Sweet Dagny

Calm. Smiley. Engaging. Curious. Joyful. Radiant. Bright. Exuberant. 

Nine months of joy. 

Two Babies

Remington Grey and Dagny Clementine. Nine months old. Best buds.

Memorial Day

"They are dead; but they live in each Patriot’s breast,

And their names are engraven on honor’s bright crest."

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 I hope y'all had a wonderful day with your families. My heart aches for the families of our heroes, that grieve and remember their loss. What a sacrifice. We remember their brave and selfless sons that gave their life for our country today. Not a lot of Americans are willing to fight and die defending something they believe in. I'm thankful for those that have, and pray our country would live up to that honor.

My favorite part of the Sailor's Creed has always been this: 

"...I represent the fighting spirit of the Navy and those who have gone before me to defend freedom and democracy around the world...."

A moment of weakness.

Nights are long since you went away, 

I think about you all through the day, 

My buddy, my buddy, no buddy quite so true.

I Miss your voice, and the touch of your hand,

Just long to know that you understand,

My buddy, my buddy, your buddy misses you

Buddies through all the gay days,

Buddies when something went wrong;

I wait alone through the gray days,

Missing your smile and your song.

I need to talk about Mark. I am truly overcome by sadness these days and my heart hurts. I love him so much and I miss him so much. Its very hard because I am extremely happy for Mark and 100% supportive of what he is doing. I wouldn't change it for anything. I just hate that he is so far away  doing it. And this feeling of separation is really getting to me. I might look back at this post and think I was silly to share it. But hopefully, I'll be reminded of how hard this time was and how much of a rock my husband is.
Feel free to scroll to an older post about Dagny if this is too depressing. Isn't this what writing is for though? I need to get it out. I like the idea that I can look back on this. I like the idea that when I do, I might be with my husband and time will have flown by. I like that maybe after I write this, it will be easier to write my day to days again. If anything, it is a sweet letter to you Mark.

I love you. 

I love your smile. 

I love how you changed my heart. 

I love how you made me realize how special I am. 

I love how kind and pure you are. 

I love how handsome you are. 

I love you as a daddy.

I love how you play peek-a-boo with Dagny on FaceTime.

I love how you love me. 

I love how strong you are. 

I love that you are following your dream and playing professional soccer. 

I love that you are good at it. 

I love that you are patient and faithful through this injury and a frustrating start to a season. 

I love how you are constantly there for me. 

I love how handsome you are. 

I love your (long) hair.
I love how responsible you are.
I love the sound of your voice.

I love how you read the bible to me until I fall asleep. 

I love how you love Jesus and make me love Him more too. 

I miss you. 

I miss the way you smell. 

I miss the way it feels to be close to you. 

I miss feeling your arms wrapped around me. 

I miss the way the house feels with you in it. 

I miss seeing Dagny love on you. 

I miss watching you tell me something serious. 

I miss knowing you're close. 

I miss the way you give me a hard time about the toothpaste.
I miss being indecisive about everything with you.

I miss sharing a bed with you. 

I miss our long talks over drinks and dinner about our future together. 

I miss our naps. 

I miss going to the movies with you. 

I miss cooking in the kitchen and listening to good music with you. 

I miss fighting over who is going to turn out the lights. 

I miss going to sleep next to you and waking up next to you. 

I miss having you here to make me coffee in the morning. 

I miss you doing things around the house that I seem to neglect. 

I miss that feeling of safe when you are around. 

I miss my best friend. 

I miss laughing with you. 

I miss looking at you in person. 

I miss hearing you talk in person.

I miss your hugs.

I can't wait to be with you.

I can't wait till I can stop saying goodbye to you. 

I can't wait till I stop missing you. 

I look forward to the days we live together. 

I can't wait to go to church with you.

I look forward to a time when a night out without you sounds okay. 

I look forward to hanging out with friends and family with you and not alone

I can't wait to have waffle Sundays or taco Tuesdays with you and our family. 

I can't wait till you are there every day with our next babies. 

I can't wait till I can go to every one of your games. 

I can't wait for our kids to see you play. 

I can't wait till the day we find a home together. 

I can't wait for a home to feel like home.

I can't wait to go on dates with you.
I look forward to coffee mornings and wine evenings with you. 

I look forward to this time being behind us. 

I look forward to being able to understand why we are apart.

I look forward to our future together. 

I can't wait to find out how much more I could love you. 

I'm thankful for you Mark. I think you are the most amazing man, husband, and daddy. 

I love you. 

My mom, sister and I are doing a Fruit of the Spirit devotional together. Day 4 was "peace," but I find myself reading it over and over each day. Now that thats out, I will think less about how sad I am and more about the peace God has given me. 

"Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid." John 14:27

"Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." Philippians 4:5-7

A Morning Ritual

6:00 am. Dagny wakes up. I feed her and put her back in her bed if I am really tired. Most of the time we go back to sleep in my bed.

8:30-9:00 am. We wake up. Dagny rolls all over me in bed. She acts as if her head is too heavy for her to hold up and dramatically flops into pillows or my stomach. Lately she has been dropping her head  backwards and bends as far as she can. We get up and get changed. Dagny aggressively does 20 donkey kicks and laughs at me while I try to get a diaper on. We make coffee. Dagny grunts at the loud grinder. I open all of the blinds. We go into her room. I sip coffee and watch her go from the walker to the piano to the book shelf to the neatly folded blankets. She then repeats her route of disarray. I usually get climbed on and an attempt to grab my mug is made somewhere in that loop. If Mark has the morning off we FaceTime and watch Dags play.

10:00 am. Dagny starts rubbing her eyes and throwing her head around again. We sway for a minute and I put her down. Some days she goes down with out a peep. Other days, she will spend a few minutes looking out the window, talking, crying, throwing her pacifier around, throwing herself around and bonking into the crib. I go in, give back the pacifier, pick her up, she lays her head on my chest, I put her back down and we repeat once or twice more.

10:30 am. I poor a fresh cup. Turn on pretty music if it isn't already playing, sit on the couch and sip my coffee. I read. Catch up on other blogs, text my sister, read what people are saying about Mark, or shop. Its a good hour or so to myself that I could probably be more productive in, but purposefully choose not to be.

Are everyone's mornings as happy as that? It truly is like clockwork.

Waking up with Dags

Little Jail Bird

I have a lot of favorite things about Dagny. One of them is hearing her in her crib after she's woken up. Sometimes she's sitting down facing the wall mumbling to herself. Most of the time she's standing up like this yelling for me to realize she's awake. 

That little crinkly nose. I can't stand it. 

Waking up with Dagny is as sweet as putting Dagny to sleep these days. I turn out the lights, put her ocean noise maker on, and play Somewhere Over the Rainbow sung by my sister Clementine. Dagny calmly rests her head on my chest and makes little, peaceful noises. Tonight, she tilted her head back and looked at me. I gave her a kiss on the cheek close to her mouth, and she laughed the quietest laugh, smiled, and closed her eyes. I cried. I love her so much and thank Jesus for this sweet gift of being her mama. 

Poor Bird

At what point are wild children ill behaved children? I hosted a party recently that a bunch of friends from work came to. Within minutes of the arrival of a family with kids, my little tiny house was turned into a jungle gym. My couch was a fort and my closets were prime hiding spots. If you have been to my house you'd know its adorned with treasures. Antique hand me downs from my parents, Damariscotta pottery and pieces I like to describe as investments make up most of it. A few pieces are even a little too rickety for Mark's taste. Suddenly, I found myself having a very hard time enjoying the party because my house was being destroyed, and the volume had increased ten fold. I'm not sure if it was that I kept reminding myself to relax and accept that this is what life with children looks like, or the fact that I kept drinking margaritas, but I didn't say anything. Don't get me wrong, I love children. I especially love well behaved, polite, and respectful children. I also understand that my curated house will have to undergo some changes as Dagny gets older and our family grows. 

My sister and I have had a number of conversations about raising children and comparing the different parenting types. Our biggest examples are comparing our families with our cousins. Now that we are all adults its fun to talk about the different methods and "scary aunts" from our childhood. My parents were always the strictest of the families. We knew that at 5:00pm it was wine time and "grown-up" time. The five of us would disappear and entertain ourselves elsewhere. We also knew that when one of the parents had to come tell us to settle down, that meant business and we obeyed. Most of my cousins were terrified of my parents. However, my parents were raising five children in an Inn that was constantly full of inn guests trying to enjoy the peace and quiet of the East Coast. We had to understand boundaries and be well behaved. I love that at a young age, we knew how to find pleasure in talking to older couples staying at the Inn. We knew that there was a time for quiet. When the Inn guests left for the season, we could be wild and make the Inn ours. The Bernets were always a little more on the wild and ridiculous side. Today, they are the funnest people to be around because they are all hilariously silly and they make everyone around them laugh. While some of their behavior growing up never would of flown in our house, its clear that a little wild and silly is okay. I don't want to be the "scary mom," but I can already tell I have a lot of my mom in me when it comes to acceptable behavior.  It makes a huge difference when your children are guests in someone else's home. The behavior in your home can be different than the behavior in someone else's. I want my kids to be well behaved. I also want them to be silly and wild like the Bernets. I want them to know love like those kids do from their parents and I want them to make Mark and I laugh as much as they make their parents laugh.

So at what point is wild ill behaved? Well, when my dollhouse stairs are ripped off and this poor little birds legs are bent back just because, I draw the line. I can look past the messes and noise. Those are easy fixes and apart of the experience. When things are broken because of misbehavior, that is harder for me to look past. The fact is my house is tiny. There really isn't somewhere for kids to disappear and play. We also had two babies here that were on and off sleeping in rooms that could of been played in. So the chaos seemed to be where the adults were trying to eat and drink. It just got me thinking about wild children and how well my parents taught us when wild was not okay. 

Dagny update

Dags is 8 months old. She's getting so big! Currently she crawls around the house making a stinky face and breathes heavily through her nose. She looks and sounds like a little bulldog. She just started giving me open mouth kisses. Now we're working on giving bear hugs like Remi. She is joy in its truest form and I love her to death.

We Snuck Away

Happy May! I'm sad to see my birthday month go, but who doesn't love May! A couple weeks ago Dagny and I made a quick trip to Dallas to see Mark. Mark wasn't ready to play, but the team still took him on the trip because he was going to see us. Thank you TFC. It was the greatest breath of air to see Mark and Dagny together. She took to him as if he was here every day, and we loved on one another all weekend long. Thank you Jesus. Now for an overload of pictures.

Dagny was a saint on both flights. I traveled without a stroller and didn't miss it for a second. 

The hotel was out of pack and plays so the three of us snuggled up in the king bed. 

Taco Diner. 

 After about 40 minutes, a Texas thunderstorm moved in and delayed the game. The stadium cleared as everyone was advised to seek shelter. We hunkered down for three and a half hours. 

I got to see Lindsey! 

Goodbyes are the saddest. Mark is the most handsome dad I know. 

Im not quite sure how this fair skinned beauty and I are related.