The Nursery

Brandon is all smiles now. But this is before we started on the changing table!

And these pieces go where?

Did you notice the watchdog in the corner?

We had a little bit of excitement last weekend because, after countless hours of online searching, and waiting a few weeks for delivery, we finally got the furniture for the nursery. So, we spent a few hours each night on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday assembling everything. An assembly project of this scale can be somewhat tedious and stressful, but we think we handled it pretty well. We started with the crib on Thursday night, but after completing most of the assembly steps, the crib still didn't seem as sturdy as it should have been. After a call to customer service on Friday, we found out that a few steps of the instructions were incorrect. So, we tried again (with the correct assembly instructions) on Friday night, and everything fit together much better. (Imagine that!)

We put the dresser and changing table together on Saturday night. Some of the pics above show Brandon sorting through all of the pieces for the dresser. We thought that it would be the most difficult piece to put together, but it was actually the easiest. In fact, the piece that we thought would be no problem at all (the changing table) ended up taking the longest. It probably took twice the time and effort compared to the other two pieces. So much so, that we had to pause mid-assembly for a Steak-Out break in order to re-charge and relax a little.

Anyway, after a weekend of furniture assembly, we are very pleased with how everything turned out. As you can see, baby boy Brooks is going to have a safari themed room.

December Ultrasound Pictures

These pictures are from December. It's really neat for us to be able to look back at the first few ultrasounds and see how much he has grown over the past several months.

November Ultrasound Pictures

These pictures are from mid November, and as you can see...... It's a Boy! (Handsome, isn't he?) We were so excited to finally know what our little one was going to be. We were also surprised to find this out so early. Because during this appointment at Dr. McMichens' office, they were just going to draw blood from April for lab work, do a urinalysis, and listen to the baby's heartbeat. But our favorite nurse said that she was having trouble hearing the heartbeat, so she would have to send April back for an ultrasound to accurately check the heart rate. As you can imagine, we had no objections :)

September Ultrasound Pictures

These are the first couple of ultrasound pictures from mid to late September. The doctor who did the ultrasound on September 10th said the baby looked like a gummy bear, but we call it the 'Teddy Graham' picture :)

The First Ultrasound

This is the first ultrasound picture (from August 27th), which provided visual evidence that we were mommy and daddy to be :) At this point Baby Brooks is but a tiny speck in the upper right corner of the doughnut shape in the center of the picture. We always jokingly referred to this as 'The Doughnut' picture.

Our First Posting

Welcome to the blog for the Brooks family! We set up this blog space because we thought it would be a fun place to post pictures and info about our soon to be growing family. Since this is our first posting, we should probably provide a little bit of back-story.

So…..we were married at the Huntsville Botanical Gardens in February 2003, and are just a couple of weeks away from celebrating our six year anniversary. We have three cats; Rusty, Dharma, and Kasey. They have provided us with countless hours of entertainment over the years. Rusty is the mischievous one of the bunch, and is always into something (and spends a good bit of time at the food dish as you can see in the pictures). Dharma is the sweetest animal on earth, content to spend the majority of her day sleeping, being petted, or snuggling up to us (naps on the couch are her favorite). And Kasey is the most vocal of the group, never afraid to voice her displeasure, whether it is over a semi-empty food dish, a litter box she feels needs emptying, or just her general displeasure having to share ‘her’ house with the humans. (She is also a master of the 5:30 a.m. Saturday morning,’ Hey, I am awake, so why aren’t you?’, meow-meow alarm clock).

….and now on to the primary reason we decided to become bloggers. We have always known that someday we would want to start a family. And we tried for quite some time, but had no luck getting pregnant. Then, last year, we went to see Dr. Cynthia Sites, a reproductive endocrinologist at the Kirklin Clinic in Birmingham. She and her staff were extremely nice and encouraging. One of our favorites was a doctor who was always upbeat, with a smile on her face, but unfortunately had a consonant filled last name that we could never pronounce or remember :) After our initial few appointments with them, we were cautiously optimistic that this time we really would get pregnant.

Which takes us to August of last year, when after a series of medications, a few boxes of ovulation detectors, Brandon’s first experience giving a injection (ouch!), and a couple of dozen or so home pregnancy tests, we finally started to see the double (You’re Pregnant!) lines. Obviously, we were extremely excited, but were still a little cautious until we got confirmation from the doctor. So, we scheduled an appointment with Dr. Sites for lab work and an ultrasound. And during our appointment later that week, we found out that the double lines were indeed correct. We were pregnant!

April decided that she wanted Dr. Timothy McMichens in Huntsville to be her obstetrician, so around October of last year, we started seeing Dr. McMichens for all of the routine, monthly appointments. Dr. McMichens is really nice, patient, and easy to talk to. He never makes us feel rushed, and always takes the time to ask if we have any questions. We also really like our primary nurse and ultrasound technician. They have all done their best to make this an awesome experience for us. The due date for the much anticipated Baby Brooks is April 26th! And that pretty much catches you up to to the present. We are going to post some of the ultrasound pics, etc. from the last few months to show everyone what we've been up to. We will also begin posting current info to share our experiences from here on out.

Thanks for reading!