Hailey is ONE! On October 11^th, we celebrated Hailey’s birthday in the beautiful Georgia mountains in Blue Ridge on our annual Fall trip (and while avoiding Hurricane Milton). Hailey is the perfect addition to our family. She gives the best smiles and loves to flirt with her Dad. She loves watching James run around the house and giving high fives to Claire. Her favorite foods are sweet potatoes, pasta, corn on the cob, quesadillas, and strawberries. She takes two beautiful naps a day and still wakes up for her midnight milk snack. She is such a fast crawler and will be in the other room before you turn around. She’s starting to stand on her own and recently took her first steps. She’s getting more confident and will be walking soon!

Now that Hailey is one, that means our last baby is officially a toddler. While I feel a little sad that the baby chapter for our family is complete, I am eternally grateful that we got to experience it three times. Before I was a parent, I didn’t fully grasp how special it is to watch your child grow from a tiny newborn, to toddler, to preschooler, to little kid, to big kid, etc. The same baby with the tiny fingers and toes is the same kid that you’re tossing a baseball to. The same baby that wouldn’t sleep longer than 2 hours at a time now needs to be pulled out of bed to get to school on time. That same baby that loved to rub their cheek on anything soft now has a twin bed full of colorful stuffed animals. Comparing my 7 year old (wasn’t he just a baby??) to my 1 year old shows how fast time goes and how quickly they change. It’s a reminder to embrace each stage and enjoy them in the moment. I remember asking a family friend (with two adult children), which stage was her favorite and she immediately said “all of them!”. I think about that often. 😊

Thank you Darlene Barlows for these beautiful beach photos of our family and capturing Hailey for her birthday! 

To look back on Hailey’s earliest days, here is the blog from her birth story and her newborn session and my letter before her birth and our pregnancy announcement. 

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Here’s our newest baby girl, Hailey Brooke! I am forever and ever grateful to be able to grow these precious babes and add them to our family. My sweet friend Leah came over to our house for Hailey’s newborn session and let me say, having “bigger” kids makes photos soo much easier! They were eager and excited to get in the pictures with their baby sister. The hardest part of the session was finding something for me to wear that fit and I felt good in postpartum. I definitely Amazoned that shirt last minute. It opened my eyes again to what my clients experience before their sessions! 

Hailey is ten days old in these photos and is now approaching four weeks old. She is doing so well. You’ll find her either sleeping, drinking milk, wanting to party at 3am, cuddled on our chests, or blissfully napping in her mini crib in the living room while her siblings play loudly around her. She fits right into our craziness. Looking through these photos makes me think back to our newborn photos for Claire in 2020 and James in 2017. I love having the photos to reflect on those special times and see how tiny they were. 

Here’s our Hailey honeycomb (as James has officially nicknamed her). Leah did such a great job and provided so many images in the gallery, it was hard to cull it down to these favorites. I love them all!

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I’m thrilled to introduce our daughter, Hailey Brooke Stoker. Hailey was born on October 11th via repeat c-section at 39 weeks. It was a beautiful day and as I did with my other two babies, I want to share her birth story here to remember all the details and to share what a routine scheduled c-section is like. I have been told by many anxious mamas over the years that our story (especially James, our frank breech baby) encouraged them and helped prepare them for their birth. Welcome to the world, Hailey. We’re so glad you’re here!

Claire Birth Story here

James Birth Story here

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To Honey Bear, our little girly…

The day has finally come. We will get to see your precious face tomorrow and hold you in our arms. We have been anticipating this day for a long time. We found out that you were coming back in February, right around Valentine’s Day and now it’s close to Halloween. We were full of gratitude and excitement to grow our family again. You have a very kind and smart Dad that loves you so much. We have been together since we were teenagers and have always said that we wanted to have three kids.  You have an older brother named James and an excited older sister named Claire. You are the missing piece to complete our family. We all like to call you Honey, since we have a Brother Bear, a Sister Bear and now a little baby girl, just like in the Berenstain Bears books. I bet it will take a while for them to start calling you by your real name.

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