Charlotte Is Here!

Charlotte Jane Brooks was born at 4:50 am on July 31, 2009 (my due date!)  She weighs 7 pounds 12 ounces.  They haven't told us her length measurement yet (she's in the nursery right now).  She is healthy and beautiful, and we are so thankful to our holy, sovereign Lord for this amazing gift!

My labor was really fast and easy again.  Yay!  I'll do another post with the story soon.  

My sister took TONS of pictures, so I'll add more of those later too.  Although, you can't tell in this first one, she looks JUST like her brother except with tons of black hair:)...

Getting Ready

So it's getting really close now. My last day at work is Friday because we'll be inducing by Monday if she's not here yet. (To all of my sweet friends who've called to check on me...I'm so sorry if I haven't called you back, and I promise to soon because you deserve it for being so caring!)

It's funny how different and at the same time how similar I feel to the last time we were getting this close to welcoming a child into our home. Once again, it seems so crazy and weird to me that we'll have a daughter in 5 days (or less!). But, hey, it's weird to me that we're parents at all, and we've had that role for over 2 years now.

Hunter has been pretty helpful in getting things ready for baby Charlotte. We got out the swing and set it up the other day, and Hunter wanted to put Bear in so he could have a turn to swing. I was so encouraged at how loving and sweet and gentle Hunter was with Bear.

He let me buckle Bear into the seat and gently rocked him back and forth while he danced to the music.

He leaned over to lovingly check on Bear...
Then he wanted Doggie to have a turn. (As you can see we come up with some really creative names for our stuffed animal friends in the Brooks household.) So we buckled Doggie in, and tried to fit Bear in with him...
But then a totally surprised Bear got thrown to the floor out of nowhere. Apparently Hunter was so over playing with him...
Doggie was obviously the priority...and Doggie is never a priority over Bear. Bear is definitely Hunter's favorite friend.

We're hoping Hunter will be less fickle in his love for Charlotte. :)

Poppy

James's dad, Poppy, is so great with Hunter. He plays with him non-stop when we are at their house, and Hunter LOVES it! He asks to see Poppy almost every day!

My sister-in-law emailed us some of the pictures she took from the trip. Here are some great ones with Poppy...

She also sent some from the morning she and James took Brooke and Hunter to Bounce Town...


As you can see he's way more adventurous than he was here or at his birthday party!

The busiest, most fun week of H's life...

Hunter's out of town cousins came to visit this past week, and he was super excited that he got to play with them everyday! Brooke and Hunter had tons of fun in the pool Grandee and Poppy got just for them...The frisbee was a big hit too. Hunter actually had a couple of really good throws, but unfortunately I'm not exactly a skilled videographer, so you don't really see the throw...

H's excitement over his accomplishment is pretty cute though, isn't it? He's really been proud of himself for doing things independently lately, so we hear the phrase, "I did it!" all the time.

B and H also had tons of fun running down the hill in front of Grandee and Poppy's house...

...and posing for pictures for their papparazzi mommies...That last picture of H cracks me up. The expression on his face and the way he's posing reminds me of an old timey black and white picture for some reason.

Somebody pulled out James's old trombone from high school and college, so he played it for the kids. H loved it!

And after about 1 minute, he said, "I do it!" so James let him have a try. I think he did pretty good for his first time!

Hunter also got to skip school one day last week to go to the zoo with his in town Aunties (and Uncle) and cousins. Aunt Courtney put some pics up on her blog, so I stole this one...Apparently Hunter thought that gorilla was hilarious.

On Saturday we went to Thomas and Ronnie's third birthday party at Pump It Up. Hunter LOVED this bounce the most...At first I just thought it was because that's where Olivia (Thomas's sister whom Hunter adores) was on it, but he kept on laughing even after she left...

I was really impressed that he went down this slide with daddy because it was HUGE. You really can't tell how massive it is from the picture. Every time an adult would ride down with a kid, they'd fly off the bottom because they were going so fast...

Hunter thought it was "so fun!" along with every other thing from the week (unfortunately I didn't get pictures of many of the other fun activities we did...like Bounce Town with daddy, Aunt Melanie and Brooke and my grandad's 83rd bday party!).

Hunter woke up at 7:45 this morning which is waaaay past his normal time...maybe we'll have to wear him out like this more often!

Brooks Look-alike Meter

MyHeritage: Look-alike Meter - Family history - Free family tree

Maternity Pictures

My sweet friend Emily took our maternity pictures and we LOVE them! They couldn't have been better! Here are some of my favorites...

I know that's a lot, but it was hard to narrow down my preview because there are so many we adore! You know you want to use her, so click here to see more of her work:)

Get out the hand sanitizer...

As my due date gets closer and closer, I think more and more about our limited time as a family of 3. So we've been trying to think of fun, special things to do and Friday night decided to go to Chuck E Cheese with my sis and her fam.

It's been a while since I've been, and somehow in my childhood memories that pizza was a lot tastier...maybe it's because now that I see how much money we're spending on it, I expect 5 star cuisine. A word of advice, don't order tomato and green pepper as your pizza toppings at Chuck E Cheese. Stick with the generic plain cheese or pepperoni. I don't think fresh veggies are one of their priorites.

Of course Hunter has to do everything that Zack and Vanesa do so he followed them around most of the time. Here he is on his favorite ride of the night...He waited so patiently watching Z and V ride it, and was really excited when it was our turn. After a zillion times on that ride, we went over to the kiddie roller coaster.At first Hunter thought it was "cool". (That's what he's telling us in the picture above.) But it didn't take him long to realize that it was laaaame-o compared to the big kid ride he'd just been on for 15 minutes... And soon he heard Zack and Vanesa behind him......so the kiddie coaster was quickly abandoned so he could join in on their fun.At the end of the night we took our modest 160 tickets and got Hunter a couple of $1 store toys from the counter that are "so fun!" He's been playing with them all day:)

Pool Time

We bought Hunter one of those kiddie pools at Target about a month ago, and as y'all can see, he loves it. Unfortunately mommy doesn't love the 100+ heat that we have to sit in to hang out in there...especially since I don't get to cool off with the water. (Just in case you were wondering, kiddie pools and 8 1/2 month pregnant women don't mix well.) Luckily, James is the best husband and father ever, and usually I go inside once I can no longer breathe because it's SO DANG HOT!!! This is usually after about 5 minutes of pool time. Seriously.

The pool we bought has a little slide and a giraffe head that sprays water so the slide can stay wet. I know. Scary. That picture above was the first time we hooked up the giraffe. About 1.5 seconds later, Hunter was doing this...

And yes, James and I were CRACKING UP at this....possibly the funniest thing I've seen all year.

Obviously my kid is not a fan of the freaky, water-spraying giraffe head, but he does love holding the water hose to fill up the pool himself...I think this makes up for the attack of the water-spewing giraffe.

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He also likes to pick blades of grass and put them in the pool only to scoop them up with a cup seconds later to clean the pool out...Cleaning is one of his favorite past-times, you know.

...

This week Hunter got to go on 2 playdates with friends that have real pools. I didn't get any pictures in the big pool at Charlie's house, but I got some of the boys playing after...

Maybe they'll be b-ball teammates one day. That is the sport I'm pushing for...it's the indoor-ness of it that's so appealing to me:)

The next day we went to Jackson's house for a big playdate with Jackson, Levi, Judah, Teagan, Presley, Kayden and Keeley. (Crystal, I hijacked pictures off of your blog since I didn't take any that day:))...

We had so much fun with all of y'all this week! Hopefully we can go swimming again soon!