Year In Review

On April 2, 2012, this sweet little boy turned ONE!! It seems like just yesterday, until I start to think about all that we've done this past year and we have been BUSY!! I LOVE this little boy soooo much!! He has been such a blessing to our family!! He is a GOOD baby and I couldn't have asked for anything better!! Since I'm really bad at marking down dates for the milestones, I thought I would give a summary of his first year and what has been accomplished. On April 2, 2011 this little guy joined our family.

Since then we have been on several trips. We had several family members visit when he was born and we went to the beach, aquariums, LA Temple, Dodger game, etc. He had his 1st Easter when he was only just a couple weeks old. He was blessed by his Great Grandpa Reid Smith the first Sunday in May. He joined mommy and grandma on their annual mother's day trip to Camarillo. At about 2 months old, Brock started sleeping through the night, which made mommy VERY happy! In June he went to Universal Studios with Mommy, Daddy & Emma (Michael was in Washington visiting Grandma Killmer). We also went to Santa Monica with cousin Megan and her friend Amber and had fun on the pier and beach. In July he learned to roll over all by himself. In August, we packed up for a really long road trip to Idaho Falls for our first stop to visit Great Grandma and Grandpa Smith's condo where we went to the zoo, had yummy ice cream and visited the falls. After our Idaho visit, we drove through Yellowstone, saw Old Faithful, and headed on to the Big Horn Mountain in Wyoming where we spent the week with Grandma & Grandpa Killmer and Aunt Mary. We had a great time visiting, playing games and LOTS of fishing. He enjoyed it, until the last day of riding in the car. By then he was READY to get out of his carseat! Brock started eating rice cereal at 4 months old, but had a hard time adjusting to the texture. He would ONLY eat it if it was mixed with breast milk. By this point, Brock's doctor started noticing that he wasn't gaining much weight and was concerned that he was spitting up constantly. Mommy told the doctor that she was the same way when she was a baby and Emma had stayed small as well, so the doctor agreed to trying medications and various things to add calories to his diet. He started on fruits and vegtables at 5 months in hopes that he would start gaining weight. But, after those things failed, we decided to see a GI specialist at the Children's Hospital in Madera. Brock had a follow-up fwith the regular pediatrician in October to see if he would definately need to see the specialist or not, they determined that he would and also found a hernia in his scrotum. Brock had had liquid in his scrotum since he was born and the doctor would always check it to make sure that it wasn't hard. But this time it was, which meant surgery! Brock also started army crawling in October. He didn't get up on his knees for the longest time, only crawling on his tummy! Now that he was mobile, he CONSTANTLY was crawling through the house trying to find mommy! And he was successful most of the time! We scheduled an appointment for the GI clinic in November and by the time we went, mommy's milk had started to dry up. At the appointment, the doctor put Brock on the formula Nutramegen (which was SUPER expensive!) Thankfully, the clinic would give us free samples whenever we were there! :o) A couple of weeks after that we went to see the surgeon about his hernia and what he thought. The surgeon determined that he definatly had something on the right side, but wasn't sure about the left. We decided that we would go ahead and make an incision on both sides to be sure we got everything. His surgery was scheduled for Tuesday, December 13th, and he was supposed to be the first baby, which meant that we had to be there at 6:30 am, which meant we had to leave at 3:00 am! Mommy didn't get a lot of sleep that night...They had to do several small evaluations to make sure he was ready for surgery and by about 8:00 am the nurse came and took him back while mommy and daddy waited in the waiting room. The doctor came in about 9:45 am and said that everything was great! We were out of there by 12:30 pm and ready to head home. Brock recovered fantastic from his surgery and has 2 little incisions just below his hips. Brock also celebrated his first Christmas with lots of family and was spoiled! Just after Christmas, Brock started waving by opening and closing his hand. We also went to Knott's "Merry" Farm with Grandma & Grandpa Pitts, Uncle Ry Ry, Aunt Amanda & cousins, and our family for our Christmas present. In January, Brock finally started crawling on his knees! We also went on another road trip up to the Tri-Cities Washington to welcome home cousin Chris who had been serving in the Sao Paulo, Brazil mission for the last 2 years! While there, Brock cut his 2 bottom teeth and he discovered how much he loves ice cream! He also started getting pretty good at pulling himself up and walking along furniture, but wouldn't let go. In February, Brock discovered his love of sports balls (just like his brother!) and even started "playing" basketball with the Little Tikes basketball hoop! By March, Brock discovered a love for "walking" only on his knees! As of now, he still pretty much refuses to walk on his feet for very long and prefers to walk on his knees everywhere! On March 30th we celebrated his FIRST birthday with a monkey theme! A fun time was had by all! (More pictures to follow!) We feel SO blessed that Heavenly Father has placed this little guy in our home! He is so fun to be with and I just love him to pieces!! I look forward to many more birthdays to come!