Letters to My Son

A few months before I got pregnant, my husband and I visited his best friend and his wife to meet the newest addition to their family.  They had a little boy already, and they had just had a little girl about a month earlier. We spent some time with them and each got to hold the little cutie pie.

While we were there, Jesse's friend took pictures of each of us on his phone and told us how he had been sending emails to his children since they were born.  He would take a photo sometimes and then send an email to them to tell them about something that happened that day.  He copied each of us on the email he sent, which had our pictures with the baby attached.  The email talked about how we met for the first time that day and contained just a few details of our visit.

I loved the idea so much that I could hardly wait to use it with my own children.  It turned out I didn't have to wait long, since I was pregnant just a few months later.  Even though my son is not due for another four months, I decided to get a head start on writing to him, especially because I have so much I feel I want to share with him, and there is so much I might forget.

I created an email address for him and got started once we found out that we were having a boy.  Here is an excerpt from the first email I sent him:

By the time we got to the car, I had an email and a text message from Mandy, just dying to know if you were a boy or a girl.  She was ecstatic to know that Diezel, who is due next month, would have a playmate.  After we left the doctor's office, we went to get something to eat because we were both very hungry.  Aunt Emily called right after we got to the restaurant, and we put her on speaker phone to tell her the news.  I handed the phone to Daddy, saying that I would let him tell her since he is the "man of the house."  He made a joke about being the man of the house just for the moment, but she was expecting a girl so much that it took her awhile to get what he was saying.  When she realized, she was so excited.  We have all been waiting so long for a boy!

Carolina got on the phone with me to hear the news, and she was excited, too, but in a different way.  She was all business, wanting to know if you were crying and also wanting to know if we had purchased your crib yet.  (The last time she visited, we didn't have the crib yet, and she was not impressed by our parenting skills.)  I assured her that we do now have a crib, a present from Nan and Gumpers, and she relaxed.  Notably, Carolina was the only one to accurately predict that you would be a boy, but it was based on the fact that there are a few boy sleepers hanging in Aunt Emily's closet - gifts from a friend who was convinced that Carolina was a boy.  As your father likes to say, "You may argue with her logic, but you can't argue with her results."

I plan to write to him all along the way, detailing everything from his first steps to all the funny things he says and does over the years.  When he is older, he will be able to look back and remember all of it and also see proof of how much his mommy and daddy loved him, right from the start.