braxton michael | twenty-one months.

Our sweet Braxton is twenty-one months old today!

A lot has changed since that crisp morning in January when he was welcomed into the world, and our biggest change yet came just last week when we moved out of the first place we ever called home. This little house was so much more than just a little house to us for more reasons than we can count, especially since the day we brought our first baby home.

Every day from the time I learned I was pregnant to that Monday morning when he was born, I would write prayers and letters in a journal to him from different rooms in our bungalow. I wrote most of them early in the mornings before school while sitting at the dining room table under our beautiful chandelier right after I ate my breakfast and read my Bible, but I would sit in the floor in the other rooms, too, and write about what it would be like to hear his hands and feet go pitter-patter on them. I dreamed lots of dreams for our family as I poured my heart out to my unborn baby on paper.

And for nearly twenty-one months, I lived those dreams.

We lived those dreams.

He won't remember this house or the memories we made here, and that's one of the things that makes moving on so hard. He won't remember looking out the window, watching the cars go by and jumping with excitement when he saw daddy pull into the driveway. He won't remember that first time he ever walked around the block on his own two feet. He won't remember all the wagon rides and front porch swings and baths in the tall clawfoot tub and hiding in the closets and running into the living room with his milk in his hands and a big smile on his face when he opened the fridge by himself for the first time and those lullabies we sang as I held him in my arms with daddy listening in from the other side of the door.

But I will.

This house watched and supported us as new spouses and new parents, and we did a whole lot of growing in short time here.

Our sweet baby boy spent his first twenty-one months of life behind those plaster walls covered by dark brick.

That's something this mama will never, ever forget.

The best is yet to come, I believe that with all of my heart, but I'll always remember the place we got our start. And I'll tell him stories about our old, charming bungalow for as long as he will listen.