quite got there yet. She will sit up if I kind of barricade her with pillows around her. She is also starting to try and get up on her knees, and if you just leave her on the floor, she will somehow manage to move herself around the room. I am sure crawling will be right around the corner. It is funny with her milestones. Somethings I figured she would be doing now, she isn't (like sitting up on her own) and she started rolling from her back to her belly first, rather than the other way around, which is much hard.

She is now starting to hold her own bottle when we are feeding her. She hasn't quite mastered it, but she definitely is trying. She has started more and more food. She has now had bananas, peas, beans, and carrots, squash, and applesauce. She seems to be tolerating everything really well. Her 6 month appointment is July 9th and I will be interested to see how much she weighs. Of course, by that point she will almost be 7 months old but should be interesting. She is still pretty fantastic and has become a belly sleeper. When we lay her down in the crib at night, she immediately rolls from her back to her side/belly and stays that way for most of the night. It is funny to think that both Brody and Molly both were not fans of tummy time, yet they both became belly sleepers.

I love this picture of Molly and Ethan. Ethan stayed home with me last Monday and we were watching a movie. He had Molly laying with him for a little bit so of course, I had to take a picture. I can't tell him enough how much of a good big brother he is. He is so helpful and interacts with them. It is so sweet to see!


Brody has become such a little dude. We got his haircut last week and he always looks so handsome with a fresh haircut. Not like he doesn't before that, but he just looks so different. He is so funny and sometimes, I am shocked at what he says. He sounds so grown up Ted and I have both said that sometimes, it is hard to believe that he is only 2. He has been doing really good at daycare and has a new teacher in his class that says nothing but good things about him. She says that he should be employed there because he wants to help do everything. in his folder last friday, the note said "Brody is such a big help and a joy to be around. Keep up the goodwork!" Makes momma so proud!!

Well....I think that is about it for now. I am going to relax today. Hope everyone has a good July 4th holiday!