I Want to Remember.....

I want to remember his hands. They’re still little, but I know they won’t be for long. 

I want to remember how much he loves cars and trucks and swords and monsters and school buses. Oh, how he wants to ride a school bus! 

I want to remember how he is right now. He’s just barely still a baby. It’s like any day now, he’ll lose all the remnants of being a baby, and he’ll just be a big boy. I want to remember him like this. 

I want to remember how he loves to “nuggle.” “Nuggle me Momma. Nuggle me!” He is my snuggle bug for sure.

I want to remember the way he loves me. He is such a Momma’s boy. He is my sweet, sweet, baby boy. 

I want to remember how just three years ago he came into this world 3 1/2 weeks too early. I want to remember what it felt like to love more.....to grow more. 

Just like Addison changed me, so did my little man. Luke came into this world and decided to come out with a challenge. From the beginning he had jaundice. We didn’t think it was a big deal at first, but apparently it was more serious than we thought. 

After we had been home a couple days, we got the call that we needed to take him to Children’s Hospital immediately. It was not a good phone call to receive. His jaundice was out of control and his liver was in jeopardy of shutting down.

It was then, when he was naked with his eyes covered, lying in that little baby tanning bed under the lights, that I first knew what it felt like for him to be away from me. I couldn’t hold him unless I was nursing, and it literally hurt to just let him lie there. It was physical pain being away from him (even though he was lying right next to me in bed).

We’re not quite as attached now as we were then, but he is still my baby. He still sneaks out of his bed at night to “nuggle” in Momma’s bed. 

He loves to wear jammies. He loves chocolate, and he loves to play outside. He is “all boy” in every aspect of the phrase. 

He changed me. He took who I was, challenged every bit of it, and made me better. 

Today we celebrated. We celebrated the three years that our sweet boy has been in this world. We celebrated our family as it’s been for the past three years. And we celebrated our love for each other. 

A million thank yous to our good friends the Stewarts who watched the babies tonight, so we could have a night out to celebrate. It was exactly what we needed.

Enjoy the pictures. I know there are a million, but it took forever for them to upload so you're getting a lot of them!

.....day 212 of a year of writing.....