All that mamadada mumbo jumbo

Bradley's already 8 and a half months old! He's sitting has teeth is crawling and says lots of 'mamama, dadada, umumum'. It is so cute to listen to! He is trying so hard to communicate to us. He started sitting up on his own when we were in Hawaii in the middle of June, then quickly transitioned to being able to move between sitting and rolling around so at almost 8 months to the day he started Crawling! I have baby proofed the house and he still is teaching me what to keep baby-proofing.

Bradley loved baths. He splashes and plays with his bath toys and just laughs a lot while he's in the bath. 

Riding the carts all by himself! So grown up... 

Rodeo! July 23rd. Aren't by boys the cutest?

He takes his cups very seriously. Look how much hair
he has! It feels like all the sudden he woke up with
a full head of hair.

Cutest little clothes. Thanks Elisa and Whitney!

Take me out to a ball-game! 

Take me out to a show! Taylor Swift with Mitch and his parents!
She was actually pretty awesome.

More proof we were there! 

                                       

We just love this boy. Our daily lives are pretty normal for new parents. We both go to work in the morning around 7 a.m. and I only work part time teaching gym until 11. Bradley goes to the daycare at the high school near me, so I pick him up on my way back. The schedule is great for us right now and Bradley is learning how to be okay without mom or dad nearby. After work we all eat lunch together (Mitch works close enough that he can come home sometimes for lunch!) and then Bradley and I find fun things to do to until daddy gets home. Dinner and more fun games/toys and he goes to bed around 8. We then proceed to watch netflix and talk until we are too tired and the days start all over again. 

We like our ward and our friends up here and are happy to call it home for a little while. We're in the process of looking for a more permanent solution in Davis County so if you find a good place let us know! We have to be out of our apartment in April so we've got a little time but we are getting anxious to settle into our own home. 

BRADLEY!

I've put an alarm on my phone to blog every week! We'll see what that does. This is serving as my journal and I haven't even blogged about our son Bradley yet! So that needs to happen, and will right now!

Pregnancy: We found out we were pregnant on a Sunday in April (the 27th to be exact). We were so excited to be pregnant and also I was shocked. It didn't seem like it was real. I showed Mitch the pregnancy test and he thought it was a joke because I didn't tell him I had taken one. He just came into the bathroom when I called for him and Surprise! Baby on the way! After the shock wore off for both of us we were so happy it made me feel a lot better about it all! I figured I was pregnant when all of the foods I normally liked tasted gross to me and I had next to no energy for anything. Plus, I would cry over so many things! I got really nauseated and just felt gross that first trimester, but second trimester I felt back to normal which was a blessing for me.

We went on a cruise with the Gill's in June 2014.
I was just barely 8 weeks pregnant in this photo.
 Kind of sick to my stomach the whole time but it was really a fun trip! 

We got to go on a "baby moon" in October 2014 before Bradley came.
We went up to Stein Eriksen Lodge and had a beautiful 3 day weekend up there.
It was so fun to pretend to belong and to just relax. We needed it!! 

I am 9 months prego in this photo.
 I was so ready to be done when I was done!  Being pregnant was amazing and I can't believe I grew a baby inside of me and got to feel him growing and hear his heartbeat. Those doctors appointments were my favorite things because we would know that he was alright and growing. Towards 35 or so weeks though I was so uncomfortable. He dropped into the ole pelvis and I was waddling and using the restroom all day long!! 

Birth Story:

Welcome to the world Bradley Clayton Gill. He was born on January 5th, 2015 at 1:01 a.m. He weighed 8 lbs. 4 oz and was 21 inches long. Getting him here was quite the adventure for Mitch and I! 

On the 4th I had a lot of back labor pains from about 2 a.m. until 8 a.m. I didn't sleep hardly at all because I had contractions coming every 8 minutes or so. Around 5:30 a.m. I started counting the time in-between contractions and it was about every 4 minutes, so Mitch and I decided to go to the hospital and see if we could be admitted. I called my mom on the way down there and Mitch called his. Mom told me that if I just made sure to breath it would all be easier. That advice, though simple and I knew that she was right, was so hard!! The contractions hurt so much, it was easier to just not breath during it. I did try to make sure to take deep breaths and Mitch helped me a ton to do the same and the car ride to the hospital was more comfortable than I had been all night. 

When I got checked by the nurse, she said that I had not dilated at all from my previous number at my last doctors appointment so I couldn't be admitted. I was beyond bummed! We had geared up so much to be able to have our baby that day sometime and so I cried a lot on the car-ride back. Mitch was such a kind and supportive husband to me the whole time though. He was definitely my strength!!! We went back home and watched a lot of friends while I continued to have contractions about every 8 minutes again from 10-2 p.m. they slowed down in intensity so I was thinking we would be waiting another few days. My doctor wasn't in town until Monday morning anyways, so waiting till the next day was fine by me for that reason and that reason alone. Around 3:30 I woke up from a nap in so much pain! The contractions had come back and strong. We went on a walk around 5:30 to try to help speed the contractions up a bit and it worked! by 7ish I was having them every 3-4 minutes and they hurt sooo much! Mitch convinced me, after I had a nervous break-down about not being admitted again, to get in the car and try again. 

The second time coming into the hospital, when I was checked I had dialated 2 and 1/2 centimeters! Wahoo. I was at a 3 1/2 so they admitted me. I was so relieved and excited! We got the best nurse ever that night. She was calm and kind and very understanding, way better than the one from the morning. My doctor (Lister) was out so I ended up having doctor Jerico. I loved her! She was so informative but not pushy. It was like being an obgyn was her hobby. My kind of doctor. I started on piton around 11:00 p.m. to speed the labor pains along, and then promptly decided to get an epidural. Those contractions hurt and I saw no reason in waiting longer for the epidural. I had dilated to a 4, but my water hadn't broken yet so Dr. Jerico came in to break it. As she was checking me, she felt something off about where the water should be, so she decided to have me get an ultrasound. Sure enough, Bradley's dumb was where his head was supposed to be! In all my checks over the week and day the nurses etc. had all said he was head down, so they thought that somewhere between me being admitted and getting the epidural, Bradley had flipped. I felt a strong movement right when I got the pitoson, but it didn't hurt like they told me it should have, so we are not sure what happened! So around 12:00 this happened. Dr. Jerico looks at Mitch and I and tells us that the recommended thing to do was to get an emergency c-section. She said we could try to flip Bradley back around, but there were risks involved with the umbilical chord and other things that we just didn't want to do and they didn't recommend doing anyways. So surprise! What I had expected to take all night with laboring happened suddenly, this baby was coming now! 

The whole experience of having a C-Section is a little blurry to me. I got a huge dose of the epidural from the anesthesiologist that made it so I was numb from my toes up to my chest. Because of how quickly you get this medication for a c-section, I started shaking uncontrollably. They put me in a different gown and made sure my stomach was ready to get cut into. Mitch got a yellow poncho type outfit to put on and we were off to the operating room! While on the operating table, I kept on telling Mitch, I am shaking so much. Is everything okay? How's my heart-rate etc. etc. Poor guy was freaking out inside but he kept it together so well and made me feel confident and calm about what was going on. I couldn't feel anything but pressure on the area, but apparently with a c-section they just pull and tear and cut for about 20 minutes until they safely make their way to the baby. They have a heart-rate monitor on the baby so they can make sure he's not under stress while this is happening. Dr. Jerico said "This little guy has no idea what is about to happen. He's just enjoying his cozy home and then, surprise! He gets pulled out and is supposed to breath etc. without moms help". Around this time I started having trouble breathing, and asked Mitch to check with the Anesthesiologist to make sure that all my vitals looked good still and that it was normal to feel like I couldn't breath. He said it was just an effect of the epidural. But when I asked Mitch apparently he was more scared than he had ever been. He felt like he might lose his wife and his baby in the same night! 

Bradley came at 1:01 a.m. and was blue and purple and big! They lifted him above the curtain I was covered with for a second so I could see him. He wasn't crying or anything, so they started doing all they could to get him to breathe. They took him to a separate room from me and put him on breathing treatments. His apgar scores were good besides his oxygen. He started breathing with the support of oxygen and I finally heard his cry! So cute and not shrill, the perfect baby. The nurses came in to tell me things that were happening with Bradley and Mitch was going between my room and Bradley's giving me the details too and holding my hand through it all. The whole experience took about an hour and all the sudden we were parents! 

I was wheeled into a recovery room and Bradley was taken to the small NICU/Nursery place in the hospital where he could be monitored by nurses and stay on his oxygen. I was really sore and tired, and I guess Bradley was too! Look at these little breech legs. 

First photo of him ever! So handsome and Big!

Our first meeting. around 3:30 a.m. after my drugs
had warn off a little and his breathing was stable.

around 7:00 a.m. I got to really hold him and feed
him and it was incredible. He looked up at me like
he knew I was his mommy. I'm so glad Mitch captured
this moment. 

Mitch's first time holding Bradley. What a proud papa.
Bradley has been a daddy's boy ever since. 

0-3 months:

Oh, the first few months! What a whirlwind of emotions, experiences and joys! We were in the hospital for 3 days because of the c-section. We got to go home Wednesday night. We had lots of visitors in the hospital including all our family members (except kyle/ashley b/c they live in CA and Chris/Jacee came Wednesday night to our house). My mom had a Chemo treatment the day Bradley was born so she came down when she finished that even though she wasn't feeling well which meant the world to me. Mitch's mom came every day to visit her new grandson and help me figure out how to breastfeed and not stress too much about c-section stuff. She had one with Mitch and is the only person in my family who had so it was nice to talk to her since she had been through it all before. We had some really great nurses, and loved our experience at McKay-Dee hospital in Ogden.

The first week was AMAZING and HARD. That first night alone in our home with a new baby was so awesome and overwhelming. The responsibility to take care of this new little life with no professional help! We really thought that we were done being in the hospital, but when Mitch's parents left that night, we were just surprised at the weight of the responsibility and overjoyed with the reality that he was ours. We enjoyed having our baby in his home and giving him a bath and into his jammies for the night. And then he wouldn't go to bed! How crazy right? He had his days and nights mixed up for about a week so Mitch and I shared the staying up with the baby duties and learned a lot of patience with being new parents. Bradley only took a little while to adjust to the day vs. the night and by two weeks old he was waking up pretty regularly in 4 hour intervals. He got used to nursing pretty quickly too. Though it was painful and frustrating, we learned how to do it together and Bradley is still a great nurser to this day. Mitch and him have just grown to be the best of buddies. He took to being a Dad so naturally and it has brought me more joy than I could ever have imagined to see them together.

Here are some first weeks of life photos including some of my favorites from a beautiful photo session of Bradley when he was just 10 days old.

Bradley and mama. I love that he is looking up at me.

So small he fit in a kitchen bowl!
 

Bradley with his nana. This is at 3 days old! We got to go to my mom instead of her coming to us because of the chemo treatments. My mom still jokes about how Bradley and her have the same amount of hair ha.

I took this photo the Sunday before I went back to work. I got 6 weeks maternity leave. He was smiley even then!

First day of Church! March 2015

First ever cougar bball game. Many more to come I am sure.

He's just so cute! And independent. He sat and held up his head so soon in life! 

Blessing Day! March 8th, 2015 

The family on Blessing day! Mitch did so well!                              

 

Look at those cute big eyes!! 

Grandma Ballard and Bradley share the same birthday. I think they even look alike. These photos are precious to me. 

We took a photo like this of us as roommates when we were all single, and now we all have children! I am so grateful for these three ladies so much. (Hannah & Ella, Kelly & Maggie, Whitney & Macklin)

3- 5 1/2 months: Bradley is moving toys from one hand to the other, focusing on us, eating baby food, and smiling back at you! That first purposeful smile was my favorite thing! He still smiles at us all the time and I melt. Look how cute my boys are!!!

  

Bradley loves the water. We got him this crab in preparation
for a big trip to Hawaii. We swam a lot this summer and he
hardly ever got burned... 

Uncle Scott's farewell. He left on May 5th, 2015. This is our best family photo so far. I love how handsome we all look dressed up for Scotts big event. We miss him! He's in the Independence MO mission. (Whitney lives in his mission!)

5 and a 1/2 - now: 

We got to go to Hawaii in the middle of June this year with Mitch's family. It was so beautiful there! We went down to Kauai for the first time and the scenery was unreal. It was pretty rainy there but that added to the beauty of being there truly. We had the best view from our window. Bradley did so well on the plane rides. I read up a ton and stressed a ton about traveling with a little one, but now that we've done it I think I stressed too much ha. We didn't sleep well, but I don't blame him with the dramatic time change and probably uncomfortable pack-n-play but other than that he was a dream baby as he's always been. We ate delicious food, adventured and played outside a lot. It was wonderful!

"The Dolphin" restaurant was Mitch's favorite
food of his whole life. It was so pretty and yummy.

Helicoptor ride! I had a panic attack but Bradley did amazingly well and fell asleep pretty soon into the journey so I took comfort in that and calmed down and enjoyed the experience (though my face here says something totally different than that ha. This was at the beginning, it got better!)

Bradley and Daddy on the beach in Hawaii. Both my babies burn so easy... They hung out in the shade most the time!

"Look Mom! No hands!" 

If you know much about our family it is that in the summers, we boat. We were so nervous about it this year with having a baby and that Bradley would hate it. He actually likes it aside from the uncomfortable life jacket! He would get lulled to sleep on the boat if we got him into just the right position... 

Boating is so fun. I'd say that is our favorite activity to do as a family. Mitch and I both love being pulled behind the boat and wake boarding but we also enjoy just relaxing in the sunshine. We live up in Kaysville/Fruit Heights now so it is a 50 min. drive to Jordanelle and a 1 hr 10 min. drive to the Gill's house, so we didn't get to go as much this year as years previous, but it was definitely still fun to use the boat and enjoy it with a baby. Mitch almost landed a 360 this year and I finally am comfortable going in and out of the wake on both sides (Only took me 6-7 years, right Brandi!?!)

It was a great first 6 months! We love being parents and love our Little Guy so much. He has a fun, strong and loving personality. We have been very blessed!

Rededication

With the uptake in friends using Instagram to update me on their lives, and myself using the same means to learn about others, I have all but forgotten about this blog. However, in the last month or so I have decided that my life is better without looking a few times a day at social media sites. I have decided to get back into blogging. I think with the future I have ahead of me, this will be a great tool for me to keep a journal, and to have a place to upload photos etc. to mostly just myself. I am hoping that one day I can print off the blog and call it my journal. 

This is for you Whitney...

I've always been horrible at journaling, and with a baby on the way, I am re-considering the important things. I want this little guy to be able to know what went on in the daily/weekly/monthly etc. life of his parents. So, I rededicate myself today, to be better about journaling, and spend less time using Facebook and Instagram. 

Since my last post, a few large things have happened: 

This is the photo we used to announce what we were having to our family and friends.

We are expecting a baby boy on January 6th, 2015. We found out about this blessing on April 27th, 2014 and learned the baby was a boy on July 30th, 2014. We are so excited to meet him and learn from him. We have a crib and some clothes, and I have the daily evidence that he is growing inside me! I am growing and he is too! I can feel him kicking… I started feeling it about 2 weeks ago. My friends who are also pregnant right now were saying that they could feel their baby, and I kept thinking, why can't I?? Well… when I finally stopped to think about all the movements and changes in my body, I realized it was him that felt like the butterflies and flopping about in there. 4 more months left and then he will be here! 

I taught for a whole school year as a Physical Education Specialist in Granite School district (from 2013-2014). Basically this means that I was an Elementary teacher at two different schools… the home school as they called it was Calvin Smith (in Taylorsville) and the other school was William Penn (in East Mill Creek). I would travel back and forth every other day from school to school and teach students ages kindergarten --> 6th grade for 6 or 7 forty-five minute class periods every day. The big catch with all this was that it I taught two class at a time all by myself, so I had an average of 55 students per period. It was so hard!!! I had hardly any idea about what I was doing at the beginning of the job since I had finished a year of teaching secondary Health and had never taught in an elementary school… let alone taught P.E. I learned how to do it, and figured it all out with lots of support from Mitch and my fellow teachers in the district. Most of the time when I would tell people about the job, they would say "isn't that illegal? that doesn't seem fair to you or the students". Well… I agree, but I was blessed to find a full time teaching job after graduation. This job taught me a lot about being patient and loving with all sorts of personalities. I taught almost 1,200 kids last year! The amazing part to me was that I learned about a lot of the kids' lives, and got to know their names and personalities, even though I had so many. I am grateful to have had the experience, and grateful to not have to do that again. 

This is an example of how big they were. One of my fav. classes, 3rd graders, at William Penn. 

This school year I got a job at Centerville Jr. High school as a part-time PE teacher. I wanted to go part time so I could have more time for the baby when he comes. I knew I didn't want to stop teaching all together, so we will see how it goes this year with working and being a new mother. So far (it's only been two weeks) it has been a great choice. My colleagues are really kind and easy to work with, and the students at Centerville are really well behaved. I haven't had to solve problems constantly, or do a lot of lesson planning. I am grateful that I was offered this position, and am back working with middle school kids again. I also get to team teach, so I have a lot of help every day from an experienced teacher. It's been basically ideal. 

Mitch graduated on April 25th, 2014 and was hired as a 'computer scientist' at the Hill Air Force Base. He mostly does statistical analysis on how productive and things different programs are at the base, and he does some computer programming also. They absolutely love him out there, and think he is an incredible employee and person, which is true!!! 

We moved to Fruit Heights from our cute awesome little apartment in Pleasant Grove. We knew we needed a place with a second room for our little one, so we live in a place called Orchard Farms in a 2 bedroom apartment. I am grateful for the change and what I need to learn, but so far, we haven't really made friends around here, and don't love the prices and things. Hopefully next June we can move into a house! 

My parents came home from their mission to San Diego on June 28th. It is SOOOO great to have them back. We love them so much, and are so proud of them. 3 years was a long time to have them gone, but I am so glad they can be around for our little guy's birth and to help me out with all the changes. 

I can't really think of anything else that was big enough to remember from the last year ha! I will try my best to keep a weekly update so I can have a better history left behind for our posterity.

Us at the Tulip Festival in April. We love going to see the beautiful flowers every year. 

The first 6 months

   Hello Blog world! I realized the other day that Blogging used to be such a huge part of my life! I would write such deep and unique things on the blog. I am grateful I learned how to do this, and started a blog during college. It is all I have as a written record of my life. My poor children are going to know next to nothing about my young adult life because I have struggled so much to write things down. Oh well, I will try to be better. What I really like about blogging is that I can use photos to tell my story. They are so fun. So here are a few from the last 6 months of my life!

Since January, life has been pretty routine. Mitch and I woke up around 6:30 every morning to get ready and head off to our responsibilities. He to school and work as a secretary/excel genius for the buildings department of BYU and me to my internship at Union Middle school. We would come back from these lives of ours around 4 in the afternoon. Most days, Mitch had a later class and would be home around 7 and I had lacrosse to coach, or basketball to coach, and wouldn't really be done with responsibilities till around 7 or 8 myself. This was our busiest and craziest time. It was also very rewarding though. Here is a photo of the lax team I coached this year.

At the end of Mitch's semester we enjoyed a trip out to San Diego with Katie to visit my parents. It is always so good to go out to see them. We love it when we get the chance. During our visit this time, we were privy to a free tour of the US battleship "Midway ". Here are some photos of our experience there.

Behind us is a statue of a very famous Photo taken of a sailor seeing his girl for the first time after the war called "the kiss". We were re-enacting it here. 

For our wedding we got a gift certificate to go to the roof complimentary of our reception center. We enjoyed this on the anniversary of our first date on May 4th. Here are some photos of that day. It was BEAUTIFUL downtown and the perfect celebration of an important day in our lives. 

We seem to be doing a lot of driving lately. Whether it be to our jobs or just to our parents house, most of our one one one time seems to be in the car. So this photo is necessary to describe what seems to be at least 1 hour a day of our lives every day. 

On memorial day we made sure to visit some graves of my family. Most of Mitch's family is not buried in Utah, so we did not visit any of his side. My grandma Clayton still doesn't have a headstone after 4 years of her passing away. I hope next year when we go to visit there is something to mark that her body lies there. 

We both have our birthday's in May. Mitch's is on the 22nd and mine is on the 31st. We had fun buying things for each other! I surprised Mitch with a kindle and he surprised me with a nintendo 64 and my favorite game ever. 

He also bought me this lovely necklace, an ipod shuffle so I can have tunes while I run, and some wonderful clothes/shoes. I am so spoiled. 

June 7th marked the end of my internship! I can hardly believe that it is over. It was such a wonderful experience full of changing and growing. So much happened to me during the last school year, it is incredible to look back on. I got engaged, married, coached a university lacrosse team as the head honcho, coached a 9th grade bball team, and organized a 3 v 3 basketball tournament at my school. I moved into an apartment in pleasant grove, became a wife, in-law and all that goes with it. And I had incredible relationships with my students at Union. I really do feel like I impacted lives while being there for just a year. They told me at the beginning that it would be tough, and I thought, well... I am a tough girl. It definitely was harder than I expected, but in all reality looking back it wasn't too bad. It was as tough as I expected, but the emotional strains of teaching I was not prepared for. 

It was hard to daily work up the energy to be positive and passionate about what I was teaching. Sometimes, the best moments were during those times I was teaching about avoiding an STI or how to properly wear deodorant, and the worse times were when I felt like I really needed to get concepts into their heads like how to refuse drugs, violence and sexual misconduct. It was challenging to believe in what I was saying after delivering it for the 6th time that day... But it definitely was all worth it. In the end, I got a lot of thank you cards about how I helped people to recognize they were in a cruddy relationship and how to get out of it, or I helped them to improve their self-esteem. Sometimes I got quick notes in the question jar asking me for relationship advice or how to deal with friends who don't like you. It was rewarding to know that I was making an impact, though very subtle on student's lives. 

I miss that. And the opportunities I had at Union. I hope that soon I will find another job in teaching so I can continue to make and impact and positive difference in the lives of youngsters.    

My classroom after I had moved all my stuff out of it. :(

Legit teacher Kelsey. Room 718 

This is Jaqui, my fellow BYU intern at Union. She saved me during so much of my struggles at Union. I am so glad I got to work with her and have someone to talk with and relate to. I had another co-worker there named Olivia who was an awesome friend too. She left before I could take a photo of her, but these ladies were the best. 

We have loved spending time on Mitch's parents boat at Jordanelle reservoir. We love being outside by the water and have spent many afternoons on this boat with many more to come. Doesn't Mitch look so at home here? I love it. 

So that's our lives up to now! Mitch is working 30ish hours a week at his job down at BYU and I am catching up on projects and things like blogging at home while I apply at different schools and places like costco for a job in the fall. Most of my days are spent out on our tiny patio in our recently purchased camping chairs enjoying the stories of Tina Fey. (I highly recommend her book Bossypants if you are looking for a laugh.)