On Your Birthday- February 11th

You can click on each image to enlarge it :). 

This is one happy momma.

Daddy all dressed for the OR. 

Suctioning out your air passages, so you can breathe.

Here's the man that helped you make your way into the world!

Daddy's cutting your cord. Don't worry. It doesn't hurt. 

Measuring your abdomen. 

Looking into your daddy's eyes for the first time.

High foot!

What a happy baby!

Fast asleep.

You are one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.

When I first heard you cry on the operating table, I said, "That is the most beautiful thing I've ever heard. It is so worth it." When I first saw your face, I said, "He's SO BEAUTIFUL!"

You're Here, right?! It's February 6th...three days after your due date!

Hello My Sweet Baby Logan,

        I would like to dedicate a song to you. It's called, "You Can't Hurry Love" by the Supremes. Clearly, I have made my belly such an inviting and comfortable place that you don't want to leave yet. Free food, warm bed, but it has to be getting cramped in there, my love! You just don't know what it feels like yet to stretch out, or at least don't remember it from when you were smaller.

       How funny would it be for you to come today on your Uncle Mike's birthday. Taylor's birthday (your cousin) is also on the 6th. I wouldn't mind if you come tomorrow night, as long as you don't wait until February 14th like your grandpa is predicting.

        Your aunt Bethanee has been checking on me everyday. She loves you so much and wants to help watch you over the summer while mom finishes her last two classes in the nursing program! Just saying that makes me feel so relieved. There is a light at the end of the tunnel in my school! I've been in school for a very long time. I hope I don't get any wild ideas about going back after I graduate. I should at least wait until I get my student loans paid off before I think about that. Your dad is happy to have me stay at home while he works to support us. I've always been one that likes to earn my keep. He thinks the chores I do around the house is enough...and especially with you coming. You will be more than a full time job!

      The change of heart that I have had lately has been really helpful. Before, I couldn't wait until we could move out of our small house into something nicer and bigger. I think I was taught by society growing up that living in a trailer was trashy which makes the people that live in the trailer trashy too. Now, I feel like there is nothing to be ashamed of when you are living modestly. Bigger houses mean higher house payments which means more obligation and stress about money and making ends meet, especially with the loss of a job because of the economy or some other unpredictable circumstance. The only thing trashy about anything in this circumstance is taking advantage of other people and expecting them to take care of you while giving nothing in return or without trying to make something better out of your life. However, it is getting to the point that the middle class is being taxed so much that it is a wonder they can support themselves at all. Everything has become so expensive that it almost forces both parents to work. I believe that children are definitely better off if the mother stays at home with them. I am hoping by entering into the nursing field, I won't be gone from you very often. I want to work a maximum of three times a week and only at night. I just don't know how friendly I will be if I don't get enough sleep!

So I'm going to see you tonight, right? I love you, sweetheart! See you soon!

Love,
Mom

Quick Little Messages

2/5/14

You wake up in my belly when you hear your dad's voice when he comes home. It's really so sweet that you seem to love him so much.

Children fill a part an empty place in our hearts that many don't even realize are there, but I've known that void was there for a long time. I've missed you for a long time, my sweet boy.

I'm not ashamed of my stretch marks. I think they are beautiful, because it means that I get to be your mommy.

2/15/14

We liked to joke that we named you Logan after Wolverine on X-Men. We didn't of course, but it is so funny that you were born with thick side burns!

2/16/2014

I find it funny that a Jewish man performed your circumcision, since the Jews were the first people to have circumcisions!

3/1/2014

I can tell you that being a mother is the best thing that has ever happened to me. It was like all of a sudden everything in my life started to make sense. I love taking care of you and watching you grow.

3/8/2014

Your dad took you to the World of Coke Museum with your grandparents for your first outing yesterday. While you were there, a tourist from Asian asked to take your picture, because you are so cute!

You met your great-Papaw, Aunt Karen, and your first cousin Jody for the first time today. You actually made your Papaw smile. He says you get your good looks from the Ledford side of the family.

4/2/2014

Wow, you are an amazing kid! You've got so many people wrapped around you little finger, my little charmer! I hope you get to experience how amazing it feels to be a parent one day. Nowadays, the world tries to convince people that children are a burden. I can't imagine being without such an amazing blessing. You are teaching me to be a better version of myself- patient, loving, forgiving. I want to give back to you all that you've given to me. I'm going to go now, so I can spend time with you in person. I haven't written in a while, because I get to talk to you face to face now. Can't wait until you can talk back, so I can hear what you think about the world!

1/25/2015

My messages are getting fewer and further in between, because I am busy taking care of you and working full time at night. Your great grandparents come over during the week after the nights that I work to keep you, so I can get some sleep. You sleep a lot less now, and you are so very busy. You love to get into everything, so we had to put the child-proof locks on all the cabinets. I was afraid you were going to pull out a pot or pan and drop it on your foot. For the first time yesterday, you went to sleep in the crib by yourself. You did the same thing tonight. You are starting to get more and more independent. I'm a little sad about you not needing us to fall asleep, but I'm glad at the same time. Sometimes, you would take an hour before you fell asleep. Like last night, your dad spent about 40 minutes trying to get you to sleep. We traded, and I tried for 25 minutes. I left the room, because I couldn't keep trying to get you to sleep. Five minutes later, you were asleep by yourself. That's how I found out you didn't need us!

I recently went to the funeral of someone's father whom I grew up with. He was like a father to me for a large part of my childhood. I was devastated he had past at 61. That's too young for someone to lose a parent. She also lost her mother when she was around 2 or 3 in a car accident. I'm terrified to think about my children growing up without knowing me and how much I love them. Or worse, having a step-mother that doesn't love y'all as much as I do, because you aren't biologically hers. I think your dad would put up without a lot to try to keep a woman happy, and I hope that allowing someone to mistreat you wouldn't be one of the things he would tolerate. Let's hope that it isn't in God's plans for me to be taken from you before I'm a very old woman (or worse...have something happen that takes you away from me). Since I don't know God's plans for our future, I just want you to know that you are the love of my life. You have brought more joy and happiness into this short year with you than maybe all of the other years combine. Being a mother is one of the best decisions I have ever made. The two other best decisions I've made are marrying your dad and joining the Latter-day Saint church. So if anything were to ever happen to me, here are the things I want you to know. You are more loved and more important than you will ever know. I love you more than anything and always did my very best to help you learn and grow in spite of the many mistakes I have made along the way. In case I don't get to continue you this blog after your siblings come along, this message applies to them too. After I am gone, I will watch over you and do my best to keep you safe and help guide you to make the right decisions. The Latter-day Saint church is true. There will be things you may not understand. Just because we don't understand things at first doesn't mean they aren't true. Search for the answers to all your questions, and don't give up until you find them. That's what brought me to the church to begin with. Try your best, but don't be hard on yourself when you mess up. You are going to mess up. That's why Jesus had to die for us. Use the atonement and forgive yourself. Each day try to be a little better than you were before. Perform random acts of kindness and smile often. If you believe and do these things, you will have success in this life and in the next. And if you want all our friends and family to know the thoughts that I would leave them with after I return to my creator, speak these words at my funeral.

Here's the song I sing to you, because it's how I felt when I first saw you. My heart has never been more full.

A New Year Brings New Life and Perspective

You've grown so much my baby boy. I love to tell you how proud I am of you for growing and being so strong! You aren't even born yet, but you make me smile like crazy!

If there is one thing that I have learned from this pregnancy it is that weight is just a number. I've never felt more beautiful that I do now, though I am at my heaviest weight. I know gaining weight means that I get to be your mom, and that makes it completely worth it. I now get to be known as "Logan's Mom."

I guess a normal question people like to ask pregnant women (don't ask me why) is how much weight they have gained. I won't let the doctor's tell me, so I can't answer that question. It almost feels like women have a silent competition going- who gained either the least or the most amount of weight when they were pregnant. I absolutely know you can eat too much and make the baby overweight which is associated with certain health risks and higher rates of C-sections. Who cares as long as the baby is a healthy weight? People have told me they think you are going to be a "big baby." We will see. Even though they think my belly looks big, I don't feel very big. I know that I am a tiny person, and there is nowhere for you to go but out! I don't think you will be bigger than 8 pounds and a few ounces.

I understand why our culture has become so consumed with weight. There are a lot of obese people in the United States now. Other countries make fun of us. But it's almost like most people's minds can only function in black and white. It's one extreme to the other. People can get obsessed with weight so much that they just don't eat at all. People can really allow themselves to become distraught over gaining a few pounds. Don't get me wrong, when I'm not pregnant anymore, I absolutely want to get back into shape. I want to be able to fit back into my old clothes again, but I won't let that number on the scale determine my self-worth. It helps that your dad loves me no matter what. He just told me today that I am more beautiful than I ever have been. I feel so happy for you to be able to have a great guy like him as your dad. It's become harder and harder to find good men these days.

I know you will love to exercise and be outdoors, because your dad and I do. I can't wait to take you hiking with us when you get older. There is so much to see and feel out in nature that you just can't feel when you are stuck inside. Some of my best memories are outside feeling the sunshine and wind on my face and breathing in the fresh air. Of course, I want it to be a little warmer and for you to be a little older because I take you on many walks outside. It's the coldest that it has been in Georgia in a long time today. The temperature is 13°F but the weather center says it really feels like 2°F.

Though it was cold yesterday, I drove to visit your aunts. They cancelled their school yesterday due to the possibility of black ice on the roads. They've cancelled it again today, though I am not sure why this time. On the way to their house, there were several rainbows within the clouds, and it made me recognize just how much beauty there is in the world. There is pain and suffering which can continue indefinitely if we choose to continue to dwell on it. Even more powerful is all the beauty in life. Just being alive, breathing, and thinking with these bodies is a tremendous blessing.

I love you, sweetheart. I am thinking of you always. Hopefully, we will get to officially meet in 27 more days.

Love,
Mom

Baby Shower

Dear Logan,

         We just had your baby shower this weekend. Your granny spent a lot of time and effort to make sure everything was perfect. They had stuffed monkeys hanging from a tree, and everything was safari-themed. Here are some photos that your great-grandpa took (that's why he's not in the pictures):

 There are some other photos from your granny and great aunt that I will post as soon as I can get them!

We only have a little over 7 more weeks to go before we get to meet. (I started this about a week ago. We now have around 6 more weeks to go). I've never been more excited for anything in my life, and I don't think I've ever done anything more important in my life. It's like everything else pales in comparison to you entering in our lives. I will really miss being able to feel you move around in my belly. You move around the most around 11 pm, but it seems like you've recently started moving around a lot in the morning too. I've been extremely thirsty in the past couple of weeks. I've also gotten stretch marks in the past couple of weeks too! They aren't bad (yet).Granny had twins, and she still had the kind of stretch marks that faded so much you couldn't see them anymore. Maybe these will be like hers. I like to tell you that I know its not your fault and it is worth every pregnancy-associated symptom to have you! I talk to you all the time, though you are still in my belly :).

It's funny to me, because I've gotten more compliments on my appearance since I've been pregnant than when I was very fit doing Crossfit. I've wondered if they are trying to help me feel better about the weight I've gained. However, I honestly believe they really think I look good, though I think I look a bit like a chipmunk storing nuts in its cheeks for the winter, lol! Pregnant women have a pregnancy glow, and I think there may be something that can be seen beyond physical appearance as well. Maybe people can tell how happy I am to be having you.

I like to listen to books on tape when I am in my car, because there is rarely anything uplifting that plays on the radio anymore. I recently listened to Mitch Albom's "The Time Keeper" and started a book called, "Building Better Families." Here are some questions that you can expect to hear from me a lot as you grow up, and I am doing my best to raise you to be a happy, loving, respectful, and kind person with integrity and grit:

What can you learn from this experience? (You can make any situation something positive as long as you see it for what it really is- an opportunity to grow).
How could you have handled that better? (This is a question that I ask myself often).
How will that help you become the best version of yourself?

The last question comes from the "Building Better Families" audio book. I've just started it, but it has already been so  insightful and helpful, It has shared different ideas that I have thought about but have had a difficult time putting into words. It feels nice to hear someone else confirm something that I already know. I don't think the author is a member of the church, but the ideas that he shares are the same as what we know already- they may just be worded a little differently. I think it is interesting how you can say something in a different way and things finally connect and make sense to someone. He basically said that we live in families to help each other grow as individuals. We have come to earth to become the very best version of ourselves. He also said that, if I ask you those questions, I should expect you to ask me the same questions. That our kids will hold us accountable for every inconsistency. For example, if I try to teach you that you don't need to watch a lot of TV but I do, you won't learn that as a true principle. Needless to say, my little one, I have a huge responsibility ahead of me, because there are some things that I need to change about myself in order to be the best example for you. I would never be able to convince your dad to get rid of many of the movies that he has, but I might be able to convince him to put them into storage. He loves car movies like the Fast and the Furious series, but these movies objectify women as sex symbols. They idolize money, recklessness, power, and conflict. I just think you are going to see me as being so controlling. I don't want you to think that, and I will do my best to try not to seem controlling. Often when we are young (and regardless of whether we are young), we don't realize what kind of impact our culture is having on us. The entertainment industry brainwashes us by exposure. If we expose ourselves enough to these things, what we put into our minds is eventually what we become.

 I love you, my little one. You and your dad are my best friends. I want you to become the very best version of yourself. I know you will help me do the same, because I will experience tremendous growth as a mother. See you soon, my precious gift!

Love Eternally,
Mom

Pregnancy Progression

17 weeks

18 weeks

19 weeks

20 weeks

23 weeks

24 weeks

25 weeks

26 weeks

27 weeks

28 weeks 29 weeks

30 weeks

 31 weeks

 32 weeks

 33 weeks

 34 weeks

 35 weeks

 36 weeks

 37 weeks

 38 weeks

39 weeks

 40 weeks

...40+ weeks!

 Lots and lots of swelling...

 Even more love.

Your Great Worth

My Sweet Little One,

      The things I am about to tell you may be too sad for your tiny little ears to hear right now. Luckily, you won't read this blog or know it exists until later in your teenage years, in the years that you will be subjected to more temptation and peer pressure than you've probably ever known. I won't always been around to help you make the right decisions, and you will have to choose for yourself what path you want to walk and who you want to be. Hopefully, I will have taught you how to make your own decisions- good decisions you want to make and not because you feel guilty for not making the decision that I would choose for you. It is during these years that you will need to know just how much I love you, how much I have always loved you, and how much I want to protect you from the evil that exists in this world.

Today, I read an article about the various ways that newborn babies were found abandoned (dead or alive). They were flushed down toilets, suffocated in trash bags and thrown in the dumpster, strangled, and found in sewer drains. Worse still, "doctors" will dispose of babies of failed abortions by twisting their heads off or severing their spinal cord. A baby made swimming motions after being thrown in a toilet, so an abortionist took the baby back out of the toilet and cut the spinal cord. He or she was someone so helpless, and yet, still fighting for life. Millions are dying every day, because the people that are supposed to love them somehow lose their ability to love, or they are deceived into believing that material things on this earth and fleeting pleasures on this earth are more important than family.

Every soul is of great worth to our Heavenly Father, so I don't mean to diminish the worth of those precious babies that are losing their lives. However, I wonder how important you must be to our Heavenly Father's plan to be born into a family that loves you so much. When we asked for you, we asked the Lord if we could take care of one of his valiant souls. I have a feeling that you are a very special boy. I also feel that you will have a strong testimony and help bring many to the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. I know that I have many weaknesses, so I have been praying that the Lord will help me to be a good example to you.

There is so much evil in the world today that sometimes it can be difficult to stay hopeful for the bright future that is waiting for us. There is so much evil in the world today that it is easy to be overtaken by it. I've already mentioned how evil is often disguised as good. Entertainment can portray drugs, violence, and sex in the most seductive and enticing ways. It is so important that we pay attention to the things that we put into our minds. What we put into our minds shapes our thoughts, and our thoughts shape who we are. Here's a quote that I've always really liked:

“Watch your thoughts, they become words;
watch your words, they become actions;
watch your actions, they become habits;
watch your habits, they become character;
watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.”

All the little decisions that we make in our lives, though they may seem insignificant, mold us into the person we are. When I first started to pray again, changes didn't occur in my life all at once. It was through persistent prayer, gratitude, and appreciation for my trials that were helping to humble me that helped to transform my anxiety and depression into joy. Now I understand that the sadness that I may experience from time to time helps to keep my heart turned upward to whom I must look for strength. For this reason, I don't know that I would ever want to be rid of it completely. I hope you inherit your dad's cheerful demeanor. Even if you don't, please know that even sadness can be a good thing and a blessing.

I feel like I've said all this before, I hope I don't sound like a broken record...but I do feel like the biggest enemy you will have to face will be inside of you. You will ask yourself questions like, "Am I good enough?" The answer is, yes! You are better than good enough. The Lord loves you for who you are and who you can become.

Here is the pumpkin that I carved in honor of your expected due date. It is very rare for a baby to come on the date that they are predicted to come, of course. It's just the thought!

Three short months from today (roughly...depending on whether or not you want to come sooner), I will get to see your face for the first time! Your dad and I worked this weekend on painting your room. We still aren't done yet, but I will definitely post pictures when we finish. We love you so much!

Love Always,

Mom