Our sweet angel, Carter Scott!

It's hard to believe it's already been a year since our second child was born.  We are so thankful for our special little boy and we have some precious, sweet memories that we wouldn't trade for the world!  

I remember how soft his skin was, softer than any baby I've ever felt before!  He had the most beautiful reddish-blonde curls that of course made me so excited!  He loved to snuggle, especially with momma!  We did a lot of kangaroo snuggling, or skin to skin, to try to help maintain his body temperature, and of course I just ate up every single second of that!!!!  He seemed to enjoy it too!

He was so tiny and cute!  He made the sweetest little noises and we just cherished every single one of them.  He loved to eat and would fall asleep soundly after his meals.  Despite his cleft, he really liked his paci, especially if we put a little sugar water on it!

Evan didn't get to spend a ton of time with us at the hospital.  Needless to say, a young 2 year old doesn't really have a great attention span for being couped up in a small room with lots of people, cords and buttons he wasn't allowed to touch, and no toys...  But he did give Carter some good kisses and also gave him a special monkey that we made at Build a Bear (that I still sleep with most nights.)

It's hard to explain, but most of the time when we think about Carter we aren't sad.  We were just so in love, and so happy and blessed during those two days we had with him.  When I think of him I feel the peace and joy that I had during those two days.  We weren't sad while he was here and being sad isn't going to bring him back.  And he really was a very peaceful baby. The biggest blessing of all was that he didn't suffer.  He wasn't in pain or discomfort and seemed very content the whole time (except when he got hungry, which is normal for any newborn!)

We just try to thank God that he brought this little gift into our life.  I would do ANYTHING to have him here with us, but that just wasn't the way it was meant to be and we don't have a choice but to accept that and continue to live our life to the fullest.  We might not ever know why God chose us to go through the experience of losing a child.  But we can choose to either be sad over his loss which won't change anything or we can just be happy that our experience was so beautiful and special!

And thank you to all of our friends and family who made Carter's birth special and who thought about him and us on his birthday!  We appreciate it more than you could know.