nine months//dear maddox

Dear Maddox,

Nine months is the amount of time that I grew you inside of my body. Nine months I spent knitting you together, piece by piece until you were perfectly formed and ready to thrive in this world on your own. Nine months I carried you with me, wondering if you were a little girl or a little boy but hoping for a healthy baby over all. Nine months felt like an eternity when we were waiting for you to join us.

But then you arrived. You arrived on a Tuesday afternoon in a hospital operating room, screaming from the bottom of your miniature lungs until you were placed in your daddy's arms and he held you close and brought you to me. And suddenly, those nine months were over and here you were and I had forgotten all of the sleepless nights where you slept on top of my bladder and the swelling in my feet and the fact that my wedding ring no longer fit. I forgot all about it because here you were, worth every last ache and pain, every last mark upon my body, every last sleepless night.

And now we've come upon another nine months and I'm just as amazed at how far we've come and how fast it has seemed. I seem to have forgotten much of the past nine months and so I'm thankful for the ways that I keep track of all of your changes and the sweet little things you do (and used to do, too). I've forgotten how small you were as a newborn and can hardly believe that you fit into those teeny, tiny newborn clothes that I must stop and ooh and aww over at Target and every baby store I step foot into. I've forgotten how tired I was when you were waking up every three hours to be fed. I've forgotten what it was like before solids, when you were a milk-only baby. I've forgotten what it was like when you couldn't sit up by yourself; or before you could crawl; or before you rolled over for the first time.

Because here we are now. It doesn't make sense how a human body can grow a baby in nine short months and that tiny infant can grow and grow and grow and double (and come close to tripling) their birth weight and start to crawl and pull himself up on things and put every single thing into his mouth and put himself to sleep at night and wean himself from his pacifier (cold turkey. not mad.) in another nine short months.

What I'm saying is you are so, so amazing and I cannot stop thanking God for this gift that you are.

You were born five days before Easter--a holiday we celebrate the Resurrection of our Savior. Never before has a holiday held so much significance as your first Easter when I held you, my son, in my arms and understood--the most smallest fraction of understanding--of how God sent his Son to die for me and what that truly means. How I lived for 25-years with absolutely no concept of His love for us until I held you in my arms and felt that unconditional love that only a parent can extend to their child.

And it's only fitting that nine months from your first Easter we would celebrate the birth of our Savior and your first Christmas. You have given us new understanding for these two beautiful holidays and we are so thankful for that. And we are especially thankful for you.

We love you so much, Maddox Oliver. We love how you reach for us and point to us and wave hello and bye bye. We love how you crawl towards us and after us and can recognize when we call to you from the other room and you can follow our voices to where we are. We love how you give open mouth kisses on our lips and our cheeks and how you stand up in your crib and scream to us to come and look at your accomplishment. We love how you laugh when we read you books and how watching yourself on video is your most favorite thing ever. We love how you mimic and the panting noise you make all the time. We love your new closed-mouth laugh and your open mouth laugh and your belly laugh reserved for tickles. We love cleaning up the water dish and vacuuming our floors five times a day and making sure that absolutely no piece of anything besides possibly a cheerio falls on the ground. We love how you sit in front of your jumparoo and pull it around the house while you scoot on your bottom. We love how you sleep through the night and mostly wake up in a good mood laughing and giggling to yourself. We love every little thing about you and can't wait to love every new thing you do this month and next month and all the months after that.

I love you, I love you, I love you.

To the moon and back,

Mama