this is how i'll remember you

when everyday feels more erratic,
and the tantrums remind me that you're two,
each sleeping night, as sweet silence returns,
i peek through the night to gaze in at you.
and this is how i'll remember you.

when earthworms and green army men
quickly become your very best friends,
and five years of tide and blue jean patches
develop a relationship with me that sees no end,
this is how i'll remember you.

when pretty girls with silky hair and shirts
appeal to your eyes and capture your heart
i will be there to straighten your black tie
and pray for your return before you even start.
still, this is how i'll remember you.

and one day you will have beautiful children
and you will be a man of the highest esteem
and integrity will be linked with your name
my heart will bust with pride at every seam.
but this is how i'll remember you.

Cassie Murray 2007

calvary made it!

today is quite the milestone at the murray household; our little man is officially one today! it is hard to believe that a year ago i was at the hospital in the worst pain of my life. this year has been a tough one. between surgery, allergies, and oregon trail illnessess we almost didn't think this day would come. oh how grateful i am that we are able to celebrate!! he is quite possibly the sweetest and most cuddly child ever. he's not quite walking. in fact, the other day he took two steps and each step evoked the most pitiful cry i have ever heard. he's scared of walking. he will climb to the top of a coffee table in no time, but taking one teeny tiny step forward is terrifying. maybe the ground is made of lava. he is sweet. he loves harper. she makes him laugh like no one else can. one of his favorite places to be is in her room. he also loves animals. he thinks everything is a dog. he also loves to eat. last night he had two slices of pizza! i am grateful that he is here. i love him with all of my heart. i don't quite understand how that can be because i love harper with all of my heart as well but it is a strange truth...one person can love two different people with their entire being and it is peculiar for each one. i don't love harper like i love calvary; i don't love calvary like i love harper---but i love each one entirely & completely.

little clothes

well this past week has been a week of adjusting the closests from fall and winter to spring and summer. i went through all of the kids clothes determining what was too small and what could possibly be worn next year and then going through the clothes from last spring and summer and determining what clothes were too small and which clothes would make the cut. after i finished, i went back through all of the clothes that were too small and organized them into piles of keepers and sellers. i was much more emotional about this then i have ever been before. as i folded all of the little clothes it hit me for the first time that i do not have little babies anymore. harper is nearly three years old! calvary is going to be 1 on saturday! i just cannot believe it. i found myself saying, "i'll keep this for our next baby." i must be delusional. next baby is something i swore would never happen and here i am planning for it. wow. this must be that baby bug that people talk about. i don't even want any more babies, i just don't want mine to get any bigger. harper assured me today that even when she is a grown up she will still cuddle with me--we'll see about that. i suppose the best thing that has come out of the changing of the closets is that i realize a little more fully how precious this time is to me. i spent a little more time holding calvary as he fell asleep. i spent a little more time painting harper's little fingernails and held her a little longer while we read a story. this is probably my favorite time in my entire life and i am afraid that nothing else will be able to compare to this and they are quickly growing and i am quickly losing this time! yep, i love them. every single one.

Legitimate fear...

Someone please help me. I've used google, i've used parenting.com, i've even used WebMD. none of which have helped me in my quest of determining my child's normalcy. Surely, i think to myself, that several infant/toddlers have irrational fears of completely harmless items. surely, this is not only my child. i've searched high and low and the only conclusion i have come to is that yes, it is only my child that has irrational fears of completely harmless items. Calvary, 11 months old, is afraid of pinecones. don't stop there; his fear is not only limited to pinecones but extends into a deep suspicion of all things natural. Grass is to be avoided in anyway possible. Flowers...don't even think about. But t doesn't even stop there. the other day Harper was playing with her blocks and she dumped them all out--at that moment you would have thought that an air raid was striking in the murray family play room. ear piercing shrieks forced me to my knees where i found little calvary cowering in fear. i picked him up and his nails dug into my skin hoping that i would not return him to harms way. even tonight at dinner i was feeding him some ground turkey. for a while it was fine...as long as i was putting it directly into his mouth. but when i placed it on his table for him to grab for himself he shuddered and recoiled as far into his seat as he could possibly get. it is weird. so i spent the better part of the night searching popular sites for any glimmer of this being a normal problem. i have found nothing. i have found fear of baths, fear of animals, and fear of thunderstorms. all of which sound perfectly rational. i'm not quite sure what to do. a life of reconnaissance-like examinations of all carbon based materials does not sound thrilling. surely i am not alone.

this must be what it means to admire someone...

so it has been a strange week/weekend. stressful would be a better word. we have had to deal with dumb issues because we decided to procrastinate our responsibilities. the funny thing about procrastination is that when i am justifying my delay everything seems to make perfect sense...but once everything actually pans out i sit in amazement at how idiotic my rational was. so anyway, a one time 30.00 inspection turned in to well over 500.00 escapade that is no where near completion. my court date is tomorrow and i will be standing there with a handful of "attempts." all of this piled on top of the illnesses that keep plaguing the bodies of my small children made the comfort food of Bojangles and idleness seem like the only resort. when i finally went back to work on Thursday, i learned that a friend of mine lost her daughter. it doesn't matter how inevitable that death may have been, the news still strikes like it was never expected. kyle was asked to sing "i can only imagine" at the funeral and he wasn't sure if he was capable of doing it. i begged him to sing because i wanted to do something for my friend and Lord knows that i can't sing, especially at such an event. anyway, when we arrived at the funeral i went to my friend. she was exactly how she always is. she made a few jokes and kyle and i went to our seats. as the funeral progressed and i heard the stories of the family's trials i sat in amazement. i watched as every person in the room wept, not with surprise that the little girl had passed away, but because of how much they loved the family. i spoke with her again after the funeral and i though to myself about the strength, the unforced grace, and indescribable joy that this woman has. i told kyle that i was not sure if i could be like her if i ever had to go through such a situation . i told him that i wondered if everyone in the sanctuary felt the same way towards this woman, the same closeness or love. i always have called this woman, who is very close to twice my age, my friend. but i think it is something more than that. when i see her in the face of adversity it is consistent with the character of everyday ease. that amazes me. i've seen her cry. i've seen her laugh. i've seen her angry. but i've never seen her without joy. i told kyle that i was not sure if i could be like her. but i want to be. this must be what it means to admire someone...

what is in a name?

i just went on a website called "Behind the Name" and i was looking up the names of my children, as if the meanings ever change. when i looked up harper's name i went to the comments tab. i was enraged by the comments left about how there are much more beautiful names out there and several wondered why anyone would name their daughter such a masculine name. when i named my daughter Harper I quite honestly expected a few raised eyebrows. Little did I know that the name had actually made it to the top 1000 names! My daughter is almost 3 and living up to the fiercely independent conotation that the name holds. I named my daughter after Harper Lee not because I absolutely love her novel but because she has written one of the greatest American novels of all time and she has done so without sacrificing her integrity or sucumbing to the pressure of fame. I have no idea what my daughter will become in life, but I believe that it is so shallow to look at a name and judge it based solely on whether it is believed to be masculine or feminine. Sure, there are obviously more girly names out but I believe that there are few that compare with the beauty of the feminine legacy that this name carries. Are we teaching our girls that what makes us beautiful is the way we appear or what we contain within our souls? i must say that having and naming children has made me strive to never judge the name a parent gives their child. surely there is purpose in the choosing. these names are beautiful if not for the simple fact that they are representation of God's entrusting grace...

on the oregon trail...

so in the past two weeks we have had croup, whopping cough, ear infection, sinus infection, pink eye, roseola, and hives. oh, and by "we" i mean harper and calvary. thankfully, the weirdness has been evenly dispersed between the two children. calvary started us off with the loss of a voice which apparently meant the group/whopping cough. we treated that with a heavy dosing of the always favorable predisone. between us--i think i preferred the calvary with no voice to the calvary hopped up on predisone. about 3 days after that calvary moved on with an ear infection and a sinus infection. our only sign with this development was the devil he had become. i sent him to the doctor praying that there was indeed something wrong because if there was not i wasn't sure if i could handle the person he was becoming. just as we finally had him all squared away, harper's school called and said "not to worry, harper just has a red itchy rash all over." not to worry-ha. so i left school and rushed to her school. when i got her to the doctor she determined that it was pink eye (what?) and roseola. the roseola i could see, the pink eye left me skeptical. sure her eye as a little swollen, but pink? oh well. she's the doctor. she told me that roseola was not an itchy rash but my daughter's immune system responds to viral attacks by sending out the hives...thus adding to the redness of the roseola with her own defense system of red puffy hives. this isn't the first time that harper has been sick and developed hives as a result. sigh. i feel like i need a covered wagon and some rations of the spring's crops. modern medicine and its vaccines have failed the murray family...its on to the local medicine man for our 14th century illnesses.