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so this is Christmas…

(Disclaimer: I always aim to commemorate every 25th, but in the midst of holiday celebrating and traveling, I didn’t post this to you on time, HD. I love you six days more as a result;)

Henry David,

It’s Christmas Day and you are dressed in little red pajamas with petite Christmas light bulbs scattered all over your pants. Your shirt made you take three steps back in excitement when you opened it up this morning: all red with a bright orange pickup truck toting a gigantic, lit up Christmas tree in the back. You love pickup trucks, and I love you. You can be confident that this is true, because I would never have fathomed buying you pickup truck pajamas for Christmas otherwise. Somehow, you make them darling, as you do with most things.

This time last year, you were a mere eight months old and wearing your first Christmas jammies: red and white velour stripes with a reindeer on the behind. In my heart it was the best Christmas ever–our first Christmas with you, your aunt and uncle visiting, all of us tucked warmly into the little blue house and celebrating so much love…

And then this year rolled around. It’s true it’s not the same without Auntie B, Uncle Teddy and your sweet cousin Emmelia here, but it’s equally as good in a different way. (Doesn’t hurt that we’ll get to see them in a mere TWO days!) We’re celebrating Christmas somewhat quietly, with Grammy Susan visiting, our usual brunch and dinner on the menu, and a mostly modest exchange of gifts that we’ve hoped will delight you (and one another). We barricaded you from the living room this morning so we could all go in together–daddy with the camera rolling to capture your little face as you noticed the presents waiting. Your big gift from us this year is a play kitchen. I am probably the most excited of all about this particular gift…so much of our world is cars and trucks and things that go, and I just know you’ll grow into your imagination as you create and cook and bake us through the coming winter months at home. In true Henry fashion, you’ve already declared the oven a garage for your newest matchbox cars, and I’m good with that. At twenty months old (today!) you’re a stinking riot to watch.

When you discovered the pile of gifts this morning your shouted, “robot!” as you ran towards the stuffed character we’ve been eyeing for weeks at the toy store. It took you mere seconds to come up with a name for him (“Moses!”) and to declare yourselves fast friends. It is a joy to see you come into your own, and to discover that your opinions are pronounced, decided, consistent. In moments like these, we best realize that your busy mind never stops–you are always processing something, and certainly soaking everything in. We consider it sheer luck to have landed you, not-so-little one. As your parents, we get as much out of loving you as we possibly could out of any other endeavor.

I don’t know whether this will be a Christmas you remember, or if it might be one that’s tucked into the hazy recesses of your toddler years. If you do remember it, I trust you’ll recall all of the fun we had–cozying up in the house, munching on Christmas cookies, and watching The Snowman before tucking you in for a nap. And if not, well, we’ll certainly remember it…the way you stayed in your jammies and played and played for hours with all of your new things, the way you loved the washcloth I pulled out of the kitchen drawer just as much as all of your wrapped up gifts, the way we prayed over Christmas dinner and talked about baby Jesus while the music played quietly and the candles burned bright.

So this is Christmas, my little love. Baby Jesus has been born in a stable and He is lighting up every corner of the world. Mary and Joseph take Him in in wonder, pondering the Miracle of His coming and not yet knowing the impact of His presence here on earth. Watching you, I understand this sense of marvel–this reverence for the unknown and the beauty of it all in the making. You are filling up our own little Bethlehem on this Christmas night, warming a space in our hearts that means more than we could comprehend, bringing joy and hope to our corner of the world.

praying you’ll always know, deep in your heart, the reason for all of this holiday pomp and circumstance.

love you forever,
your mama

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the beat goes on.

Dear Henry,

Earlier this week, I shared something hard here–one of the darker parts of this year and certainly an experience that has colored our lives (and our life with you) over the past number of months. I want you to know that in the midst of hard things, you have been the shiniest light.

Today marks nineteen months since our family grew to have you in it on this planet, gracing this world. I thumbed through a photo album of your first eight months earlier this afternoon, and I can’t believe how much you’ve changed from that little person we brought home and hardly knew. It’s honestly a challenge to throw back to days without you in them–while life was sweet in many ways before you came, it is that much more rich and textured with you here.

At nineteen months old, you are steady, strong, still resilient. As you gain your sense of self and determination in this season, we are both active participants and bystanders to your precocious, humorous, stubborn, steadfast, and loving ways. You have us laughing one minute and bracing ourselves the next–just as you should as a toddler on the verge of two, with every bit of *both of* your parents in him. “Run for our money” doesn’t describe every moment with you, but more and more of them all of the time. You are witty and quippy and discerning, capturing the joy of circumstances in perfect ways and seeing through our attempts to tag team your discipline when your two-some side reveals itself. We are constantly on our toes with you, and yet, I think we’re learning you well. You have given us much to discover.

My favorite Henry-isms these days are both actions and words. Today, for example, you showed immediate remorse when you did something wrong, and did your best to correct the issue by hugging me tightly and patting my back with your chubby little hand. It’s terribly hard to stay stern for very long when you understand consequences and communicate that understanding with a loving, gentle action. Even when you’re in “trouble,” you’re our little buddy–we know there’s a sweet spirit behind your personality, and it blesses us as your mama and daddy.

More actions?

You get right down to eye level with all of the pups in your life to say hello… “Hi! Hi Kruger!” you exclaim like his very best friend in the world. “Hi Rika!” you say as you lay down on the floor to get close to her face. “Hi Peyton! Hi Callie! Hi! Hello!” You are impossibly friendly and darling in your efforts.

You wake up in the morning with a whole list of things you’ve dreamt about or are thinking about that must. be. discussed. right. now. Goats! Pigs! Cows! Tractor! Wagon! Engine! Traaaaaaain! Thunder…Boom! Boom! Raining! Cars! Downstairs…Kruger…Water! Your morning train of thought is a far better wake up call than coffee.

You see everything from your backseat, rear-facing view. And I do mean everything. There is chatter from the car seat for miles as we pass cranes, ambulances, police cars, pick up trucks, flags, kids, bicycles, trees, clouds, the moon, sunshine, lights, animals, COLORS! Who needs the news when they can have the Henry Report? I am taken with your little voice and the way you notice the important things, distracting me from the unimportant and causing me to appreciate the world right where I am. Right where we are.

You tell me things. More than just words, you’ve begun to truly articulate your thoughts and needs and wants, and it’s so beautiful. As your mama, I love knowing what you’re thinking. Today you’ve said things like, “Mommy do it.” “Henry do it.” “Kruger did it.” (Uh, oh. How did you figure that one out so fast?) “Henry tired.” “Henry’s water.” “Funny.” “Laughing.” “Go get it.” “I need it.” And so forth. As your ideas string together and your words develop into sentences, I’m watching you become so self-sufficient in ways I never expected at this stage. I love how bold you are, but I wish the clock would stop advancing so quickly at the same time. Keeping up is an adventure.

Anything else that’s changed over the past month? You’ve gained two new teeth this week, bringing the grand total to eight. It’s amazing what you can manage to eat in one sitting with just eight front teeth, but you let little get in your way, and your pearly whites have been no exception. You LOVE to color. You liked it before, but it’s a daily activity now. That, along with lining up your cars, playing trains, running through the house chasing Kruger in hysterics, and reading your favorite books (Paint Pig, Construction Sites, Pantone Colors, your children’s Bibles, Dr. Seuss’ ABCs, Moo Ba La La La (still:), Little Blue Truck, and Let’s Go) a dozen times a day. You like to sleep with two blankets as of late, cuddle up with Giraffe-y to sleep, and often pray for our meals and at bedtime when you’re in the mood. You love going on a “hike!” and checking out all things in nature. Whew! You are a busy and growing boy.

And we love you like crazy. Oh, man, do we ever! You will never have any idea how fortunate and blessed and lucky we feel to be your parents (at least until you have a little buddy of your own). We thank God for you a million times over and we pray to honor Him as your mommy and daddy. All of this time with you is a taste of Heaven on earth–even on the hard days.

Keep being you, and keep acting two (if you must;), and keep chasing after everything good.

you heal my heart, Henry David. it’s true. xo.

mommy

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i have something to say.

I’d had a hunch amidst party-planning and birthday chatter, but decided to wait. If I was right, I wanted the celebrations to be separate–each their own wonderful expression of our life at this stage. We wrapped up a weekend honoring Henry’s first year in our world, and when the dust settled, I snuck quietly away that Monday morning to take the test. Two lines. Inside, I was beaming. Life felt rich, full, incredibly good as I whispered the secret to Henry that morning. “You’re going to be a big brother!” I told him, as quietly as I could. I laughed as the words became real in my mouth–he smiled at me as Henry would, as if to say he was celebrating right along. That day, we wandered downtown to find the perfect memento, and I carefully wrapped our selection–a soft, giraffe-shaped rattle for Henry to give to his daddy that night at dinner. We were sorry for the early Father’s Day present, we wrote on the card, but we thought he might need this new toy to ring in the New Year. A baby brother or sister was on the way!

For a short time, we exchanged knowing looks as we encountered friends–too early to share of course, but oh how we loved the secret! We talked about baby at the dinner table, both quietly pondered necessary changes to the house, a second nursery, holidays with a little one due in the midst of them. A New Year’s baby! January 2nd was the bullseye on the calendar. Not quite eight months away. Our chatter was pure bliss to my mama heart.

And then what you never want to have happen, happened. And what you dread as an expectant parent became tangible. We didn’t have to wonder what it felt like anymore. We knew. We weren’t having a baby, and it was raw and hard and heart-wrenching and terrible. We called our parents to tell them two sets of news: “We were pregnant yesterday, but today, we aren’t.” We sat on the couch and looked at each other and wondered how in the world we were going to come to terms–with this outcome, with our sadness, with the days ahead.

It really does feel this bleak with you’re in the midst of it because a child–your child, is no longer going to born to you a living, breathing, beautiful soul. Still beautiful, yes. But in an entirely different way than you ever imagined, and when it happens, you don’t want to think of all of the beautiful right away. You just want to grieve. To throw in the towel. To know that it’s all going to be over. And that’s exactly how we were left processing that day.

Millions of families go through it, and far fewer of us believe it’s ok to talk about it, and far fewer of us still actually do talk about it. It’s not easy in the least bit–not for a moment. I’ve never wanted to pretend that it was, and so this story has had to unravel itself slowly, until it was ready, six months down the line. We had a miscarriage and lost a baby, and some days, it is still hard and raw and painful to think about. But now I can see some of the beautiful in it, too, and I’m here telling the story because I think it’s important to share our aches as much as our joys. Our life is so full of joys. This year, it has been riddled with its share of heartache, as well. And God has been generous and faithful and abundantly gracious in the midst of the ache.

By now, I would be seven and half months pregnant, seven weeks from my due date, taking weekly photos of my exponentially growing bump. We would probably have the tree up, envisioning a shorter-lived holiday stretch in anticipation of baby #2, hustling around putting finishing touches on a new space for the little one–another re-working of our cozy home to make room for more cuddling and cozy. Instead, we are fully embracing the growth of a gentle-spirited and chatty eighteen month old who reminds us daily that life is still blessed, beautiful, essential. Our days as parents remind us that it is also challenging, wearing, imperfect. We don’t have any more figured out than we did six months ago, but we’re weathering it better and we’re expectant for God to move in His timing. There are plenty of days when this knowledge of God’s sovereignty doesn’t make our humanity feel any easier.

(I know that for a dad, losing a pregnancy has its own set of emotions. I respect them, pray for them, grieve them alongside Jason. But I won’t pretend here to know entirely how he feels or what he thinks about in this strange season of our lives. I say this just to recognize that I’d be remiss to attempt classifying his thoughts on this subject here in a blog. And I want to honor his privacy here, so to speak. Where I have said, “we” I mean we. And from here, the rest is me, knowing that our hearts are similar, but not the same…)

Since May, my world has often been consumed by my own thoughts, riddled with broken and pleading prayers, and compounded by everyone else’s questions. I don’t say this to offend, but perhaps to create an awareness if it isn’t already there. When someone isn’t pregnant, you never know the circumstance. Maybe they don’t want to be, and that’s ok. Maybe they desperately want to be and aren’t. Maybe they were, and they’re not anymore, and there’s no easy way to say it, so they just answer as politely as possible and add the question to the pile. I would put myself in categories two and three. And some days I weather it better than others.

When you’ve had a miscarriage, I’m not sure you want to explain to everyone in the world that you’ve had one. You don’t necessarily want anyone’s pity–although you might require a few amazing friends and family members to be lifting you up, encouraging you, and praying for you on a more than regular basis. This was me, and still is to a great degree. We shared our news with a handful of trusted prayer warriors and loved ones. I leaned harder into those relationships, drew away from others, avoided some social settings because I knew it would just plain be too hard. I challenged myself to still show up to moms groups and play dates and baby showers and church events for two reasons: first, because I needed to feel normal, and second, because I still wanted to celebrate the good in the lives of people around me. It’s been a harder fight than I’d like to admit, but God’s grace over me still swoops in at every exact right moment. I still assist births in this season with great joy, as though there is a protective shield guarding that part of my life. I still delight in new babies being born, new pregnancies announced. I just wish that mine was among the bellies gaining momentum in my life, and I have to slay my dragons as they appear. It’s a very ragged-edged kind of healing that I don’t understand.

But I don’t need to.

God is crafting my story–our story, out of the good and the bad, and still making all things new. I have faith that our family will be added to in God’s timing (which I confess to questioning somedays, even though I somewhat grasp the process). When we want things, we want them now. We can only see a small, narrow field of the greater picture He is crafting for us. It promotes us to fight impatience and to trust more than we are humanly capable of. It urges a sense in us that we didn’t know before great pain, and strengthens our muscle to hope when we apply the hurt as it fits with faith and our knowledge of a Savior. At least, at this stage of life, it does for me. I am learning to get a little better at this “peace in the midst of suffering” business, although I don’t pretend to want to. Not really one bit…

more to share…

mm

But with you there is forgiveness,
    so that we can, with reverence, serve you.

I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits,
and in his word I put my hope.
I wait for the Lord
more than watchmen wait for the morning…
Ps. 130.4-6

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i owe you one.

Hank,

A note to you is long past due. You’ll be getting another before the week is out, but in the meantime, it would do my mama heart some good to tell you what’s on my mind.

Life has been quite busy lately, and I’m hopeful that you haven’t felt the brunt of it in our days together. This is the first in many days that I feel like I can breathe (and blog)–I’ve had a big goal on my plate with a deadline I couldn’t ignore, and balance has been trickier than I wanted it to be for your sake. I’ve been crunching tasks into every spare minute, using nap times as battleground for paperwork and essays, and juggling every other responsibility into the midst of your playtimes, mealtimes, routines.

I’ve tried to make sure we’re still carving out time for all of the important stuff: cuddling up with a stack of books, sharing a bagel at the coffee shop, choosing the perfect matchbox car to take along each day, and picking out veggies at the market mid-week. And yet, our usual pace together has been different–me always checking the clock and thinking about what’s next, while dying to be present and appreciative of the way you eat your breakfast at your own speed, savoring and sticking to every bite. I want you to know that I love our time together, and I’m asking your forgiveness now if I haven’t honored all of the seconds we’re blessed to share. As always, you are still gracious and persistent–still asking to climb into my lap without reservation, still cuddly, still with that look in your eye as though your mama could do no wrong in this world. It isn’t true, darling. But you can know at this moment and forever that my intention is to do right by you at every turn. I’m offering you my best, in other words, and when I get it wrong, the heart behind it is still intended for good.

You are so young and small in the grand scheme, but your ability to forgive and love and run at something unabashedly is changing my world every day. You are a constant reminder that I am called to something far bigger than myself. All of my hopes and dreams have you in them–wrapped up and intertwined in the very best ways, all of my intentions and actions with you in mind. I pray that we will do life like this for a very long time, learning from and spurring each other on as we are called to do, honing our spirits and our love for each other as mother and child with every step. You amaze me. Amaze, amaze, amaze. I’ve never deserved you, but entrusted into my care, I will do my best to serve you well in every moment offered.

This morning, we wandered to the post office together (police car and tractor in hand) and put a weighty, beautiful, bloodsweatandtears packet of documents in the mail and sent it far away. To me, it represented perseverance, passion, calling, diligence, grace. To you, it means your mama is a little more free to just be–to take our days in stride and to pour time into you more fully in the days ahead. We left the post office with a new lease on the day and a very fancy “I visited the post office today” sticker on your jacket. Indeed you did, bug of mine. Thank you for going with the flow, for reminding me to take time outs for playing and getting dirty and snuggling up, and for flexibly and breezily coming along for the ride!

love you more than ever,
mommy

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520 wondrous days later.

520 days. 17 months. Today’s milestone and a little bit of my own disbelief, all at the same time. You are growing, growing, growing, my dear boy, with no sign of slowing any time soon. I knew this was the risk we’d inherit; having you of course meant watching you take flight from day one, just the same as it means 519 days later. I cringe at this a little bit sometimes, but I love being your mama so much that it hurts, and I’d take the growing pains over anything else, any day.

I’m not so much “Mama” these days as, “Mommeeee!”, and oh, how you squeal my name with such energy and delight, it’s contagious. I liked being, “Mama,” for certain, but “Mommeeee!” comes with a sense of intention–a need expressed, attention wanted, sheer joy at the discovery of something new, love for this person who loves you more than anyone else ever could (although I’m sure if you checked with your dad on this one, he might argue, and that’s fair.) Your shift from mama and dada to mommy and daddy comes at the exact same time as a verbal explosion under our roof and you, Henry D, are at the helm. Your little voice fills up the empty spaces and wafts over and under our daily everything, heightening our senses to the sweetness that you are and the enjoyment you have always been. “Flower,” “hop top,” “bippo,” “Elmo!” “Go, Go, Go!” “Kwoo-guh (Kruger),” “Pease!” “Emma!” “Amen!” You are abuzz with chatter.

This past month cradles so many firsts…your first sentence (“That’s a cow!”), your first gondola ride in the mountains, your very first and oh-so-adorable cousin, Emmelia! Not the best month yet health-wise, your first split lip, hospital visit, CT scan, and tummy bug, along with new bumps and bruises from all of the running around you’re doing at this adventurous stage. You’ve taken two airplane rides, traveled to Chicago, Milwaukee, Denver, Breckenridge, Boulder, and back, and you’ve mastered the art of art-viewing at ArtPrize 2012. As of late, you’ve taken to leaf picking and rock collecting and Kruger chasing, too…all of the things I’d expect from a boy and all of the dirt and scrapes to go with them 😉 You are so very good for my soul!

Henry, as I watch you grow, I’m reminded over and over how our Great God knows exactly what we need, when we need it–and how He meets us there in all of His power and love and gentle compassion at every turn. We are so small, Henry, but the God we serve is Mighty and Big and Powerful and Attentive, and He will always guide us on the path He has set for our lives if we seek Him and desire His presence in the daily. I pray this for you, sweet child. That you will seek Him in the daily. Being your mama has taught me this–more than anything else ever did before you came. I need God so that I can be the best mama I’m able, for you. And I need God so that I can love and serve your daddy well, and so that I can continue to become the woman that God intends for me to be. I hope that as you grow even more, this will be apparent and encouraging to you. God has amazing plans for your life, and I get to watch them unfold every day. Even now, while you’re still so small, His hand upon you is evident in every bit of who you are.

I loved you before I knew you, and today I love you 520 times more. I pray that my longings–to keep you small and to protect you always, never get in the way of your growing and changing and adventuring in all of the ways that God will call you to on this earth. You are a miracle in our world, Henry David. Nothing will ever change that, I am sure.

to infinity and beyond,

mommeeeeee!