One of my most favorite pictures of Ray with Emma when she was not even a month old. Already you can see the bond between father and daughter. His love radiates from him as he feeds his daughter, which also provides a wonderful bonding experience between father and child.
I do not believe you get the title Mom or Dad once the baby is born, but once the strip on the test turns its beautiful color letting you know you are now living and breathing choices that impact the miracle that grows inside of you. From the very beginning of my pregnancy with my daughter Emma I considered myself a Mom. We researched topics, safety, and how to help bring our baby into the world healthy and strong. We read books, I watched what a ate, what medications I took, and exercised. Ray went to every single appointment and even had a few extras to do all we could took to help keep our growing child healthy and safe until we could hold her in our arms instead of me just holding her in my womb.
Some of the things that we did as a couple to celebrate my pregnancies, to increase the bond between myself and my child, to increase the bond between father and child, and to increase the bond between myself and my husband are as follows:
I kept a Belly Book for Emma and I am now currently keeping one for Abigail. In this book I write about my pregnancy each week. I also take pictures of the baby bump, record information about doctor appointments, and Ray writes his thoughts and reflections in them as well. This provides a wonderful story through our experience being pregnant with our girls that they will get to read when they are older.
I also started the Baby Book before I give birth. There are pages for information about the pregnancy, doctor appointments, and areas for pictures. This also provides the girls with a keepsake as well as a document that we will continue to use as they get older, usually ending at age five when they start school.
As you are reading you can see that we love to document and share our experiences, love, and excitement for our daughters with our friends and family. This has also been a way that we have celebrated our pregnancies and parenthood together. Through the use of this website we are also going to be creating a book for each one of the girls that documents their pregnancy up until their 1st birthday. This will give them stories, more details, pictures, and comments other people have left for them.
Facebook has also been a tool that we have used to share, celebrate, and post images about our girls with friends and family. We plan on printing those posts and placing them in the baby books for the girls to read when they are older.
Writing Letters is a wonderful way to share a memory with your child. Ray and I both wrote letters to Emma and we will write a letter to Abigail. In the letters we expressed our thoughts and feelings about expecting them, how much we planned for them, loved them, and wanted them before we even knew God had blessed us with them. These letters help to express our love and desire to be parents.
Painting your belly during the pregnancy to celebrate different holidays or special events is a cute way to bond with your husband and bring your pregnancy into the celebration. While pregnant with Emma Ray painted the American flag on my belly to celebrate the 4th of July. For our pregnancy with Abigail we will do something for Easter and even have Emma help paint the baby bump.
Pregnancy pictures are another way to create a special memory of being pregnant and it helps to convey in images all the emotions you can't really express because they are so many and so rich sometimes they just can get past your lips. Ray and I took pictures in our 3rd trimester with Emma and plan on taking those same type of pictures during our 3rd trimester with Abigail.
If you love scrapbooking, that is another way that you can create memories and celebrate your pregnancy and motherhood. You can get as fancy and detailed as my mother-in-law or you can make them simple but memorable.
For each pregnancy Ray created a unique way to announce that we were pregnant, and those we saved as keepsakes for both girls and it helped him to establish that bond as the proud Dad announcing to the world that his child was on the way. When we found out the gender of our girls he did something unique to announce their gender as well.
We also did a belly cast when I was pregnant with Emma and will do the same for our pregnancy with Abigail. This was a wonderful bonding experience between Ray and myself. It will be fun to add Emma to our experience doing Abigail's this time. We will eventually use them for some decorative art once we get them 100% finished, painted, polished, and ready to be hung.
There are other things we did during holidays to give gifts from the kids to each other. An example of this can be seen during my recent birthday celebration. Ray gave me gifts from himself, Emma, and Abigail. This helps us bring Abigail into the family and celebrate our pregnancy at the same time during special events in our life. We did the same thing when we were pregnant with Emma. An example of doing this when we were pregnant with Emma was celebrating Mothers Day and Fathers Day even though she had not been born yet. I believe this is 100% appropriate due to the fact that I believe I am a Mom once the strip turns it's beautiful color, not once I deliver my daughter.
Other examples are having special dinners, talking about your child with your partner, making special purchases to help commemorate this awesome moment in your lives, selecting baby shower themes, decorating the nursery, and selecting the coming home outfits, as well as planning your child's baptism before they even arrive.
I hope that every person embraces and celebrates their pregnancies, motherhood, and fatherhood as much as possible in every way.
As you can see Emma has inherited her parents love of sweets. She really loves chocolate : ) We usually can just share whatever it is that we have with her, but on this night she wanted her own, plus a little of ours.
I must admit she got more on her clothing, highchair, and in her hair than she actually got in her tummy. But we all enjoyed watching her have fun with her first chocolate push pop!
To my husband who has to work a 12 hour shift today. We love you and wish you could be here enjoying our snow day with hot chocolate and smores!
Emma going out to step in the snow, touch it with her fingers, and watch her dog race around in the yard for a few minutes.
As you can see the snow has covered much of everything, but it is starting to melt in certain parts. Places where it is thick it feels great to walk in.
We enjoyed our few minutes outside, but I am not willing to risk more than that. We hope everyone enjoys the snow.
We went to the doctor yesterday and got another great report. Abigail is doing great! She is healthy, active, and still a Little Wiggle Worm : ) Mommy also got a good report. I still need to take it easy, not do any lifting or carry around heavy objects. I have been told to make sure to say hydrated and try to rest often. But that is to be expected as you enter into your 3rd trimester! Everything that is going on now and the precautions the doctors tell us to take are normal and nothing extra to be concerned about. I still have Braxton Hicks contractions, but there is no regularity to them, nor do they last for long periods of time.
Emma staying warm as Jack Frost comes to visit the area for the next couple of days.
Flag pole with the missing Valentine's day flag. Went looking for it and can't find it yet.
Trash cans are all over the place. We heard it hit the garage door last night, luckily there is no damage to the car that I can tell.
The fence is down and now we hope the neighbors do the right thing and get it fixed since it is theirs and not ours. We will see what happens in the next couple of days.
One of my most favorite pictures of Ray with Emma when she was not even a month old. Already you can see the bond between father and daughter. His love radiates from him as he feeds his daughter, which also provides a wonderful bonding experience between father and child.
Emma eats lunch like a big girl at her own table with chairs. She can sit all by herself. She knows to go here with her snacks, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. She also likes to sit here from time to time when we are cooking in the kitchen.
Ray picked out several pajamas like the one she has on in this picture and she loves them. We were able to find them on clearance at Carter's about a month ago. Emma is also liking to wear small clips in her hair. Since her hair is getting so long and thick we are trying to keep her bangs out of her face. We will not be cutting her hair anytime in the near future, so we are happy that she is wanting to wear the clips now.
Emma following her Dad around the house as always! She loves being around her Dada all day long, and when she does not get his attention fast enough she takes action and grabs it quick.
Emma enjoying her first Dreamcicle ice cream with her Dad. She has his taste in food and it is amazing that she does so many little things that remind me of him.
Emma loves being outside all of the time. It makes it hard on us when the weather is bad, because she can not have that little bit of outside time. She enjoys playing fetch with her dog and swinging in the hammock in the back yard. Emma also likes to run around and feel the texture of the grass, trees, and plants.
Emma also enjoys many moments of relaxing in her princess chair with her princess blanket. She likes to sit here and watch her favorite shows on the big screen t.v. It is amazing how much her Daddy lets her have her way and he winds up in the master bedroom watching his sports while Emma watches her Mickey Mouse Clubhouse on the big t.v. in the living room.
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