To bring our precious babies into the New Year with us, The Lucky Anchor Project did a photo challenge on the social media platform Instagram. My next few blog posts will have the photos and stories I shared in the challenge.

I am grateful for this challenge, I found choosing the photo and typing out the explanations therapeutic. Many times I had Albert help me chose or had him chose the photo he wanted to use. After each post, I would read my responses to him, this always led to a discussion about our son. Nothing heals the heart more than talking about the love we have for Theodore.

I loved participating in this challenge for myself but also, just as much, enjoyed learning so much more about some of Tek’s Friends. Moms that participated in this really put their hearts out there.

#lapnewyearschallenge2021 #1 – Child’s Name and Why you chose it

Here is the story of how we named our son.

I have always loved names you can shorten. Once of my favorite names is Edward because I love that the name goes through all stages of life – Eddie, Ed, Edward. Albert didn’t want to use the name because of the Twilight book/movie series.

In 2016, Theo Epstein to the Cubs to the world series and won. I loved how the name Theo looked in writing so fell in love with the full version – Theodore.

I also got to use my other favorite name Edward as our sons middle name which is Albert’s middle name and his Grandfather’s name.

While I was pregnant I called Theodore Tek ( his initials) because we were attempting to keep his name a secret. We failed and let his name slip out many times but I still called him Tek.

While in the NICU I overheard one of the nurses call him Teddy and quickly out a stop to that. I had no intention of calling him Teddy so they wrote “Not Teddy” on his board. They couldn’t write his nickname because that was our password with the nurses and doctors.

The name Theodore means God’s Gift which I guess God took seriously and welcomed Theodore into heaven and just 10 days old.

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#lapnewyearchallenge2021 #2 – Birthday/Due Date

“…she was diagnosing me with preeclampsia with signs of severe features; as a result, she was going to have me go up to labor and delivery to get prepped to be induced. I called my husband and up to labor and delivery I went.

Some may have been scared at this point but I wasn’t. I was 100% ready to become a mom. I wasn’t scared about labor; I knew I was getting the epidural as soon as I was allowed to. Every part of me was excited! As the three of us waited in the labor suite, we talked about the arrival of our son. We all laughed at the fact that my actual due date was March 5th (3 days before my birthday), but due to being high risk I was scheduled to be induced on February 12th (1 day before my husband’s birthday) and here we were being induced to have a January baby!! We loved the idea of a January birthday.”

#lapnewyearchallenge2021 #3 – Favorite Photo

For this challenge I asked Albert to pick his favorite photo of our son.

And I absolutely love the this one. J

Looking at this picture I am so amazed by how much he looks like his daddy (eyes) but at the same time see so much of me (nose) in him.

Our son was born with a full head of hair (hello pregnancy heartburn!). The NICU nurses loved to do all sorts of things with it – Mohawk, spiky, and one even made it look like Sheldon Cooper from Big Bang Theory – that made me laugh! My favorite was natural messy. His hair was so soft I was obsessed with touching it.

Theodore was a beautiful baby. I always like to say to Albert when we look at pictures together “damn we did good”.