Dear Baby

Dear Baby,

As we get closer and closer to your arrival, I am more and more excited to meet you. To give you a name. To finally hold you in my arms and see your pretty eyes and hear your little noises. To hold your tiny hands and tickle your tiny feet. I can't wait to catch that first smile and feel my heart warm with the sound of your laugh. It will all be so, so good.

As I write this, it's hard to imagine that it's actually you inside my belly moving around. A real live person in there! Mostly your movements have stressed me out the entire pregnancy. I didn't feel you moving until well after 22 weeks. You gave us that scare at 27 weeks. And then yesterday the Dr. couldn't find your heartbeat for several grueling moments. And then it was so slow before speeding up. Since then I've gone crazy counting every single movement to make sure you're doing okay. On the one hand I wish I wasn't so worried about you but on the other hand I just can't bare to think about coming this far and not holding you in my arms. Stay with us, baby. We're nearly there.

I'm trying really hard to treasure this very moment because we, you and me, are as physically close to one another as we will ever be in your entire life. After you are born and for the rest of your life you will forever be moving farther and farther away, little by little. That thought makes me sad and makes me want to hold onto these last few weeks for as long as possible. To keep you safe and content inside my belly where all your needs are met with such little effort from me. Once you are born, your needs will be so much greater and I won't be able to meet them with as much ease. I might disappoint you, and I'm sorry for that.

Life will be wild, but I promise we'll have fun along the way! Daddy will make you laugh and he'll teach you how to be a gentleman. He will teach you integrity and unconditional love because those are his character strengths and the things that make me love him the most. And I hope you are just like him in those ways. I'll teach you how to be creative and imagine worlds beyond you and lock away special moments in your mind. I hope you are just like me in those ways. We will both teach you how to be silly, because life is just plain hard if you can't goof-off on occasion.

And I hope you like snuggling, because we like to snuggle. I hope you'll crawl into our bed some mornings and we'll just all jumble together waiting for the sleepiness to leave us and get ready for the day. I hope you'll still like chips and sour cream and I hope you love chocolate so you and I can go on special chocolate dates that Daddy would hate. He can teach you basketball, that will be his special thing...you and me can just eat chocolate :o)

I hope you grow to know and love Jesus, to feel Him in your heart and follow Him with your life. I hope we can teach you how to do that and help you to grow into an honorable and Godly man.

I just love you so, so much and I didn't think that was possible before you were even born. We'll see you soon little guy!

Love forever,
Momma