Letters to Lincoln . . .

When I was pregnant with Lincoln, before we even knew he was a boy, I saw this ad when I was watching something on YouTube. A dad creates an email address for his daughter and emails her throughout her life. I'm going to go ahead and blame the pregnancy hormones (then and now...sigh), but I definitely teared up. Before we knew the sex, we were 99% set on a name. After we knew we were having a boy, it didn't take me long to set up an email address for him. I emailed him right away expressing our excitement and love for him. On his due date, when he was five and a half weeks old, I emailed him a condensed version of his birth and the trials we all went through. I emailed him again about his first Christmas. My latest email to him, April 3rd, went as follows:

 

Hi sweet baby boy,

I just wanted to take a second to send a quick note telling you what my two favorite parts of my day are...every single day.
Every morning when I walk into your room, as soon as you can see me, you squeal and get the biggest smile on your face. It melts my heart, punkin.
The other favorite part of my day is watching you fall asleep in my arms while we rock in your room. I know I should lay you down awake so you learn to put yourself to sleep, and I used to, but I cherish that time too much to stop now. Your eyes slowly get heavy and you fight it. You keep trying to look around and take everything in, but eventually sleep wins. When that happens I simply stare at you for a minute before I kiss you three times on your left cheek, say "Momma loves you times infinity", and lay you down.

You are the sweetest and most perfect baby boy we could have asked for.

Xoxo,
Momma

 

It is not my intention to share all of the letters I write to my son here, as that is personal, but I just wanted to make mention of this tradition. I think writing letters to your children, in one way or another, is a great habit. I hope to keep it up with Lincoln and our future children as well. I can't wait to sit them down one day, log into their gmail (assuming it'll still exist...), and let them read what I wrote to them when they were a tiny baby. I hope it will mean as much to them as it does to me. I plan on waiting until they're at least out of high school, maybe college, in hopes that they'll better understand and appreciate the concept and words they read from me.