My sweet girl is TWO....

I can't believe my sweet baby girl is 2!! I had a really hard time on the week of her birthday but am so excited to start this new adventure in toddler-hood with her! We've gone through the toddler years with Miller, but something tells me that miss priss is probably going to be a whole different story in the Hoyle family book!

Anyways, EmmaLeigh had her 2 year doctor appointment this week and she was perfect, as we already knew, but it's always great to hear from an outsider!

I absolutely love Emma & Miller's doctor and really look forward to asking her questions about my kids and her opinions.

Emma was such a big girl and just put on a whole show for the nurses and the doctor. She was 35.5 inches tall (completely off the chart % wise) & she was 28.2 pounds (which is right at the 50% mark for weight) She has been off the chart for height since birth and she's keeping up her height even at 2 years old- I'm hoping she stays tall and slim.. she'll love that when she's a teenager!

I filled out all the paperwork and completed the questionnaire for her age group, answering all the questions on her stats and abilities. She passed them all with flying colors, I was amazed at how advanced she seemed just by the questionnaire. Dr. C came in and checked her out, she was growing well, no problems or concerns. She then went over the questionnaire and asked me a few questions about certain things, but most memorable, she asked me if Em "could put more than 2 words together." As Emma is being her wild self, and dancing around the room, she walks over to the door and attempts to open the knob, turns around to me and says, "Oh no door is locked, Mommie what gunna do." Dr. C busted out laughing and says- I think we can check that off the list!

Emma is right on track and doing wonderful. Dr. C is very pleased with her progress and says she is way too smart for her age! She is such a joy to our lives and it's great to hear she's as perfect as we all know she is!


A few things about Miss Emma as she enters the wonderful world of TWO...

Em absolutely loves her dogs, blankets, and animals. She must sleep with ALL of them every night and at nap! She has 2 dog blankets, 3 blankets, a stuffed pig, a stuffed kitty, 4 pillow pets (including one she stole from Miller), a blue dog blanket (also stolen from Miller), and a HUGE Pink dog (about 3 times larger than her- given to her by my sweet cousin Dusty). She sleeps laying all over the animals and must make sure they are all there before she can sleep!


She has really began playing house and playing with her babies. She loves to feed them bottles, sit them in the high chair, sing to them as she puts them in their crib, and of course put them in Time Out- complete with the finger pointing and "dont you dare get up!"


She loves to eat anything and everything! Emma's favorite foods are tomatoes and "Mackey Cheese" She will pick up a tomato and eat it like an apple. She is a great eater and will usually clean her plate.


Emma Loves to Sing & dance with her brother, and does anything he does!

Her favorite movie is Tangled and she loves to dress up in her Repunsal dress, shoes, and most of all the crown!

She keeps us on our toes and keeps us laughing constantly! I know I have said it before, but she is the most precious little girl, and I am So blessed to be her mommie!

It's Party day.....

My babies have had one more huge birthday this year! I think, and more importantly I hope our birthday festivities are finally over!

Birthdays started this year on Aug 5th! Wes and I both took a day off work, along with my parents and Wes's parents to celebrate the kiddo's birthdays! My grandparents even flew in from a mission trip in Idaho to celebrate the week with us!

We got up early on Friday morning and had a pancake breakfast! I had found a recipe for "Funfetti Birthday Pancakes" they were awesome- made out of funfetti cake batter and oh so good! We had our first candle blow out and sang happy birthday to both kiddos individually.
After breakfast, Mom took the kids to watch a quick tv show while me, Wes, and our dads attempted to put together their birthday playhouse, in a quick minute! They came out and ran right to the playhouse! The loved it! We then began opening presents.... and we opened, and opened, and opened! I thought it resembled Christmas morning, the kids would open a gift, play with it for a few mins, and then go on to the next one! They had a blast opening all day long! We had lots of fun playing with all their new birthday toys all day long!

Saturday was Party day! We had a joint birthday party scheduled for the late afternoon with all our family and close friends! We were all ready and decorated and had big plans of a jumpy slide and snow cone machine outside for the party! However, the weather had other plans. The party was set for 5pm and the slide was to be here 4:30, which was about the same time the clouds started rolling in. Miller was in awe when he saw the slide, in his back yard! He had a few fun slides before everyone started arriving. All of our family and great friends came in and then the bottom decided to drop out! It rained all over the slide and the party! We moved inside quickly and attempted to not be hot and squished in this house. We opened presents, had pizza and cake and all the kids had a great time playing with new toys and our toys out in the playroom. The kiddo's are so blessed to have such great friends and family that love them so much to cram into our house while it rained outside to enjoy their birthday party with them!

Finally on Sunday we had a break- a few days off from the Birthday week!

On Tuesday, Emma's actual birthday (and my Daddy's too) I took the day off to spend with her! I can't believe my sweet baby is already 2. I had a rough day on the 9th, it only seems like yesterday that she was a sweet little one and now she's full toddler and wild as can be! I spent the day with her and Miller doing everything and anything they wanted to do, we had a fun play date with some great friends, and then took good naps and then out to dinner with my family to celebrate Emma & Popaw's birthdays. I held her extra long that night and rocked her until she fell asleep, something that she rarely allows me to do anymore, and I enjoyed it very much, I am so blessed to be her mommie!

Just a few short hours later... on Wednesday was Miller K's 4th birthday! Miller had a day all planned out for us starting with breakfast at his favorite place! When you tell a 4 year old that he can plan the day, you must sit back and laugh at the results! We started with a pancake breakfast at Mcdonalds with a little playing in the indoor playplace, then off to Monkey Joes for a birthday fun day! Some of our great friends met us there and we had a wonderful time, even if it was overly crowded! We then went out for lunch and Miller's next request was a trip to ToysRUs. We had fun in the toy store and walked up and down every aisle until he picked out the perfect birthday toy. We came home, had great naps, and then ending the day in perfect Miller birthday fashion he picked out dinner. He wanted his favorite Chicken & Broccoli from the Chinese place and ate his weight in it!

We had a great birthday week and I am so blessed to have my wonderful family and friends and most of all my beautiful, healthy, amazing babies! I am so proud of them and of the children they are becoming! I love them more than life and would do anything for them. I am so happy to celebrate their birthdays this past week and hope and pray for many many more of these crazy weeks for the rest of my life! I've never been more proud to be a mom. Happy 2nd and 4th birthdays Miss Emma & Miller K!

Miss EmmaLeigh's grand entrance...

A few days ago I decided to write a post to share Miller's birth story. Today it's all about the 2nd child.....

Miss EmmaLeigh Carroll

First... I apologize for the length of this and of previous birth type posts to all 1 1/2 of my readers ;)

Miss Emma is the 2nd child, so my pregnancy with her was very different for a lot of reasons, but basically because I knew what to expect, or so I thought. Emma's pregnancy was horrible and that's the only way I know to describe it. I was sick from day 1. I'm pretty sure I began puking the day I conceived and didn't stop until a few seconds before she arrived. Wes and I began thinking we wanted a 2nd child just a few weeks after Miller turned 1... yes 1, I know we were crazy! But, we wanted our children close in age for various reasons. So Miller turns 1 in August, we start thinking about expanding our family a few weeks later.... and skipping a few details... WOW.. I'm pregnant in October AGAIN!
I woke up one morning the first of October, sick on my stomach, the kind of sick feeling you get from motion sickness. Maybe it was something I ate, maybe a bug, nope.... it was Pregnancy Sickness (Once you've seen it, you know it!) I was scared and excited all at the same time. The morning sickness continued the entire pregnancy, eventually with me losing 15lbs instead of gaining any weight. I couldn't eat and what I did, didn't stay down. I was on 6 different nausea medicines, spent 3 nights in the hospital on different occasions for fluids from dehydration, and felt horrible the entire 9 months. Plus, I had a almost 2 year old running around the whole time!

My due date with Miss Emma was today, August 2nd. She was a large baby at first ultrasound so the timeline kind of got a little mixed up, from the date I thought conception would have taken place to to her due date due to her size. I had a rough pregnancy but every ultrasound and test of miss Emma they did, she was thriving. She was able to get everything she needed from me.

As I said, my Due date was August 2nd. I went in on the 2nd and the doctor checked me and did an ultrasound. Emma was still in good shape, had plenty of fluid, and didn't seem to be ready to make her entrance yet. I was dilating a little and by my due date check I was already 3cm dilated. The midwife that I met with that day did a little procedures to kind of get the ball moving. It didn't work. I was to call back in 5 days if I din't go into labor, but she didn't think we would go that long. She thought she would see us at the hospital within the next few hours. She was wrong, really wrong! 5 days later, I was still pregnant and had another appointment to meet with the doctor. I went in and they also said they couldn't believe I was still not in labor, but thought it would be that night for sure. They were still wrong! They had me go ahead and schedule a apointment for an induction the morning of August 9th... 7 days overdue! We went home got all of our bags packed and just waited. We were ready to be at the hospital early morning on the 9th. We had dropped Miller off with his grandparents, gave him lots of kisses, and explained to him that mommie's baby would be here the next time he saw Mommie & Daddy.

Well, in typical Em fashion, she must do everything her way. About the time we pulled out of my Inlaws from dropping off Miller I felt a little "cramp" And deep inside I knew, this was it. I was scheduled for an induction in the early morning but she was going to come in her own way. I had made the decision earlier that I was going to "labor" at home for a while. I thought I would know when it was time to go to the hospital and I wasn't going to have the doctor send me to the hospital just to send me back home because I wasn't ready again. We went home to get ready for bed, and it was obvious Emma wasn't waiting. I took a quick shower and almost couldn't get my hair dried before doubling over in pain. This labor was happening a lot faster that the first. We got packed and called into the hospital to let them know we were on our way.

By the time I got to the hospital, I was in serious pain. I was hurting and couldn't even time the contractions, they were coming so fast. We pulled up, I walked into the delivery room and the nurse gave me a gown to change into and my water broke as soon as we walked into my room. This baby was coming, and fast! I got laid down, IV's in and the nurse checked me... I was 8cm dilated. She called immediately for the doctor and I immediately asked for pain meds. I had the Strep B Virus with Emma and knew ahead of time that I would need to be treated with an antibiotic before delivering my baby girl. I was so dehydrated that before I could be given the epidural or the antibiotics I had to be given 2 entire bags of fluid. I was in serious pain, my contractions were continuous by this point, with almost no relief. It felt like forever for both those bags of IV fluid to drain down. Finally they were in and I cold get my epidural. The epidural took and finally after 4 hours of constant pain, I had some relief. I was so exhausted from fighting the pain that they wanted me to rest if I could. I was already dilated to 10cm and ready to push around 1am. However, I still had to have my antibiotic and I was feeling just fine with my epidural, and Miss Emma was sitting pretty, no stress on her at all. My doctor checked me right after getting the epidural and told all nurses not to touch or check me again until the antibiotic was in, because she was afraid Miss Em would make her grand appearance when no one was ready! She had me "labor down" and wait until the antibiotic was in and then we were ready to push. I started pushing at 5:30am on the dot. They had all the nurses ready and it was time! Dr. T got in position at 5:30 and Em was here with the first push... One hard push and she was here! The nurse didn't even have time to lay out a blanket, she was laid on my chest and we were all in shock. My precious baby girl was here! It was August 9th, at 5:34am. Emma was so precious and so beautiful. She was smaller than Miller and weighed in at just 7lb12oz and 21 inches long.

The nurse took my sweet girl to clean her off, get her scores, and weight checks. She also had a tough time keeping up her body heat on her own so she had to stay under the heat lamps for a few extra hours.

Because it was so early in the morning and we had been up all night long, everyone went home to take showers and get naps. Wes & I layed there looking at our precious baby girl and were so happy that she had joined our family. Later that afternoon Big Brother Miller finally came up for a visit. We had missed him so much, but he was not very thrilled to meet his new sister. From day one Miller was not very interested in Miss Emma, well that's not really changed!



Luckly because Miss Emma was doing so well and I was also recovering well, we were able to come home the very next day! We left the hospital on Aug, 10th which was also Miller's 2nd birthday. We welcomed home a new baby girl and celebrated a newly turned 2 year old on the same day!

Emma is such a sweet girl and we are so blessed to have her as our daughter, I couldn't be more proud to be a mom!