Bill and Monica grow up.

Sam and I were both sort of a mess when we started dating. We were making bad decisions and living very selfish lives, very "I am in my twenties and have very few responsibilities and it is the world's job to make me happy and fulfilled" kind of lives. It's a wonder our relationship worked at all...oh wait it didn't, he broke up with me six months after we got together (the fool!). So much has changed in these 8 years since we met, but one moment from our early relationship represents what I still love so much about Sam.

Also, we used to wear a lot of costumes.

Yes. Bill and Monica. We won best costume that night!

It was early on a Sunday morning, about a month into dating each other, and we were going to church together. See, when you party on a Saturday night, all is made well by attending some sort of church service the next day...bear with me here, we were idiots. It was early Sunday morning and the house where we'd been drinking the night before was a disaster. I was hustling to finish doing my hair, but I could hear Sam out in the kitchen. I grabbed my bottle of hairspray and snuck through the living room to see what he was doing, and there he was. Broom in hand. Cleaning the kitchen. I asked what he was doing, and he glanced up through the haze of hairspray surrounding me.

"I'm cleaning."
"Yeah, but why? We gotta go in a minute- just leave it for someone else." All the someone else's were still asleep. I decided I would say a prayer for them at church, in payment for them cleaning up. But Sam would have none of it.
"You always leave a place cleaner than how you found it. I'll just do this really quick."

He went back to sweeping, and I decided I would marry him. Right then and there, in the midst of our messy lives, our selfish confusion, and our shaky walks back to the Lord, I knew that I needed to marry Sam Horney. This man who would never dream of leaving a mess for someone else to clean was my gift from God, the anecdote to my chaos. I loved him so much that I needed to spend the rest of my life with him. So I am. And last night he showed me, once again, that incredible part of his heart that still draws me in and startles me.

The last two nights with Clara were hard. During our long trip to the east coast, on midnight plane rides, entire days in her stroller in New York City and Boston, four hour car trips, sleeping in a different place every couple of nights: I gave in to a little bit of guilt parenting. You know what I'm talking about? When you don't want your baby to cry in your brother's one bedroom apartment at night, and you don't want your baby to cry in a taxi, and you don't want your baby to be upset at a memorial service, and your baby threw up earlier in the day because it is hot as hell in this damn city, and your baby is so tired of meeting new people, and so you nurse and nurse and nurse no matter what time it is?

Right. Exactly.

Except then we got home and our sweet girl was still waking up several times a night to eat, despite being night weaned before we left. So we had to start over. Forehead smacks and groans all around, people. We decided to cut her off cold turkey and let her remember how to sleep through the night again, hoping it would just take a little bit of crying. (We're not big into letting her cry. Clearly.)

The first night she cried for two hours straight. Then last night it was about 30 minutes off and on. I did not respond to her cries either time, however. You know why?

Because by the time I blinked open my heavy eyes and stumbled to the nursery to check on her, Sam Horney was already in there. Every time. Rocking her. Applying teething gel. Changing her diaper. Singing a quiet lullabye. He never woke me, he never hesitated in what to do, he just got out of bed and tended to our daughter. And he did it with pleasure.

I love him. He is the calm in my chaos, the broom in my kitchen, the lullaby in my dark. And I am just so thankful to be raising my baby with a man who loves to be a father. GOOD GOLLY that is sexy. Maybe we'll put our spandex bike outfits back on tonight?

Too much, you guys. Take it down a notch.

JUST TO BE CLEAR, if Clara ever asks, her parents met at a Bible study and didn't kiss until they got married. Second base was saved until they decided to have a baby. And we only drink wine for communion.