ML#9: Tell about the birth of your....third child

So... Thirty years ago last night I was just about to dig into the Godfather's Pizza that Randy had brought home after work, when he turns to me and says, "President Thacker stopped by the popcorn shop today."  This wasn't a terribly uncommon occurrence; his sons did work for us...
   "So what did he want?"
   "He said he wants us to speak in Stake Conference in two weeks."

Now for the non-Mormons who might be reading this post, let me take a moment to explain.  A bishop of a ward in our church is equivalent to the pastor of a congregation.  The Stake President is a level above that and is responsible for several wards (probably 8-12 wards).  Twice each year, there is a Stake Conference and all of the wards meet together in one location and frequently (at least in the olden days of the 80's) there will be guest speakers from Salt Lake; an apostle or a seventy.  The place where they held Stake Conference in Bountiful was an old "surround-seating" theater that seated thousands.  Hopefully, this helps set the stage...

I began to panic.  "What on earth are WE supposed to speak about?" (I should have known. Mormon converts were a bit of a novelty in the Salt Lake Valley and everyone loved to hear our conversion story.)

Munching on his pizza, Randy said "Oh, you know.  How the missionaries found us.  How we came to know the church was true.  How we ended up in Bountiful..."

"Did President Thacker forget that I'm pregnant? Almost two weeks overdue?"
"No.  He figured you'd have the baby by then."

Well, President Thacker was right and it was HIS fault that Brooks Amerini Sloan decided that it was time to finally make her appearance!  I went to bed that night SO preoccupied with thoughts of having to speak in front of so many people I tossed and turned until about 1:00 AM when Brooks had had enough! She gave me one swift kick and I was laying in a puddle of water!
Yep. My water broke.  We called a neighbor to come stay with the two older girls and headed for the hospital.  Brooks entered the world about 7:25 in the morning on Sunday, January 23, 1983 after my quickest and easiest birth! Thank heavens!  Of course we didn't know her name was Brooks.

She was supposed to be Jamison Randall.  We needed a JR Sloan.  Randy's name is John Randall. His grandfather was John Rodger.  We were supposed to have a JR and since this had been the easiest of all of my pregnancies so far and she was such a calm baby, I was absolutely convinced she was a boy.  I mean everything else was different and since the other two were girls, this one had to be a boy. Right?  Well, since it was obvious she couldn't be Jamison Randall, we needed a new name.  D'Arbra (aka Darby) named for her paternal grandmother?  Olivia, named for her paternal great-grandmother, Olive Fanny?  (Well, ya gotta admit, Olivia's MUCH better than Fanny!) Or Brooks, after her paternal great-grandmother, Irene Dale Brooks?

Randy kept pushing for Brooks.  I kept pushing back. "Not Brooks. Why not Brook?"
"Brook wasn't my grandmother's name.  It was Brooks!"
"But Brooks Sloan is terrible."
"What's wrong with Brooks?"
"Everyone will call her Brook her whole life anyway, so might as well just make that her name."
"Why is everyone going to call her Brook?"
"Because people don't know the name 'Brooks' for a girl and the 's' is going to blend into her last name and people are going to hear 'Brook Sloan.'"
"Well, it's not gonna be Brook."
"Okay.  Let's go with Olivia."
"Olivia isn't really Grandma's name."
"Okay. Let's go with Darby."
"My mom never liked her name. I don't want to do that to another girl."
"Well, I don't like Brooks."

As you can tell, Randy won.  But he redeemed himself by suggesting her middle name.  A few weeks before we had met the sister of a good friend of ours. Her name was Amerini and Randy had commented on how pretty he thought her name was.  Her parents had immigrated to America from Greece and she said the English equivalent was Amy... Randy's sister's name.  And so it was: Brooks Amerini Sloan weighed in at 8 pounds 4 ounces and didn't gain another once for the first six weeks of her life!

I knew she wasn't nursing well, but I didn't know it was that bad!  When I took her in for her 6 week check-up, Dr. Doug (the girls' pediatrician) was very concerned.  Put her on formula that Thursday and told us to bring her back in Monday morning and that if she hadn't gained at least 6 ounces he was going to put her in the hospital and test her for cystic fibrosis.  That was a terrifying weekend.  We already had one daughter with congenital heart defects and now this?
We prayed and we fed and we woke her up and fed and that little piglet gained almost a full pound in those four days!  Dr. Doug said "Forget nursing.  She gets formula."  And she turned into a delightful little chunk!

I always said that Brooks was the one born to prepare me for twins.  She's the one who was crawling in the grass outside when I noticed she was chewing on something.  I asked her what she had and she held up her chubby little hand to show me half of a fuzzy, green caterpillar. She's the one who I caught sniffing a raisin while she was sitting in the high chair while I was doing dishes.  
"What are you doing, Brooks?"  (She put the raisin in her mouth.)
"Don't you put a raisin in your nose." (She put another raisin in her mouth and I turned back to my dishes.) A minute later I hear a snorting sound and look around to see Brooks snorting, shaking her head and digging in her nose!
"What did you do?  Did you put a raisin in your nose?"  More snorting.  I grabbed her out of the high chair and turned her over so I could look up her nose; a little tip of a raisin! I tried to get her to blow her nose.  She snorted, inhaling it more.  I waved the pepper shaker under her nose to try to make her sneeze. No luck.  I finally called Randy who hurried home and ran her to the doctor's office.  This time, Dr. Doug removed a GRAPE!  Yep.  It had rehydrated in her nose!

Although no one who's known Brooks since her teenage years would believe it, she also used to be my morning girl.  And we're talking MORNING!  4:00 AM kind of morning!   While Samantha was in the hospital with her brain abscess, some people from church planted a garden for us in the community garden plot next to the chapel.  Since 6-month-old Brooks decided 4:00 was a perfectly wonderful time to be up for the day, and she was too happy to be quiet, she and I began daily outings to the garden at 5:00, as soon as the sun was up.  She'd sit in her stroller and just enjoy life while I took advantage of the coolness of the morning to pull weeds and later pick vegetables that I could learn to can. We'd be back home by 7:00 and she was ready to take a nap... just in time for Megan & Sami to get up and start their days!  Who says young mothers need any sleep?

5-year-old Brooks: Kindergarten at Hayesville, Ohio Elementary

(I could only comb her hair if she got a side ponytail!)

Brooks. She's always been the mischievous one. The instigator. The heritage-lover. The girlie-girl (well, after she started to comb her hair and brush her teeth, anyway). The inquisitive one. The artsy one. The dollhouse one. The laugh-out-loud one. The toot in the morning one. The sentimental one. The creative one. The June Cleaver one.  The mother of three handsome young sons. And the soon-to-be mother of one very long-awaited Baby Claire.

Happy Birthday, Weasel!  Ich liebe dich!