2011 Football Season

The 2011 football season has officially begun! This was Brooks at the Utah State game. War Eagle. A win is a win :)

My Aunt Beth caught Brooks in action.

Since I got to go with Brooks to the Utah State game, Kevin took him to the Mississippi State game. Elizabeth and I stayed home and Andrea and Harper came over to watch it with us! It was such a fun girls day!

18 month and 2-3 week checkup

The day before Elizabeth was born, 7/28/2011, we took Brooks for his 18 month check up. He was 80th percentile for height and 58th percentile for weight. His head is still way up there, in the 90 something percentile. Here are his stats:

Height - 33.25 inches

Weight - 26 lbs 3 oz

Head Circ - 18.5 inches.

On August 18, 2011 we took Elizabeth for her 2-3 week check up. I cant remember her percentiles exactly. They are around 35th. Her stats are below:

Height - 19.5 inches

Weight - 7 lbs 8 oz

Head Circ - 14 inches

Both our babies are growing so fast! We are glad they are healthy babies!

Elizabeth Clark Miller's Birthday!

I know I have a TON of things to catch up with on the blog, but one of the most important days of my life just happened, so I thought I would write about this first while it is fresh on my mind. Not that I think I will ever forget a single second of July 29th, 2011.

At about 5:30 am on July 29th I woke up having contractions. I just laid in bed tossing and turning thinking surely these are going to go away. We were 3 weeks away from her due date. When they didnt go away Kevin jumped in the shower and started getting ready and told me I should call the dr. My contractions were irregular, about 10-15 minutes apart and did not hurt that bad. So I waited. A friend of mine, Cheryl, who we met in Qatar was in town visiting, Kevin's parents were about to get on a cruise boat, and I knew my Dr. was going out of town for a week. So I just knew she was not going to come that day. I was wrong.

Well....at about 7:15 when my contractions still were not going away and were only getting stronger Kevin and Cheryl convinced me to call the doctor. Since they were still not real consistent, they told me to just come to the office for the doctor to see me first. We said goodbye to Cheryl, all got in the car, and went to pick up my dad before heading to the hospital. My mom was at Clay Chalkville for a meeting so she quickly turned around and met us all at St. Vincent's to get Brooks. By the time we got to the hospital it was about 8:30 and my contractions were consistently 5 minutes apart. They got me in quickly to see the dr. and she told me I was in labor and to go down to labor and delivery. We were going to have a baby!

Once we got down there they hooked me up to the monitors and waited for my doctor (who was in town for a couple more hours) came in to see me. When I was a little over 4 cm he broke my water and shortly after that I got my epidural. YAY! Then we just sat and waited! Since I had a C-Section with Brooks they did not want to give me any Pitocin to speed things along, just to make sure nothing went wrong. So over the next several hours my body got ready for her arrival. I was so glad to have the epidural. I could not feel my contractions and even took a little nap while we waited. Finally around 6:00 it was time to start pushing. I did not know what I was doing. And especially since I could not feel anything, I just felt a little silly. After about an hour my epidural started wearing off some and I could feel my legs and could feel my contractions which helped me to push. I was a little worried that I could feel so much, but while it was a little painful, did not hurt too bad, so obviously the meds were still working enough. At 7:49 she was born and they put her on my chest. It was such an amazing experience and I loved getting to hold her right after she was born. I could not believe how beautiful she was. When I had Brooks I was completely out of it, so I really hate I missed this moment with him. I am so glad I decided on a VBAC. Although it was more work for me, it was completely worth it when I got to hold my little girl and not be all drugged up when she made her arrival into the world.

Then they took her away to clean her up and weigh her and all that they do. She was 6 lbs 7 oz and 19 inches long. I could not believe it. This whole pregnancy I have felt HUGE! I guess it was more the twix bars I ate making me huge than Elizabeth. Maybe it was the heat, whatever it was I could not believe it when they told me her weight. I just knew she was going to be bigger than Brooks. No matter her size I am just very thankful that she is a healthy baby. Once they finished assessing her they gave her back to me so I could feed her. Shortly after Kevin got to hold her and my parents got to come in to meet her. It was a long but amazing day. We are already so in love with her and are so happy to have to as a part of our family.

Brooks got to come see us and meet his baby sister the next day. He seems to like her and wants to see her for a minute, but because she still pretty much just sleeps all the time, he gets bored with her quickly and just wants to play. He wanted Kevin and my parents to stroll him around the hospital instead. I know one day they will be great friends!

Watering the Plants

I know it has been FOREVER since I have written anything on here. I have a lot to catch up on, but figured for now I would just start from today.

Kevin has been busy for a while working on our raised beds in the back yard so we can grow some vegetables. It is finally finished and we have some squash, eggplant, peppers, and tomatoes growing. Brooks LOVES to water the plants and to help his daddy. He has been watering his grandparents plants and our neighbors plants for months now, so we were excited to let him have a try at his own plants!

Here are some pictures of Brooks and Kevin watering the marigolds in the garden first thing this morning.

ITS A GIRL!

On Monday we went for our ultrasound and saw that our sweet baby is healthy and growing right on schedule. We are very thankful that everything looks how it should at this point. We also got to find out what we are having and ITS A GIRL! We are very excited. It is funny we brought Brooks to the ultrasound to see his baby sister and when they announced it was a girl, Brooks screamed. I think he just wanted to be put down, but it was hilarious! He was right on cue.

Anyway we have decided on a name for our sweet girl. It will be Elizabeth Clark Miller. We are naming her after her two grandmothers. My mothers first name is Elizabeth and Mrs. Miller's maiden name was Clark. Since we named Brooks after his two grandfathers, we thought it was appropriate to name our little girl after her grandmothers. I know she will think it is as special as we do to be named after two incredible women.

Brooks Turns 1!

How can this be!? My baby is 1! Brooks's birthday is on February 4th, which is also my dad's birthday so we went over to their house for a joint birthday celebration. We had a great dinner Friday night and Brooks had his first taste of cake. Kevin did not give him the icing, but he liked the cake without it!

On Saturday morning we headed over to the Miller's to see them because the Tarpley's were in town. It was, as always, very fun to see Stacey, Matt, Allie, Becca, and Miller. We had fun playing with them that morning. Then they went to the McWayne Center to play and we headed over to the Patterson's for Grant & Grace's 2nd birthday party. It was the cutest party! We then went home, Brooks took a nap, and then we headed back over to the Miller's to celebrate Brooks, Becca, and Miller's birthdays in Feb. Aunt Jackie and Uncle Fred also came over to celebrate. Mrs. Miller got Brooks one of the little smash cakes and he seemed to enjoy it! I think I ended up eating more of his cake than he did though, ha! We also had another big cake for all 3 kids. We sang happy birhtday and ate more birthday cake. It was a busy day and a lot of fun!

Brooks's First Christmas

Our Christmas celebrations started the weekend before Christmas when Jenn, Jaye, Madelyn, and Aunt Beth all got into town. They all came over for dinner on Saturday night and the Coppers all came over a little bit later that night. It was so much fun spending time with everyone. We missed the Robertson's on Chrismtas, but were glad they got to come celebrate a little early!

Brooks had an amazing first Christmas. On Christmas Eve we all went to church for the service and then us, my mom, dad, Aunt Beth, Aunt Sherry, and the Tarpley's headed over to the Miller's for a wonderful dinner. Since both of our parents were going to be at the same place at the same time, we thought it would be a great time to give them a special present. On Wed before Christmas we went to the doctor and had our first ultrasound for Baby #2! Yes, if you have not heard yet, we are expecting our second child August 17, 2011. Anyway, we made copies of the ultrasound picture and put it in a picture frame and wrapped it up. We gave our parents each their picture frame and made them open them at the same time. Neither of them were expecting it! It was so fun to watch their shocked faces. I know both of them thought we were giving them a picture of Brooks. Everyone was of course very excited. We then had a wonderful evening together and then we went home and tucked Brooks into bed for the night.

On Chrismtas morning we woke up bright and early with Brooks. We let him play under the tree and with a few of his presents (I am a bad mom and had given him most of his presents earlier in the week when he was sick, oops :). Then we headed back over to the Miller's to open presents. I don't think Brooks knew what was going on, but Allie, Becca, and Miller had a great time opening thier gifts. They are all so sweet it was so much fun to spend the morning with them. I know Brooks just loves his cousins and had so much fun playing with them as well. Brooks ended up taking his morning nap at the Millers, so Kevin and I played with everyone while he was sleeping. When he woke up we headed to the Brooks/Copper family Christmas and the Miller's headed over to the Battles.

My parents host the Brooks/Copper family Christmas every year. We have lunch around noon and then open presents. It was always so hard as a child to wait until after lunch to open presents, but now I love it. We actually didnt do presents this year and opted to each buy one "good" gift for dirty santa. It is not often that all of us are in one place at the same time, and I look forward to it every year. Brooks went down for his afternoon nap and while he slept we played dirty santa and ate red velvet cake. Yumm! Once Brooks woke up we headed over to the Battle's house to spend Christmas night over there.

We had another AMAZING dinner at the Battles and Brooks got to hang out with his cousins again. He just loves Henley! I think it is because she is close to his size. He just wanted to do everything that she did. She got a slide for Christmas and he wanted to play with it so bad. We normally play dirty santa with the Battle/Miller families but this year we were having too much fun and didnt get around to it before all the kids had to go to bed. So we postponed it until the next night, when we went over to the Miller's for another wonderful dinner. We had fun that night also playing dirty santa and spending time with everyone.

All in all Brooks had a very busy first Christmas, but a wonderful one. Since both of our families live in town it makes for a very hectic weekend, but I would not have it any other way. I feel so blessed that we can spend time with both families on such a special day!