Your daddy was a career counselor at Florida State and is now a professor at Wake Forest. His career move is why we made a family move. This move allows us to set down some roots. We purchased our first home and plan to stay here for many, many years. It has a room that would be perfect for a little boy. I think of you every time I set foot in there. Here is our new house.
Your sister is always dressing like a princess and wants to wear "fancy jewelry". The necklace she keeps asking for is her "Baby Case" necklace. Some friends of mine gave it to her after you passed away. It warms my heart that she want to wear it. It says your name and "I love you to heaven and back". After she got hers, I got one very similar to it.
Looking back, last month I talked about the NT scan when we got to see you. We got to see you again just a few weeks later at 17 weeks. That's when we found out you were a boy! With your sister, we didn't want to know the gender ahead of time. We chose to be surprised when she was born. Because we were high risk with you, we knew we'd have many ultrasounds and I feared we would see "something" on accident so I wanted to find out in a fun way.
At the ultrasound, we asked the tech to put your gender in an envelope. We were going to give the envelope to my friend who was going to pack a box with a boy outfit or a girl outfit. Then Daddy and I were going to have a nice dinner and unpack the box at dinner.
During the scan, we looked away at the crucial moments. We made it through the whole scan without seeing anything on accident. After the scan, the doctor came in and asked the tech to take one more measurement. As SOON as she put the wand on my belly, we saw a complete crotch shot. No doubt about what we were seeing! We immediately knew you were a boy. No doubt about it. We shielded our eyes and turned our heads as she covered the screen with her hand. So much for our hopes of not seeing something on accident, haha! Because we weren't 100% sure of what we were seeing, we kept our plan.
That night, my friend packed the box and Daddy and I went out to dinner. We waited until dessert to open the box. My friend is a sweetheart. She called ahead of time to tell the staff we were going to be there and asked them to bring us a dessert on her. They did it on the house. So while we were sharing our "congratulations" dessert, we opened the box. There was a card with a picture of your sister on it. And it said "I'm going to have a... Baby BROTHER!" We were a little nervous about having a boy since we only knew our little girl. But within an hour, we were thrilled that we were going to have a son too. We stopped by the bookstore, picked up a baby name book, and then went to the lake to pour through names. We had a name already picked out but we wanted to go through all the names again since we knew we were having a little boy.
You were the sweetest looking little guy! At that time, I didn't have a clue what you looked like. At your sister's anatomy scan, I immediately knew she looked like me. All I knew was that you didn't look like me. It was a waiting game to see who you actually did look like. It turns out you were your daddy's clone, except you got lucky and got your momma's nose. ;)
I miss you a lot. It's strange how you creep into conversations even when I don't intend to mention you. I hugged your bear as I fell asleep last night, thinking of how I should be staring in to a monitor as you're spending your first nights alone in your new room. I hope that you're enjoying heaven and can feel our love pouring from our hearts. The very first thing I did in our new home was light your memory candle. Daddy said he was glad you were included on our first night here. You'll always be a part of our family and a big piece of my heart is always with you.
Happy 8 month birthday, little guy.
