For Clara at 18 months:

I trip over you all the time because lately you don’t leave my side. All day every day, you carry toys from room to room as you follow me, setting play dishes and dollies (or tiny bottles of lotion, a favorite toy right now) at my feet while I fold laundry or cook dinner or nurse your brother. You don’t even need me to play with you, really, you just want me near you. And you have this heart-bursting habit of drive-by kissing our legs. You stand about thigh-height at the moment and every time you pass me or your daddy, you pause and wrap your arms around our legs and smooch away. My knees are covered in your kisses by the end of the day. And so is my left arm, because that’s the one you grab and cover in kisses whenever I change your diaper, tiny little kissy face touches all the way up and down my arm which makes me feel like a queen. And you say “Mama!” while you do it, like you haven’t seen me in years.

And I have to say, you are sort of a princess around here. Every morning you have firmly chosen a set of accessories to wear before I even enter your bedroom to get you out of bed, and you shout out some combination of “hat!” or “bow!” or a sweater or a necklace or purse or maybe all of the above, and sometimes you even need a certain pair of shoes. This seems like a lot of opinion for an 18 month old but I cater to your requests because I like that kind of certainty in my girl.

You run everywhere. You are small, so short, and the literal pitter patter of your tiny feet on the hardwood makes me swoon, it honestly does. You are the embodiment of my dreams, a real life daughter who is all mine and who runs through my house with a spark in her eye and a used tube of lip loss in her hand. The looks you give keep us in stitches, so naughty and funny and smart. It’s difficult to discipline you because you are just so funny.

You talk all the live-long day, endless streams of babble along with hand gestures followed by a questioning look, waiting for us to respond to your stories. I play along even though I don’t speak your language, Smoochie, because our lack of understanding does not inhibit your hilarity. Then you’ll toss in the occasional full English sentence like “I see it,” or “help please mama” and it shocks me every single time. Even your baby brother loves to watch you, his eyes following your every move as you flit about the house. Your love for your brother is insatiable, and you always need to know his location. “Brudder?” you ask me, your head tilted in distrust, because you never believe that I know where he is. You kiss him in sets of 5 or 6 and then always go back for a few more right on his mouth, just for good measure. You like to look through his clothes and make big messes tossing them out of his dresser drawers, which drives me crazy. But you also love to help do chores, so putting them back is no big deal to you. The vacuum and the broom bring you great joy, as does unloading the dishwasher with me. I stand you on the counter and hand you plates and bowls, which you set in their cupboards with smug satisfaction. You are not afraid to be smug.

You are afraid to leave me and dad, however. After we brought home baby Sam and I started staying home with you guys, you do not like to be away from us. We do leave you sometimes, with your aunts or your grandparents, but we always regret it later. Because you’re fine while you’re there, playing with cousins and eating snacks, but you never want to sleep at home later that night. Those are sad nights, when you cry out my name and weep as you hold your stuffed puppies close, fear rising in your cries. Ever since we spent a week in the hospital with the baby and you were home without us, there is a real fear in your bedtime tears. It makes me cry whenever it happens, and I start wondering all these crazy wonders about your heart being hurt or your trust being broken. Some of it is crazy mom stuff and some of it is real. We can’t be together forever. I know you are growing up so fast, baby girl, and our relationship will change with each new age. You are less baby every second and more toddler than ever. That’s good, of course, and healthy, but I have to admit:

Baby.
You are everything. You made us a mom and dad. A ‘mama’ and a ‘dada.’ We repeat phrases you made up, we miss you when you’re gone, we watch your baby videos when you are napping…we are big puddles of Clara love and we just can’t help ourselves. You are our trail-blazer, as your Nona likes to say, our oldest child, tromping through our life and our hearts and teaching us how to be parents. We make mistakes every day and we question ourselves and our decisions, but we never ever question our love for you. I want to give you more siblings because I know what a gift you will be in their lives, but I also know how insane I would be with only two kids to love. We’ve gotta spread some of this around, doll baby, or you’re gonna get weird, you know what I mean?

You are sunshine and rain and the wind in the leaves, Clara Noelle, and it is a pleasure to be your mama.

Look at him. 

More than a few people tried to talk me out of naming my son after Sam. As my friend Marti put it, “New human, new name.” But I wanted to keep the tradition rolling, especially because I would be raising a FIFTH. How many people do you know walking around as the fifth generation of a namesake? I think that’s awesome. I also love my husband, his father, and the two generations of Samuels before them, because they are all good men who worked for the good of others and love the Lord. What an inheritance in a name, is what I say. I don’t care what other people think.
So.
We named our little boy Samuel Iradell Horney V. BUT NOW I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT TO CALL HIM. The possibilities seem sort of endless:
Samuel
Sam
Sammy
Cinco (for the fifth)
Sammy-pants
Sam-guy (my favorite)
“brudder” (brother- Clara’s favorite)
Sam the man
baby Sam
baby Uncle Sam (as my nieces call him)
etc. etc. 

I keep waiting for something to stick, or to make the most sense. Everyone who meets him calls him something different, which is fine for now. I’m just praying he doesn’t end up with some lame nickname like “bubba” but for now everything is sort of in the air. I still stand whole heartedly behind my decision, and absolutely love the deep history embedded not only in my son’s DNA, but also in the 19 letters of his name. Sure, I could’ve picked something else to call him, perused a few baby name books and websites and found something I kind of liked. But instead I gave him the gift of belonging to a wonderful family, in a line of respectable and generous men named Samuel. I love that.

Now we just have to figure out what to call him. Currently accepting non-lame suggestions. 🙂

I don’t know who I’m more mad at right now: 

Me and Alene: Horney mothers

My sister in law had a baby boy 9 days before I did this winter, and it’s been fun to journey with her through the peaks and valleys of life with a newborn. She lives in Portland, so most of our time “together” is via texts, via nursing time. My phone will beep at three in the morning with a note from Alene, and it’s nice to know I’m not all alone in the dark of early morning, you know what I mean? She is one of my dearest friends, a sister of my heart, and I love raising our sons together. The matching bags under our eyes only bring us closer 🙂

I actually have a few girlfriends currently in the ‘feeding a baby every few hours’ stage of life, and I text all of them when I have a few minutes alone while I nurse Sam. It’s a sweet club to be a part of, to imagine all of these mamas somewhere out in the world with a Boppy pillow and their phones and a glass of water nearby: the same scene played out in a million different places. I love that. Late last night I was texting my “aunt” Maggie, whose little boy was born last week. She’s actually only a few years older than me, because my uncle lucked out and married a beautiful younger woman. So now we’re having babies at the same time and I have a one-week old cousin? Bizarre and funny. I love Maggie. She is one of the most genuine and kind people I have ever met, truly. She and my Uncle James had three kids in the last three years, which is insane. And I asked her last night how everything was going, with sick toddlers and a newborn and just the craziness of parenthood. She had lots of reasons to feel overwhelmed, and I know they must be exhausted, but you know what she said to me? With a three year old, a one year old, a brand new baby, and I’m guessing close to zero hours of sleep?
“I want them to stay this way forever. Small and mine.”

I cried when I read that. The words “small and mine” had a surprising effect on my heart. I’ve often wondered at the dichotomy of these first few years of my children’s life, in relation to my experience versus their experience. They won’t remember any of this. They won’t remember quiet walks through our house as I sing them back to sleep. They won’t remember how fast Sam can swaddle them tight, or the way he holds them close in his sleep. Clara has frighteningly sensitive skin, and I use cloth wipes to prevent diaper rashes. She won’t remember me standing at our bathroom sink, rinsing out dirty wipes five or six times a day, every day of the week, willing to do anything to save her from discomfort. These early years are changing everything about me and Sam, about our life and our house and our marriage, and our kids won’t recall any bit of it. Not in the way we imagine memories work, anyways. They won’t remember how we look at them with light in our eyes. But they are soaking up our love and pleasure and guidance in places unseen, deep in their young hearts, quickly forming opinions of themselves. They’ll decide everything about who they are in relation to the world during these forgotten years with us. Are they loved? Are they valuable? Are they useful?

Yes, yes, and yes, my dear ones. I know you won’t remember me nursing you all through the night. But please know that you are loved in a sacred, holy way, at a chapel built in midnight hours.

See, these early years – these small years – aren’t meant for children’s memories. They aren’t meant to be a signpost of devotion, a clearly marked time period that I can point back to when they hate me or hate us and say “Look! Look what I did for you!” No. This time when they are small and mine is meant as a signpost in MY life. A time that I sacrificed sleep, and showers, and food, and time, and self, in order to keep them alive and well. A time when I stopped living for my own sake, and started living for others. A time when God spoke into my life and revealed a side of His heart that I never could have known if I hadn’t become a parent. These small years are memories meant for me and for Sam, to say that we loved. And we loved well. Through dirty diapers and tantrums on the floor and laughter echoing across splashing bathwater, we learned true love. We are changed through loving these small ones, and we are grateful they are ours. 

“When they are small and mine.” Amen, all you wonderful parents. Amen.

 I took these pictures to make thank you cards for our doctors and nurses. They’re not my best work, but I love them anyways. (The pictures, not the kids. Sheesh.)

my kids always smell like the last person who held them.
elegant perfume on my friend Jamie,
my sisters’ long clean hair,
warm spice of Nona’s lotion,
their father’s sharp aftershave.

these tangible reminders of elbow crooks,
of tender curves between neck and shoulder,
of pullover sweaters and winter scarves,
alight on the skin of my children,
play through their dark hair,
settle into threads and seams of impossibly small
tube socks and
bright red toddler cardigans.

and I carry these children,
through the wink of sunrise across their faces
to bleary moonlit hours at my breast,
kissing lightly, inhaling deeply,
imagining all the while how
love
could translate into chemistry,
into scent,
into invisible volatile molecules
touching down and dissipating,
blended reminders of caresses and joy.

heart notes create a symphony
on my children’s skin,
impressions of the world we leave behind.

I posted this picture earlier today on instagram and everyone said, oh my gosh that is so sweet. And it is, obviously, mind-meltingly wonderful. 

This is the real story of why they were both in our bed this morning. 

Alright, listen. I’m going to share something horrifying. In fact, when I told this story to my sisters this morning, I swore they were the only people who would ever hear it. But perhaps there is someone out there who needs to know that they are not, in fact, the worst person ever at their job. Because I’m 3 weeks into this new job as a mom of two babies, and let me tell you:

I am the worst. Not you. Me. So rest easy.

Let’s start by recognizing the fact that I am tired. If you don’t have a newborn at home, or  live with small children, I’m not sure how to describe the particular strain of exhaustion that I am currently operating under. I could tell you that my left eye has a permanent twitch, like tiny seizures from my eyelid trying to close on its own volition. I could tell you that I had a wicked case of mastitis this weekend, during which I may have actually died for a few hours on Sunday afternoon. I can’t be sure because I don’t recall any scenes from my short journey towards death, like golden streets or the face of God or anything. Which is really too bad, because that could have been a very lucrative book deal. I would have called it, “The Horney Side Of Heaven.” I would have made millions.

Anyways, I’m tired. I guess I didn’t realize how tired I actually am, until last night. I woke up around 4:00 a.m. to a squirming baby who wanted fed. I set him on the bed and got ready to change his diaper before he nursed. Sam got up to use the bathroom, and after he flipped on the light, I reached down for the stack of diapers beside my bed. I wasn’t quite lucid at this point, and did not register the fact that Clara was asleep on the floor. Not quite on the floor, though, because the top half of her body lay across the baby’s bouncy chair. Her hands were clasped sweetly under her cheek and her knees were tucked under the chair, like she was praying. I gasped out a what in the heck?  Clara sleeps in her crib, in her nursery, and I had no idea how she got into our room. She can’t climb out of her crib; she can barely climb off our kitchen chairs. I turned to my husband, who was washing his hands in the bathroom.

“Sam. Did you bring her in here?”
He looked to where I was gesturing, at our toddler folded in half on the floor beside our bed.
“What in the world…No. I didn’t bring her in, you must have. Why did you put her in the bunny chair?”
I shook my head.

“I didn’t…I mean, I don’t remember bringing her in here. Like, at all.”

I remembered her crying for me at some point, because she is getting her molars and sometimes wakes up in pain. I remembered rocking her in the nursery. And that was it. That’s where my memory stopped. How did she get in our room? Why was she asleep in the baby’s bouncy chair? How long had she been there? Sam stepped out of the bathroom and scooped her up off the floor, staring at me sort of accusingly.

“You have no idea how this happened?”

I turned back to the baby to finish changing his diaper/to avoid Sam’s incredulous gaze. He settled Clara onto his side of the bed, her head sharing his pillow, I can only assume out of guilt and as a small protective measure against my sleepwalking parenting decisions. He went out to get a drink or something while I started nursing, and then came back a moment later.

“Why is there a dresser drawer on the couch?”

I bit my lip.

“Are you serious? There’s a drawer on the couch?”

Yes. There was. Not the contents of a drawer, mind you. No. A drawer full of swaddle blankets and tiny hats, pulled off its track and set down on the couch. This means two things:

1. At some point in the middle of the night, I either left my daughter somewhere in my house to find her way to our bedroom floor, or I thought she was the newborn and set her down in his bouncy chair to sleep.

2. I pulled an entire drawer out of the nursery dresser and carried it to the living room to leave on the couch.

Somewhere, someday, I hope someone reads this post and then shuts their laptop with a satisfied sigh, knowing deep in their heart that while they might be bad at life, I am worse.

Also, please don’t call child protective services. I will take a nap today, honest.

I feel like I’m in a dream – sort of a nightmare – where classes start at Boise State next week and I’ve forgotten to sign up for anything. In this dream, the semester will commence without me and I will wake up next week in a panic, frantic over my mistake, with no books, no syllabus, no fresh pencils to call my own.

It’s not a nightmare. I’m done with school. I’ve finished. Graduated. No need to attend class, no need to do homework. It’s a relief to be done, and just in the nick of time, because I have two small people depending on me for their survival. It’s a job I do not take lightly, and it’s a job I’ve been waiting to take on full-time ever since Clara was born, and it’s a job that is at once warm and wonderful and engulfing and foreign. I’m home with these two kids of mine, and more than that, we are HOME. For another 6-8 weeks, we are very, very, home.

Baby Sam can’t see any other kids or go out in public until the worst of flu and RSV season has passed. And in order for that to help prevent any illness, Clara must follow the same restrictions. This directive seemed over the top, honestly, when the NICU doctors issued it, but then our family doctor said the same thing, and then all my nurse friends and other parents of preemies confirmed the neccessity of staying home. Sam wasn’t a preemie, obviously, but he was born the size of a 33 week baby, so we have to follow the same rules for those kids. So, here we are. Me and the babies. At home.

All. The. Time.

Truth be told, I wouldn’t be so down if it were just me and the baby at home. I tried to get pregnant in April on purpose, because I wanted a winter baby. I wanted a reason to stay home in my pajamas and hold a newborn, without feeling the guilt of skipping out on BBQ’s or swim parties or any other warm weather gatherings. So really, this is a perfect situation: except for Clara. Gees. My guilt reaches new levels when she stands by the front door holding her mittens and asking, for 30 minutes straight, to “go bye bye mama? outside, mama.” Then she wanders around our small house, listless and lonely while I nurse her little brother. What toddler misery! The worst might be the way she lights up whenever one of her aunts walks in to visit, like it’s family day in juvie or something.

You know how people sometimes say things like, “that was a hard year” or “that was a difficult season in our marriage,” or just speak generally about a long period in their life that sucked a fat one? I think I might be there. I’m not sure. But I think when I look back on this last year; when I think of Jimmy dying, when I remember this stressful pregnancy and finishing school and Sam working out of town so often,  and then these few weeks I’m spending cooped up at home, I will say to some uninterested young person, “That was a hard year.”

And then I’ll say,

“But we got through it. By the grace of God, we woke up each day. We cried a lot. We laughed too. We gathered up our community and we leaned on their strong arms and loving hands, thankful for the help and embarrassed at our extreme needs, all the same time. We learned to find light in every darkness that fell. It was a hard year, but we were thankful for each crappy day that we had together.”

At this point, the young person (perhaps one of my own apathetic children) will nod and blink twice, which will turn their eyeball phone (iball, probably) back on and allow them to watch holographic television while pretending to listen to me, because young people don’t know good advice from their own backsides, am I right?

I hope you’re in a great year. I hope you are in an abundant season of life, full and sweet, purposeful and productive. But if you’re not, or you’re just suspicious that you’re not, then join me in a thankful game. Because there’s always something: there is always SOMETHING to be thankful for. If ever you’re tempted to feel sorry for yourself or wallow in the murky waters of your own pity, like I often am, here’s a game I find very helpful. Make a list of the things you are anxious or mad or annoyed about. Then right beside those things, write a reason to be thankful for them. A little perspective never hurt anyone, I think we can all agree with that?

I’ll go first, and this is mostly with shallow stuff, because goodness knows you don’t need any deeper peeks into my complicated and frightening psyche.

kind of crappy stuff vs. opportunities to be thankful

• Being stuck at home.

 I missed being at home all of last year, because we ran around like crazy between school and work. I am thankful to be in my own house, which is cozy and warm and full of things that make me glad.

• The possibility of our vulnerable baby getting really sick.

 We live a few minutes away from the only children’s hospital in our state. We have really good health insurance. If our baby gets sick, we will be able to pay for his care at the best facility available. I am so thankful for modern medicine, and for our health insurance.

• Missing school and a learning environment with other grown ups.

 I do not have to stay up late writing any papers or reading any horrible student stories and poetry. Amen and amen.

• Clara missing out on fun days with my friends, sisters, and their kids.

 She will never remember this blip in time. And I have amazing friends who are willing to come chase after my 17 month old and play ‘grocery store’ with her, or sit in my house and hold my son so I can take Clara outside to run around. For the love, you guys, I have such amazing girlfriends. I am so thankful.

• The inversion. The constant heavy gray skies.

 I will be all the more thankful for bright days when the sun finally shines again.

• Sam working long hours or being out of town. 

 I just graduated from college debt-free. We will be able to cover insanely expensive NICU bills when they arrive. These are both possible because Sam has a good job for a big company that gives us incredible insurance coverage. I am so thankful for his job. Yeah, his schedule can be hard to deal with, but he is employed and God provides for our family. I am thankful.

There’s my thankful game. It really does help, even on the darkest days. It does not dismiss the difficulty of whatever journey you are currently on, but it does clear the air a little bit when life feels oppressive.

I’m praying abundant seasons come soon, but in the meanwhile, I am smiling with thanks for just about a million different gifts of grace.
Happy Tuesday, guys.
Oh wait, it’s still Monday?

Cut me some slack.

oh, that face.

he’s a snuggler. pretty much all i’ve ever asked for.

her favorite toy: her ‘phone’

my kids normally do not wear onesies with any sayings on them (#clothessnob) but I made an exception for this one because it says  “I run with the big guys.” ok, buddy. ok.

–

Last week at this time, Sam and I laid in bed, not sleeping, wondering what the next day held for us. We woke up at 3:45 a.m. on Tuesday and I was in labor by 6:00, and I didn’t go back to sleep until very early Thursday morning. I gave birth to our healthy son, wrapped him in my arms and placed delighted kisses on his impossibly small and perfect face. The cut off weight for taking your baby upstairs with you instead of sending him with the NICU nurses is 2,000 grams. Do you know how much our son weighed?

2,000.025 grams.

It was a miracle. We rejoiced and laughed and settled into our room, relieved beyond relief to have our baby Samuel with us. Except then he started failing blood sugar tests, and he wasn’t looking great, and his cry was getting weaker, and then in the middle of the night we followed a pack of nurses to the floor for sick babies and made the longest, most devastating walk of all my life back up to our hospital room. Alone. It was silent. No mewing of a hungry newborn, no diaper to be changed, no rolling crib in the corner. We were on the maternity floor with no baby to call our own, and I cried and cried and cried, empty arms shaking and heart on the verge of falling through my body. We didn’t know if anything was wrong with our boy, we didn’t know when he’d come back to us, and I didn’t know how I could have followed the nurse’s advice to ‘go get some rest’ and left my brand new baby alone with an IV in his foot and no family in sight. I changed out of my labor gown, pulled on a pair of sweats and my boots and blearily stumbled to the elevators. I rode down six floors and walked the long hall towards the son I had barely met.

This was the start of a long week, which followed many other long weeks, which added up to an exhausting and worrisome pregnancy. We are home now, and our baby Sam is sleeping on his daddy’s chest while I drink tea and write this post, and my thankfulness could not be any more extensive. We rode on the wings of a million prayers from all over the world during those blurry days, and I’ll write more about the whole birth story later, because I want you know how God used your prayers to provide for us.
But for now, I wanted to share this picture.

I texted this to my disgustingly pretty friend Cassidy along with this note.
“I kept asking Sam to take a picture of me and the baby, and making him retake it because I looked ‘crazy’ or ‘old’ or ‘tired.’ Finally after 10 tries I was like, wait- is this just how I look now?”

Cassidy quickly wrote this back to me.

“Haha! You look amazing! And proud, and old, and crazy, and tired. Because you have lived a good, difficult, worthwhile life. You’ve earned all those adjectives. Your boy is beautiful and totally yours, by the way. Putting up a fight. That’s your style, girl.”

I thought a lot about that text from Cass. The truth is, I can’t believe what I see when I look in the mirror right now. I can see it reflected in the concern of my mother’s eyes when we Skype, and in the tight hugs my sisters give me when they come by to visit. I know how I look. I know I’ve aged a lot in the last nine months.

But you know what?
I’ve earned this look. The bags under my eyes. The pallor of my skin. My swollen face. My unkempt hair. They are souvenirs from this journey. I have a beautiful, healthy son with a strong heartbeat and skinny legs. I have a little girl who is in love with her brother, and a husband who proved over and over last week what kind of a man he truly is, in every circumstance. So yes, I look old and tired. I know these days will soon pass and I will shower, put on my makeup, and look a little more like myself. But there is something in us, I think, that changes when life gets hard. Some shine that is worn away. It is the nature of all things difficult -worry, disappointment, grief, pain- to rub away at the proud and slick side of our self-confidence.

Thank goodness.

Because imagine, for just a minute, a world full of shiny people. No knicks. No dings. No soft spots or tender scars or worn-in grooves. Just hard, sharp, unbroken people.

Sounds like a dangerous place to fall into, doesn’t it?

It is these times, these years, that make us more true to who we are made to be. My true self is a rounded out and worn away version of my old self, a new woman made stronger by grace, not weaker by pride. It is the days when our job is hard, when money is tight, when our families are strained, when our children push our limits, when school seems impossible, when we lose the ones we love…when the future is most uncertain and we are simply tired…these are the days that break us down.

These are the days that wear away our corners, that take files to our edges and scrape, scrape, scrape until we hurt. Until we change. And with a deep sigh, we gently blow away the shavings of our pride, piled beneath our worn away exteriors.

And we are softer.
Better.
At peace.

I know I’m a mess. I cry every day and I’m still climbing out of the hole that has been my last few months. But I wear this crazed look with a heart of gratitude. Because my crazy means I’ve lived a worthwhile life. It means I am growing in grace. It means I am putting up a fight. It means God is working away at my sharp edges and He is making me better, whole, moreme than I have ever been before. 

Here’s to a world with a little less shine and a lot more love. Cheers from me and this guy-