Welcome, Baby Ellis!

He's here!!! We've been blessed with another darling baby! Our sweet baby boy arrived on Monday, April 21st at 12:26 in the afternoon. He weighs in at a healthy 8lbs. 6 oz. and measures 20 inches long. Ellis Frederic Brown is as handsome and sweet as can be, with plenty of dark brown hair. Jason and I are both fans of using family names, since they hold so much significance and are a fun tradition, which is why we chose Ellis Frederic for our baby boy. Frederic is in honor of my sweet dad who passed away unexpectedly last November, and Ellis is my Grandpa's name.

So far he has been a pure joy to the family. I love babies!!! Yes, they are a lot of work, but so, so worth it! He has proven so far (time will tell...) to be a very good baby. Much easier than Norah was at this stage, which is a pleasant surprise. Norah is so sweet with him and it is so great to see her so happy and excited about her brother. Jason was able to stay home with us last week which was wonderful. Unlike some guys, he really enjoys all stages that babies go through, including the little newborn stage. He especially likes snuggling and taking naps with the babe, but who can blame him!? He went back to work today so I'm here with both kiddos....it's now dinner time and I'm happy to report that the day has been quite pleasant. I'm sure it will have it's moments, but so far so good.

OK- many of you will probably stop reading here because this will be boring/too much info for some of you. But for those who want the full story of how little Ellis joined us on Monday, here you go:

I'd been having contractions on and off for about two weeks, so when my due date came and went on Saturday the 19th it was a little sad. I never got to the really really miserable stage that some pregnant ladies do, which I'm grateful for, however people at church on Sunday did mention in that I looked "ready," whatever that means. I'm guessing it meant that I looked tired and huge with child, which were both very true. One of the ladies at church actually told me I should go home and rest because I didn't have much time left. According to her intuition I only had a "couple hours" to go (and she wasn't that far off...). I took her advice to heart and went home and rested. I felt like the baby might be coming very soon, so I wanted to have a special last-day-of-being-the-only-kid night for Norah. We went for a long walk, then she "helped" me make cookies, and finished it off with her first ever viewing of Cinderella. The picture in the slide show is of her watching Cinderella with me and eating her cookie--boy, was she in heaven. I'm glad we had that special night with her since the baby did come the next day....it will be a fun memory.

We went to bed early and then at 2:20am my water broke. The same thing happened with Norah, so we were a little better prepared this time. Jason's reaction was notably different. With Norah he paced back and forth around the apartment frantically talking about what we needed to get together but not actually doing anything while I giggled at him. This time I said, "Jason, guess whose water broke?" He sat up in bed and with a huge smile said, "Really?! Awesome!" Very much improved since last time. Since Ellis came later, and Norah was 2 weeks early, he gave us enough time to get ready and enough anticipation was built up in wanting to meet him that we were ready and excited to get him here.

We got to the hospital at around 4 am and almost immediately they wanted to induce me since my contractions weren't consistent or too strong yet. I opted to hold off for awhile to see if things would progress on their own, but eventually they ended up inducing me at about 10am. Although I never really seem to have consistent contractions, I do go really fast near the end which is nice (I went from a 6 to a 10 in less than an hour). The delivery was really smooth as well. He was born at 12:26pm after 3 contractions of pushing. Apparently my babies more so fall out than they are pushed out. After he was born I asked the nurses, "how long did I push for, 10 minutes?" They looked at me and laughed and said, "You didn't push. That can't be considered pushing." They kept laughing about how I should make one of those labor videos where the women make it look so simple and easy. Fine by me! (Not the video part, just the easiness part.)

Once he was born the nurses said he looked like a pretty big baby. Earlier that morning the doctor had said he'd be a "pretty small" baby--she guessed around 7 lbs. He surprised us all by weighing in at 8lbs. 6oz.! Much bigger than I had expected! Especially compared to Norah's petite 6lbs. 2 oz. he seems nice and beefy. Just the way boys should be! My favorite part, which I'm sure is every mothers' favorite part, is when they lay the baby on your chest. With Norah I remember her just staring up at me with her big pretty eyes. Ellis was adorable because he just kept blinking over and over and over again trying to keep his eyes open to look at me but he just couldn't manage it. Jason and I were laughing at him and couldn't believe how darling he was. I so wish I had a video of the blinking...hopefully it is one of those mothering memories that won't fade.

I ended up in a room with 2 other girls which wasn't too fun, but since we were only there for one night it wasn't too bad. We were just excited to get out of there and go meet the big sister! She has loved having him home as we all have. We couldn't ask for a sweeter more handsome little guy to join the Brown family! We were watching TV the other day and there was a commercial for a Disneyland package for a "family of four." Jason looked over at me and said, "Hey, that's us!" So weird! So fun!