Dear Baby Girl

Dear Baby Girl,

Seventeen more days until your due date!  Your daddy and I can't wait to meet you.  Late pregnancy is certainly a test in patience.  We know you will arrive sometime in the next month, but never before in my life has a month stretched out so long in front of me, not even the month before I married your daddy!  I guess that's because you are keeping your birthday a surprise.  You might be here early, and you might keep us waiting the whole month.  I can't say I would blame you--you are safe, warm, and cozy where you are right now.  Why would you want to leave??

You still move around a lot, but your movements are not quite as vigorous these days.  I think you are running out of space and can't kick me quite as hard!  We still absolutely love feeling you move and explore your little world.  Over the past two days you have dropped a little bit, and your little feet can't reach under my ribs anymore.  Quite happy news for me!  You have mama getting up very often at night, though--that must be the trade-off for my relieved ribs. I think you are slowly getting ready to make your appearance, as I've been having some Braxton-Hicks contractions off and on.  

We are ready for you.  

We have taken birth classes, a breastfeeding class, and an infant CPR class, found a pediatrician, finished your nursery, washed your linens and clothes, stocked your changing table with diapers and wipes, set up your pack n play, gotten our flu shots, installed your car seat and gotten it double-checked, written a birth plan, and packed our hospital bags.

We are NOT ready for you.

We want to be the very best parents we can possibly be for you, precious girl.  We are nervous that we are going to mess up, that we won't know how to take care of you.  You are going to be completely dependent on us and we feel the weight of that responsibility.  We know there are going to be times when you cry, and we won't know how to help you.  That scares us.  We know you might get sick and we won't know what to do.  That scares us too.  And then as we look ahead, we know that we are responsible for raising you--teaching you, praying for you, disciplining you, making decisions for you, then helping you make your own decisions and way in life...lots of hard things might come.  All of this...that really scares us.  

We are sinners.  We will surely fail you.

How can we possibly guide you through life, from tiny newborn until you are an adult, until you sit where I sit, writing a letter to your own unborn child?

By ourselves, we can't.  In everything, we are dependent on the grace of God.  We will look towards Jesus; we really are not capable of raising you without His help, his daily working of grace in our lives, his ever-present love and forgiveness.  We are broken sinners, and you, sweet girl, are a broken sinner.  But Jesus loves you just like He loves Daddy and me.  We pray that you will love Him too.  We pray that God will use us as His tools in your life, despite all of our shortcomings and failings.     

By the grace of God, we will ALWAYS be ready for you.  

Ready for you to cry.  Ready for you to come to us with a hurt knee or hurt feelings.  Ready for you to challenge us as you grow.  Ready to love you unconditionally for the rest of our lives.

Ready for you to run to us.  

We will pick you up, and together as a family we will run towards the throne of grace and mercy.

We love you, baby girl!  And if you wanted to meet us sometime soon, well, that would be perfectly fine with us.  :)

Love,

Mama

Ready and Waiting!

Mark and I finished the nursery last weekend!  I am so glad it is finished, and I absolutely love to sit in this room and think about its not-so-future occupant.  I hope baby girl will like her room.  We really wanted it to be a place to play and read, not just sleep, somewhere comfortable for Mark and me to spend time with her, and a room that would grow with her.  I hope I accomplished those goals.

(Sorry about the funny lighting in some of these pictures...I obviously haven't figured out proper white balance on my camera yet.  Or the correct time of day to take pictures.  Any advice, Monica?)

This Saturday--just three more days--I will be full term, and baby girl will have my (and the doctor's!) permission to arrive any time.  Then we will officially be ready and waiting!  And I'll be organizing and cleaning like mad of course...

B is for Boerckel

Baby girl has really grown over the last week or so!  I feel like my belly gets bigger every day.  Today is exactly a month until her due date, and we took a picture to document the occasion.

 

The "B" on the wall of her nursery is for Boerckel...we aren't giving anything away about her name! The other two initials are hidden away until after she arrives, and then they will join B for Boerckel.

Sewn with Love by BeBe

Meet Dottie the Elephant

Sweet hand-embroidered pillow

Coming home dress

Tatting made by baby girl's great- or great-great-grandmother, a long time ago.

Maybe someday I will be able to sew as well as Mom M...with her teaching and guidance of course...I know I will never be able to paint like Mom B (seriously, you should see my attempts...a third grader could do better!)  Mark and I are so blessed to have such talented mothers.  

August Visitors

In August we enjoyed visits from lots of family!

Mom and Dad Boerckel (Grandma and Grandpa) came to visit from Illinois.  Since they live so far away we don't get to see them very often, so it was wonderful that they could come for a nice long visit.  Mom and Dad Moore (BeBe and PopPop) came for the weekend while they were here.  We got to see Joel, Monica, and Sean briefly on their trip down to Atlanta, and Uncle Joe, Aunt Joy, Madalyn, and Muriel also came by for an afternoon on their way through town.  How great to see so much family at once!  Mom B, Mom M, and Monica were all able to come to my baby shower...more about that later.

We so wish we could see Mom and Dad B and Joel, Monica and Sean more often.  Once again though we are thankful for the way that technology lets us stay in touch.  Though we have only seen sweet little Sean a few times since he was born, at least we do get to see what he's up to via videos!

Unfortunately we don't have any pictures of Mom and Dad B's visit...I need to get better about taking pictures (working on it!), but we were also very busy!  Dad B went biking on the Silver Comet trail while Mom B and I got pedicures.  (I'll take that trade any day!)  They graciously put up with my sporadic summer violin-teaching schedule.  We spent lots of time talking, eating, and laughing...the perfect combination for great time spent together.  

They also really blessed us by helping us TONS with our nursery!  We are so thankful for help from both sets of parents to get baby girl's room ready.  Dad B painstakingly painted our changing table while he was here.  The changing table belonged to Emily, Rebekah, and me, and then Lydda Grace and Wade.  It was a little worse for the wear, plus I wanted it white to match our nursery.  Dad worked really hard, and it went from the dark wood of the previous post to this:

Thank you, Dad!  It looks so much better!

Mom B is an amazingly talented watercolor artist.  Our house looks like a gallery of her paintings--we love it!  We were so happy that she wanted to paint for baby girl's room.  She painted one Bible verse for baby girl before they came, and then she painted another one for baby girl while they were visiting!  We love that baby girl will have two special paintings from Grandma reminding her of Truth every day.

  Thank you, Mom!  Such special gifts to baby girl!

Also while Mom and Dad M were in town, Mom M made curtains for the nursery, and we found a mirror for over the changing table.  After all of this help from everyone, here is what our nursery looks like today:

Still more to do, but it has come a long way!

Nursery Rewind

Not too long ago, our nursery looked like this:

Well, there weren't normally two lamps and a camera case on the bed, but you get the idea...not very baby friendly.

Then back in June, our nursery looked like this:

Mark called it the internet room.  Still not very baby friendly.

Finally, we started making some progress:

Putting together the windowseat

Working on the crib skirt

At the beginning of July--starting to look more like a nursery!  Mom and I made the crib skirt while Dad and Mark painted the nursery.  (Thanks, Mom and Dad!)  At this point we didn't know if Baby Boerckel was a boy or girl...we were still not sure if we were going to find out or not, so we were planning a gender neutral nursery.

Aunt Kay's Birthday

Still catching up from July...

The weekend before Jon, Emily, and the kids left, we also got to visit with Aunt Kay and Uncle Talley and Uncle Mike.  Aunt Kay had just had a birthday so it was fun to celebrate with her!  

Mom made Aunt Kay a beautiful quilt.  I love seeing all of your creations, Mom!