This is one of my favorite pictures from when I was pregnant. I was 35 weeks pregnant and unexpectedly on modified bed rest. Every week that passed was going to be a milestone. While we had done a wonderful maternity session a month earlier, I knew I had wanted to have Stephen take some more pictures in our nursery. That day, there was no time like the present. I took out the mom mug I had made for our announcement picture and somehow managed to get myself into the floor. I was thinking about our baby and wondering if it would be days or weeks until we finally would get to see their face and hear if our Tiny Croft was a boy or a girl.

And then that tiny baby started kicking all around. That’s right when this picture was made. Henry was born 20 days later.

As I write this, I’m sitting in that exact same spot. My now 10 month old darling little boy is helping, in his own way, to help me fold his laundry. And those at home pictures? Well, they’re still my favorite. They speak so much of who our family has become. Earlier mornings than we were ever used to means the coffee pot is always ready to brew another cup and laundry is endlessly piled in baskets, but this is who we are now. And after waiting for Henry’s arrival for so long, I want to remember every little bit of it.

My favorite images of my son are the ones where he's surrounded by his mess of choice at that moment. At 2.5 years old, he's every bit the active messmaker you would expect, and I wouldn't change a thing. It's who he is now. One day, he will outgrow so many of the things he loves now, but as he gets older, I know he'll look back on those same images with a smile. Why? Because they speak so much more to how we really live now. We spend our days playing and learning (currently on read #17542724 of a dinosaur pamphlet), and when he's all grown up, those are the photographs I want to have for us.

When I was pregnant, I stressed over where we should do our maternity session. It was going to be done in January, so it definitely wasn't going to be all blooming and pretty out. Still, we racked our brains for weeks trying to pick the perfect location.

In the end, we picked Georgia Tech. It's where my husband went to college, so it wasn't completely random. It ended up being a gorgeous day and our photographers made some beautiful images.

Looking back, though, they don't tell the story of our pregnancy and what got us to there. It was just a location. Don't get me wrong - we LOVE those images and have several printed and hanging in our home - but there's more to my pregnancy journey than that.

The years of infertility. The endless tests. The waiting. The hoping. The ultimate joy in seeing that second line finally appear. The five weeks of bed rest in the end.

So, so much more.

When my son was born, we had pictures done at home. The house was in the mess of the newborn fog, and I was beginning to struggle with postpartum depression, but those images are priceless to me. They helped me to see the magic of how our home was growing with this new tiny human. More than that, they later showed me that I was doing okay.

I was there - present - and life was so, so good.

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