MARCH

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!!

Braxton and Mimi in their St.Patty's Day shirts!!

Braxton's first time to the zoo!

B and Aunt Kira! This was her first time meeting him ever! He loves his Aunt Kira now!

Braxton and Daddy at the Aquarium. He LOVED it! (way more than the zoo, too!)

Mommy and B up inside the aquarium.

With Kira and her kids visiting we decided to do a photo shoot at the park so we could get some pictures of all of them

The Twins- Sadie & Grace

Caleb & Emilee

Braxton climbed on a rock - JK MeeMa is hiding behind it holding him up!

Kira and her kids!

All the cousins!!!

FEBRUARY

Braxton in his Valentine's Day shirt!

Braxton and his cousins, Madisen, Andrew and Emalie. They had fun at Mimi's house while Jesse and I went on a double date with Marshall and Aimee to Ruffino's. Yummy!

This was the first day Braxton got his glasses. He wanted to be just like his Daddy! Isn't he just so cute with them on? Well, I think he is! So many people ask us how they knew he needed glasses so this is what happened. Braxton's neurosurgeon wanted us to take hiim to the eye dr so they could look at the nerve in the back of the eye. If the pressure and fluid were bad enough it would be visible. When I took him the dr examined him and looked me and said, "Well I have some good news and bad news." He said, "Good news is I don't see anything wrong with the nerve, (which means the pressure and fluid werent bad enough to be seen. Which made it less likely that he would have hydrocephalus) Bad news is he is near-sides in one eye and far-sided in the other." Which meant, he had to get glasses...before he was even one! He does pretty good with his glasses..he usually doesn't mess with them or take them off. He only seems to do that when he's sitting in his highchair or if you adjust them. I think then he remembers they are there. I wouldn't have never guessed he needed glasses he didn't act like he couldn't see. Although, we know now that his head tilt (that you can see above in the pictures) went away as soon as he got his glasses. They think he was tilting his head to help him see. I'm so glad we did months and months of physical therapy to try and get rid of that tilt and all he needed was glasses!

(Most of) Our New House!!!

Our house in Cortina

The kitchen..still wanting to stain the cabinets, add new hardware and decorate more!


Hallway

My little buffet table

Kitchen Table

Family Room.. still needs window treatments

Close up of couch

End table and my fav lamp EVER (can you believe I got it at TJ Max Home Goods)

Entertainment niche - Jesse built all the shelves!

Stairwell- still need to hang pictures up the wall

Powder room/downstairs guest bathroom

Here's a better picture of the colors

Hallway between bathroom and guest room

Guest bedroom downstairs

Another view of the guest bedroom

Dining room- still waiting on window treatments and seat cushions for the chairs!

Our new living room furiniture

Another view- still need to hang our pictures and add the finishing touches

Obviously need a frame for our beautiful Mark Mabry photograph...and decor for the table

Braxton's room

His crib and bedding... I am still in LOVE with all of it

Close up of the bedding! Thanks Barbara for making such cute bedding!

Changing table and hutch

My favorite little sign I got for his room for Jesse

The kids bathroom upstairs... still need to decorate it more

Jesse's "Cardinals" office. He painted it all by himself! Still need to finish hanging everything on the walls.

Our backyard... the dogs LOVE having room to run around and we can wait to add a playset

Our fav part of the house... THE POOL! (don't mind how dirty it looks right now) We can't wait to spend time out there in the summers and have pool parties!


More pictures to come soon....since there are still 3 rooms not pictured. The master bedroom, the upstairs guest bedroom and the playroom downstairs. The 2 bedrooms were dirty and the playroom isn't even decorated yet!(it was last on my to do list!) So once I pick up and get the playroom finish I will post pictures! We love our new house and can't wait to have everyone over to enjoy it with us!!!!

What Can I Say, I'm a Slacker!

So to state the obvious... it's been a while since we last wrote a post. Our lives have been CRAZY busy over the past couple months. So I will do my best to catch you up on our lives lately.

October- definitely had its ups and downs. We moved into our new house(which use to be Matt & Beth's 1st house) out in Queen Creek. It is 2 stories with 5 bedrooms + playroom and 3 bathrooms. Our favorite part is the backyard(and the dogs like it too!) It has pool, which we can't wait to use in the summer, and a nice sized grass area for the kids to play. It is just big enough to put a swing set, eventually! We look forward to having family and friends over to enjoy this new house and backyard with us!!! Jesse has done an amazing job painting, fixing and organizing everything in the house and garage! I didn't know I married such a handy man until we lived in this house. He built the shelves for our family room. He also painted stripes in his "Cardinals" office and put up crown molding. It looks AWESOME! We will post pictures soon (which means as soon as the house is clean! lol) Towards the end of October, we got the sad news that Jesse's Granny had passed away. Granny was someone who was very special to Jesse. I remember him talking about her often before we were even married. She was such an amazing person. I was blessed to have known her the couple years that I did. We only wished that she could have met Braxton. We were lucky to be able to travel to Utah for her funeral. It seemed like a family reunion SOOOO many Ruckers were there. It was nice to be able to see all of them again and meet some of them I never have before! Despite the circumstances, I know Jesse had a great time being around all this family. We even got to see Kira!!! Even though it was nice to see everyone I couldn't help but be sad that we were missing Braxton's first Halloween. My parents took him to their ward's Trunk or Treat so he could go around and get candy!! Here are some pics of him in his Halloween costume. He was a skull, of course.

Braxton in his Halloween shirt

In his Halloween Costume

At Trunk or Treat with Mimi & Papa

Mimi pretending to feed him chocolate (I about died when they sent this pic)


November- was filled with lots of out of town guests and lots of runny noses!!! Braxton got sick for the very first time this month. It was so sad to hear him cry. He had basically lost his voice and you could tell that he didn't feel well. He had laryngitis, then Bronchitis and 2 ear infections. So 2 antibiotics, a million breathing treatments and a month later he finally seemed to get better. Of course while Braxton was sick, Jesse and I both got sick too. Man, it was one rough month for all of us! Despite us all being sick, we did have a pretty good month. Our good friends Tiffany and Jared came to visit and stayed with us for 10 whole days! It was so fun getting to catch up with them and see Brighton. (She's a month older than Braxton) And we found out they are expecting #2! We are soo excited for them and can't wait to meet the new baby! Matt and Beth and the boys came out to visit for Thanksgiving as well. It was so fun to have the whole family together again. This year we had Thanksgiving with my family (Yes, it has finally reached the point where we have to alternate families on holidays)I was so excited that it was Braxton's first Thanksgiving and what did he do, he slept through the whole meal (and so did Jesse!) I did let him try some real sweet potatoes. He loved them... probably cuz they are full of sugar! So while the whole family was in town, Madisen had her baptism. It was so special because Maddie is such a special girl. She is so smart and already knows so much about the church. She is going to be a great missionary. I just can't believe how grown up she is.







December-was filled with holiday cheer and multiple hospital trips. Come on, what would the holidays be with out trips to the ER and yes, they were all for me. So needless to say, we have had better months at our house. We did have some fun though. Jesse decorated the outside with lights and I put up the tree and stockings! Christmas day rolled around and we couldn't have been more excited for Braxton's first Christmas. We tried to have him open one of his presents but he just liked the paper. Go figure! We spent the morning with my family and the afternoon with Jesse's. We LOVE that we are able to spend Christmas at both sides of the family every year! It makes it so much more special. Braxton was definitely spoiled by EVERYONE! He got tons of toys and clothes! He had already gotten his big presents months early, a highchair and his new carseat. He got WAY too big for his infant one. Next came my birthday. I'm 26.. man, am I old. I spend the day in bed with my headache I'd had forever. But at least I wasnt in the hospital like I was Christmas night. (and would soon be the next day, and then 2 days after that)Jesse took me out to dinner at Brio. Yum! and my parents watched Braxton ALL night! So we rented a movie and got to sleep uninterrupted. yay! New Years rolled around and we spent it at home with Jake and Madi. It's so sad... the only one who didn't fall asleep before midnight was Jesse. But he woke us up in time for the countdown!





January
Not much has happened this month. So I will just end this post with Braxton's newest stats. He is now 10 months old. He weighs 24 lbs. He is 30 in tall. I can't believe how grown up he is! He definitely already has a personality. He is happy ALL of the time and he lights up the room with that smile of is! Jesse is constantly trying to get him to say "Da-Da" But so far he sticks to "dadadadadada" He is "talking" all the time, which I love. He even sings in the car with me! We are working with him in physical therapy on crawling and standing (and of course the main reason we are there... working on getting his head straight instead of tilted) This big boy NEVER stops eating. He eats all day long, I swear! He is eating more and more different foods each day and we are gradually working towards more and more "people food" He really is such a good little boy! We love him SO much!

Catching Up With The Ruckers

Well it has been a while since I have taken the time to write on the blog. Things have just been a little crazy. I don't even know where to begin. So we have invaded my parents house. We have been living here for the past 6 or 7 weeks now. (I know my parents are probably SO ready to get rid of us) But don't worry that will happen soon. We are in the middle of moving into our new house and we decided it would just be easier to stay here during the move. Last Saturday, all the Rucker family and Josh came over to help us paint the new house. It turned out great! All the rooms are done, except the upstairs bathroom. I know I will end up painting some more later on, but for those 2 rooms (Jesse's office and the play room) we haven't decided what we want to do exactly. Jesse has turned into SUPER husband and started moving all the furniture over and get everything set up. He isn't letting me do anything because of my back. We don't want to make it worse. We are hoping to have everything moved by the end of the week and then thats when I will come to help put everything where its suppose to go. Jesse knows better than to decorate without me. hehe! I'm VERY picky. I can't wait until everything is all set up and we are completely moved in! The house is so nice. The dogs LOVE their new backyard and Jesse loves the pool!

As for other news, the epidural I talked about in the last post seemed to help somewhat for my endometriosis pain. Its been alot better this month. But my back had seriously started hurting so bad. I had never been in so much pain in my life. My back hurt my whole pregnancy and they thought he was sitting on my sciatic nerve. We all thought it would go away when I had him but it didn't and it continued to get worse. The pain specialist did an MRI on my back and pelvis. They found that I still had endometriosis. Which means when I had my surgery a month ago. My doctor must not have gotten all of it or it grew back very quickly. So that sucks. They also found that I have 2 bulged discs in my lower back. My L4 and L5. The plan for that, is 1 epidural tomorrow, 1 next Tuesday (to numb and help with the pain) and then they will begin doing decompressions to try and get those discs back into the right place and not as bulged. So I have my first one tomorrow, I am REALLY hoping that it helps. My back kills all the time and I can't stand for a long period of time. I am not suppose to lift anything at all which doesn't work out to well when you have a kid...especially a chunker of kid. So I guess we will see tomorrow if I get any relief. Lets hope this works.

As for Braxton, he is now a little over 6 MONTHS OLD. I can't believe that he's 1/2 a year old. Man, does time fly.
His current stats:
Weight: 18 Lbs. 3 Oz.
Length: 26.5 In.
Head Size: 47.5 cm.
So Braxton sleeps ALL the time. I mean I swear he is barely awake. He will only stay up for maybe 1 1/2 hours and then he will go back to sleep. Its kinda hard to get him on a schedule when all he does is sleep. But even though he sleeps all day... he still sleeps through the whole night.(Now remember, even though he's the size of a regular 6 month old... he still does things by his corrected age which is 3 1/2 months old) He can now hold his head up by himself and he is loving tummy time more and more. He rolled over for the first time August 30th. He "talks" all the time and loves to laugh. He has 2 different laughs. His real laugh and a fake cough like laugh. Its so funny. He smiles all the time especially for GiGi (My Gram) Every time she comes into the house he just laughs and smiles and talks to her. He could be in the middle of screaming and he would stop just for her. He loves his Grandma GiGi. He has begun drooling... all the time, ALOT! So now he has to wear bibs constantly. I don't think he is getting teeth just yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if it happened soon. Overall, Braxton is such a good baby. He gets cuter and cuter by the day! Andrew (my 6 yr old nephew) was over one day and he goes "Why is Braxton so cute?" and I said, "What do you mean?" and he goes "Why is Braxton so cute? He is so much cuter than all the other babies." Is that not the cutest thing ever??? I think he is starting to look a little different, maybe a little more like me! Yay! Some of Braxton's favorite things to do right now are: laugh, talk and smile at his "ceiling friends", chew on EVERYTHING, play with toys, watch TV (he LOVES tv...wonder who he gets that from), kick magazines and rip out the pages, tummy time, rolling over, taking baths, laying on his changing table and his new thing... sucking his thumb (yeah, not too happy about that one)
Braxton sleeps with his eyes open. Its kinda creepy actually, they're not even rolled back into his head so if you looked at him you would think he's awake. When he does wake up, he wakes up immediately and his eyes get so wide open he looks like a deer in the headlights. He is such a morning person. He never cries when he wakes up, around 6 I will just hear him moving in his bed and I look over and his eyes are wide open and he will give you a BIG smile! I'm kinda glad he's like that. It makes him too cute to get mad that you are being awakened early :-)

New Car...well actually, cars!!!!

So we caved in and decided to get a new car for me even though we had just bought one a year ago. Last year, we decided to get a small SUV because we knew we would be having kids soon (little did we know I would get pregnant the next month) We loved having the Equinox. It was the perfect size for me and everything, only problem it didn't have rear air. But the air was awesome you could feel it all the way in the trunk. But when we got Braxton home we quickly realized not only is his carseat rear facing but it sits up high and completely blocks the air from going back there. The poor kid would sweat every time we had to go somewhere in the heat here. So I didn't even go to look at the cars but Jesse came home with the one I really wanted, a new white Chevy Traverse. I love it! I'm still getting use to it because its a little bigger than my old car. but its perfect. It has 2 rows so we can fit our 6 kids in there. HAHA JUST KIDDING ( Jesse will kill me when he reads that) But there will be more room for the kids. Jesse (the haggler that he is) convinced them to give us a 2011 for the same price as a 2010, throw in an extended warranty for free and give us the auto start for free, which is your best friend if you live in Arizona.



Then a couple days later Jesse started considering trading in his truck for something else. Because he drives so far to work (basically to the airport everyday) and he will be driving even further once we move to Queen Creek next month, he thought why not get something with better gas mileage. So he began looking at cars, he first came home with a Chevy Malibu, which we both liked but it wasn't so roomy for the tall and bigger guys. So I said, why don't you get a Hyundai Sonata like Matt (my older brother) did. He's 6'8 and a big guy, so if he can fit in it and still have room then its a nice sized car. Only problem, Dave works at the Chapman Chevy dealership...We didn't think we would be able to get one, but then Jesse found out Chapman has a Hyundai dealership too. So Jesse traded in his truck and got a 2011 black Hyundai Sonata. Its a 4 door car with a HUGE trunk. He convinced them to basically throw in the navigation for super cheap. I told him he could keep his truck, I know how much he loved having a truck, but he says he wanted to to this and he wanted me to have the car I really wanted. Don't I have the best husband ever!



So yes, we both got new cars but actually our payments are going to be about the same as they were before if not cheaper, our insurance will go down and we will save SO MUCH money on gas. So much has been going on with us, but its mainly all good. New cars, we will be moving into our new house next month, Jesse's job is going great, I finally started going back to work more and plan to work my original schedule, I have started selling really cute hats that I order from this company in LA. I am still in the process of starting by custom baby accessory business. I can't wait to start doing that. For once, it seems like everything is going good for us, for once (knock on wood) Everything except my health. Ugh. That surgery I had 3 weeks ago did NOTHING. I am still in so much pain. I finally went to see a pain management doctor, who put me on some different medications to try and she is going to do a nerve block (kinda like an epidural but they don't go in as far)She said it will hopefully help with my back pain and she said with a lot of people it also helps with endometriosis pain and intersticial cystitis pain. This is basically my last option and I am PRAYING that it works. I have this procedure done this coming Thursday and I guess the put you under with the twilight sleep which isn't as strong as general anesthesia. So thats about it for us. Braxton is doing AWESOME! He's getting bigger and cuter by the day. I will write my blog post about him next!!!