Mommy dates

Posted on November 7, 2012 | 10 comments

All month I have looked around my house with my What can I get rid of and declutter lens. This morning I am looking at my house with my Holy Shit, I have a Mommy Date microscope.

When I was very young and dating and someone would stop by my dorm room or I would try and look at my place from a young man’s point of view. This was pretty easy. I didn’t have to clean anything. I made sure there was beer in my refrigerator and that there wasn’t a pair of men’s boxers on my bedside table or a proverbial pair of boots under my bed. I had beer and I wasn’t taken. We were good to go.

When I was older and a single mom dating it was more confusing. MQD came to pick me up for our first date and I can remember looking around my place and hoping that the mini-kitchen in my living room wouldn’t freak him out. I had Pottery Barn curtains. What if I was too far gone in to the land of Grown Up to interest him? I hoped that my futon would make it clear that my 20’s weren;t too far behind me.

This morning I have a Mom Date. We met at a local children’s museum. She blew my mind when she asked me for my number. And then she won my heart with a late night call freaking out about an email she thought she had sent to the wrong person. We email. We text. I even called her the day I got a shitty haircut and slugged back way too many glasses of wine on my front porch. She’s funny. I think she might even like-like me.

But now she is coming to my house. To let her child crawl around on my floor. I have to vacuum. Like Vacuum with a capital V. What if her kid finds that leaf I missed and he chokes? My bathroom is clean. But it doesn’t smell like bleach.

Donate: this frog. Please ignore the dog hair on my couch!!! Please!

Should I offer to make her lunch? Oh man. That’s too complicated. Coffee? Should I apologize for my oh so not green and environment-friendly love of the Keurig cups? Hopefully my offer of real sugar or Truvia made from stevia and not cancer-causing Equal will win me favor.

I suggested we take a walk if it isn’t freezing. Does that make me sound like a fitness freakazoid? I am obsessed. A little. But I don’t care if she is. I should probably not drop a line like “Hey, some of my best friends are totally lazy!”

I’m guessing I should probably not say “So, I guess you read my post…” even though she has read here in the past. I mean it is asinine to assume that she checks back every hour on the hour and she is coming over practically any minute… Gah.

Keep. The viking helmet on our bookshelf in the kitchen because it was a wedding gift and it makes me happy. Who would not want to be friends with a gal with a viking helmet?

Donate. A metal polka dot frog because while it matched the beach-y decor of my downstairs bathroom ten years ago it has no place in my life now. And there is no reason for it to hang out in my living room junk drawer.

Trash. A handful of receipts I had stashed in the catch-all tray in my living room. No one ever returns peanut M&Ms or Diet Coke and let’s face it, that’s what I buy on the regular.

Wish me luck. I brushed my teeth. I am wearing yoga pants. But I might change. Jeans? Oh man, this is so confusing. How do you make sure you look like a good Mom friend but not too Mom-ish?

Maybe we should have mimosas….

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A Letter to My Girls

Posted on November 7, 2012 | 6 comments

Girls,

This morning we talked about the election results over breakfast. Emily, you asked me why I was glad that Obama had won and we talked about how you vote for the candidate that you think believes in the things that you feel are most important. We talked briefly about how candidates talk about their platforms and how we all try and make an informed decision.

“How old do you have to be to be president, Mom?” I answered you. I saw your eyes light up. “You could be the president, Mom, you are older than 35!”

I love that you said this.

I am watching the news this morning, Em. The 113th Congress will have at least 19 female Senators. How exciting!

Lucy, by the time you are old enough to talk about politics we just might be talking about what our President’s husband was wearing!

Girls, I don’t talk to you about politics a lot. But I want you to know that I am so very glad that you are being raised in a country that values your voice. It is hard to imagine that your voices will get louder, but they will. My girls, you will become women with loud, strong voices that are heard. I am grateful for this.

Someday when you have your own kids you will understand why Hope is huge. I Hope so big for you both. President Obama said in his speech last night “I have always believed that hope is that stubborn thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us so long as we have the courage to keep reaching, to keep working, to keep fighting.”

I love that you will grow up to be American women. I hope I can lead you by example. Dream big, girls.

I love you,

Mom

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Exercise Your Right!!

Posted on November 6, 2012 | 10 comments

Exercise your right to vote.  Please.

I can look back on the last 20 years in a number of different ways.   The Clinton years, the Bush years, the Obama years.  The college years, the beach years, the Chapel Hill years.

This morning I noticed that the last twenty years of my life can be divided up in to the teeny, tiny bra top years, the wind pant years (coinciding with my Sporty Spice phase) and the more recent running skirt phase.

I won’t keep you.  I’ll make it quick.  Trashing the ancient teeny tiny running tops, donating the wind pants, keeping the running skirts.

Now go put on your exercise clothes and exercise your right to VOTE!

 

 

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Some more Stuff

Posted on November 5, 2012 | Leave a comment

Stuff. I have written about my tendency to hold on to Stuff before. I hold on not just to scraps of paper and pictures and acorns and single mismatched earrings. I hold on to people, too. It is both my greatest quality and my weakness. In recent years I have learned to embrace the “people are in your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime” theory. Previously I tried to keep everyone in my life for a lifetime. I thought it made my life richer. Sadly, I think it may actually just dilute the people that are there day to day.

I have embraced the theory. I have. I have let go. And I have done so with peace in my heart and the knowledge that just because someone is no longer in my day to day does not mean that they were not there for a reason or that their season may not come around again.

I try to live this theory as it applies to my Stuff, too. I don’t always succeed. Right now in the back corner of my attic storage is a lampshade with black fringe from my Leg lamp costume. I know it is an item that served it’s purpose, it had a reason. I should let it go. But I want it to be a Lifetime piece, I do. I know it has no practical purpose… but you just never know. What if I need it?

In the last seven years I have moved three times. Prior to that I had moved only a handful of times in my life. I took advantage of each move to let go of some things. Having children makes the keeping of everything impossible. Holding on to each and every precious item, it is adding to the pile of Stuff that they will someday lug around.

Daylight Savings Time allows for a perfect morning. We all woke without the use of an alarm clock, our bodies gently nudging us towards wakefulness before the alarm clocks starts screaming Wake Up! You’re Late! (I wake to Monty Python’s Always Look on the Bright Side of Life every single day. Start each day with a laugh and a little perspective.) While Em ate breakfast I rummaged around in my junk drawer in the kitchen for three more items. I promise I won’t spend all month showing you shit from my kitchen junk drawer. Really.

Trash and Donate were easy today. For the trash I have two cheapie cat toys. A catnip toy that has a hole in the corner and a weird little ball that sheds blue plastic pieces. Lucy is a huge fan of cat toys and I am a huge fan of her not choking. We no longer have cats so these items have outlived their usefulness. They have neither a reason nor a season coming up in the near future so in to the trash with them. As I tossed them in to the kitchen garbage can I got a little misty. For the first time in more than 15years I will not be filling a christmas stocking with cat toys for an ungrateful beast that shits in a box in my house. A heartbreaking realization, I know.

Donate – I often wonder if the collect box tops for education campaign is real or if it is akin to the collect soda pop can tabs for cancer campaigns of my youth. I had jars of tabs, bracelets made of tabs, tabs in my pockets, in my backpack. I don’t remember ever doing anything with them, but I knew it was tacky not to pop them off before I chucked a can in to the trash. (In to the trash! Gasp, those crazy non-recycling 1980s.) I clip boxtops from the few items of prepackaged food we buy and I toss them in my kitchen drawer, or in to the bowl of fresh fruit that sits on the counter. Very occasionally I get it together and turn them in to the school. This year I have managed to send them in on three separate occasions and it is barely November. Yeehaw, stay at home mom for the win!

My Keep item is one that has surely outlived it’s season. But dammit, its reason is genius! 17 years ago I used to go to Busch Gardens in Williamsburg, Va quite often. Any and all funds that were not spent at Anheuser Busch’s amusement park were spent on their fine American made product, the Budweiser. Even as a young gal I oozed class and style. I didn’t always have a frosty mug with me, sadly, and I couldn’t just go around slugging beers from a can. I could snap on this metal handle and Tada! This item has a two-pronged approach to assisting you in catching a wicked buzz. Not only does your beer stay nice and cold because your hand is not warming it up but you can’t put it down without it tipping over so beers had a tendency to disappear before my eyes!

I can’t tell you the last time I used this. I pull it out on occasion to show someone. Typically someone visiting from my college days. But this item has lived in every junk drawer I have had for the last 17 years. It has outlasted the purge of moving to a new state. I can’t get rid of it now. Dare I say that this item has no reason, it has no season? Is this a Lifetime junk drawer item?

For today I am going with a solid, yes. Yes, it is. I wanted to show you how handy it is. No can of beer to be found. Here it is providing a handle to my jar of Fish Oil Supplements. Fish Oil has done wonders for my achy creaky joints in the morning. Amazingly enough a solid decade of Budweisers did not seem to make me bounce out of bed feeling like a million bucks. Who knew?

Stay tuned for 26 more days of my treasured pieces of crap. Can you even imagine the wondrous items yet to be revealed?

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Whatcha Gonna Do With All That Junk?

Posted on November 4, 2012 | 7 comments

Keep Trash Donate month has been brought to you by butts.  And by boobs. What’s next? Gettin’ in my drawers, of course! My JUNK drawers!

This morning while I waited for the waffle iron to heat up I opened the dreaded junk drawer in the kitchen to see what kind of treasures I might find.

Keep – rainbow shoe laces.  MQD went to Boston this summer for a wedding.  Like a good husband and a good dad he brought back presents.  Emily and I both received a pair of rainbow shoe laces.  I am not sure what it means that we both got the same gift.  Or that it was rainbow shoe laces but they were a gift and I am keeping them.  Perhaps not in the kitchen drawer any longer, but I am keeping them nonetheless.

Trash – I remember the day that I grabbed a couple of condoms from my midwife’s office.  In the bathroom in the waiting room there is a basket filled with condoms.  Lucy was ten days old. I had an appointment to get an IUD already scheduled.  Evidently I was afraid that the spirit would move us prior to that date.  Clearly it did not.  Expired condoms (or soon to be expired) hanging around are dangerous.  In to the trash they go.

Donate – I have had this unopened package of letters in the drawer in the kitchen since I made MQD his Big Birthday Party Poster “Twenty-nine is so METAL!” I am well known for grabbing two packages of something when it is likely one will do.  I did not want to run short on letters and I had yet to settle on a theme.  On the off chance the theme of his birthday party had turned out to be alliteration brought to you by the letter Q I did not want to run out of letters.  Hence, the two packages.  Monday morning I will toss these in to Em’s backpack. Surely her teacher can make use of them.

That’s it.  That’s all I’ve got.  Belly full of waffles. Sun is shining.  Lucy’s teeth have popped through and her fever has broken. Em is drawing quietly in her room.  MQD is hiding in the bathroom (because that is what Dads do, it’s in the manual.)   Shaping up to be a good Sunday.

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Day Three: Keep, Trash, Donate

Posted on November 3, 2012 | 12 comments

Today’s episode of Keep Trash Donate is not sponsored by my ass. I will give you a moment to be sad.

I thought I’d move on to another part of me that gets no attention. Well, they get a lot of attention but mostly from my nine month old. Lucy is getting teeth this week which means I have a boob out about 20 hours a day. Oddly a single boob is even less than 50% as sexy as a pair of boobs. I will leave that to the mathematicians among us to figure out.

Donate – I am getting rid of a terribly cute dress. It’s purple. And purple is cute. It is a “nursing dress” which means it has two secret mysterious spots to stick a boob out. And it is designed to hide the extra chub one is likely to be carrying after having a baby. I wore it the day I went to have my colposcopy after Lucy was born. (How dare I bring up women’s health issues during Movember?! Jeez, can’t men have just one month!?) Staring in to my closet this morning I realized I haven’t worn it since that day. That was almost eight months ago. I get my boobs out about ten times a day. 10 times 30 days times almost 8 months? 2400 times I have pulled a boob out and that dress didn’t scream “Wear me!” from my closet so it is outta here.

Trash – In to the trash will go a t-shirt I have had since Emily was six weeks old. It’s a pretty spectacular t-shirt really. It has the whole I am one shirt masquerading as two t-shirts thing going on. I enjoy that. A lifetime ago I was a skinny mini and could have appeared in public in nine layered shirts. A couple of kids and a whole lot of pints of ice cream later, not so much. Now I walk that fine line of searching for the ideal coverage. Not skin tight, because nobody needs to see that, but not so loose that it looks like I am hiding something far worse even than reality. Consequently the I am really one shirt but I look like two shirtst-shirt is a great choice. Even better this t-shirt is another item in my nursing clothes repertoire. You can lift up the top layer and pull a boob out of the gigantic underneath arm holes. Gelatinous stomach is covered, boob is exposed. Win win.

So, why am I throwing it out? I was carrying Lucy when I smelled it. Poop. I pulled it off, sprayed a little laundry schmutz on it and I went to throw it in the washing machine when I saw another tan-ish stain on the arm. It had been on there for years. About seven years, actually. This shirt has always had a tan stain on the forearm. I just ignored it. It was a comfy shirt, nursing mom or not. In that moment I knew I had been wearing a shirt with a shit stain on it for seven years. I don’t actually know that tan stain was shit. But I feel it in my bones. I am not ever gonna wear that shirt again. Trash. Day three.

Keep? I don’t mind if I do. I donated a nursing friendly dress. I trashed a nursing t-shirt. What am I keeping? Is it a nursing friendly tank top or a fun sweater that buttons up the front? Nope. Is that because I don’t plan to nurse Lucy as long as I nursed Em? Nope. I just don’t plan to wear nursing dresses and t-shirts for the next four years so I will be keeping these shoes. They are gorgeous. Most recently they were the crown jewel in my Halloween costume. 1983’s A Christmas Story. The Leg Lamp. “Only one thing in the world could’ve dragged me away from the soft glow of electric sex gleaming in the window.”

Day three. Keep Trash Donate. Some day I will be standing just over six feet and two inches tall at a cocktail party and my kids will be at home with a babysitter. I will be making wonderfully amusing small talk in a beautiful pair of heels. I will not be wearing a purple nursing dress shaped like a tent or a t-shirt with shit on the sleeve. Or a lampshade.

Mark my words.

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It’s in my genes…

Posted on November 2, 2012 | 14 comments

MQD took the day off of work today “to spend some time with the family.”  I am not sure this is what he had in mind.

“I’m glad you’re gonna be home.  We need to get Halloween put back up in the attic and I am going to clean out the upstairs closet.   And since you’re home will you take a picture of my butt in all of these jeans?” I point at the big pile of jeans on my bed.

Instead of raising an eyebrow and asking me “Is this what you do all day while I am at work?” He kicked back on the bed  in his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle pajamas and waited for me to drop my pants.  That sounds like Sexy Time right there, no?

Yesterday I decided to Keep, Trash and Donate one item every day for the month of November. I shall call today day one and day two since I am keeping, trashing and donating more than a few pairs. I am keeping 13, tossing 2 and donating 9 pairs.

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The Keep Pile

I shall spare you all the details and just deliver the highlights of what I learned today.

1.  Turns out I had only 24 pairs of jeans total.  I am a gross exaggerator with zero credibility now.  I do not have 30 pairs of jeans after all, not of the too small or the too big variety.

2.  What I do have are lots of hugely unflattering jeans in various sizes for various reasons all stemming from the fact that I have had two children and I never throw out  a pair of jeans.   Exhibit A.  Let me present to you I Have The Same Jeans in Three Different Sizes. Here they are in descending size.

I pulled off the jeans in the top picture and said “These are obviously too big and make me have a totally flat ass.” MQD agreed. It stung a little.

This was the first pair I tried on and I was starting to doubt the wisdom of asking him to help me with this task. But he didn’t just stop there.  “Yeah, it’s like you stuck a cutting board in your pants.”  A FUCKING CUTTING BOARD.  Moving on…

3.  When you have a baby and you plan to breastfeed that baby willy nilly all around the town you make peace with the fact that people will see your knockers. You (if you are me) never really love the fact that people will see your stretchmarks and your gelatinous gut.  You like to save that for showing the entire Interwebz.  So you purchase an assortment of strangely high-waisted jeans that give you SADDLE BAGS.

This was a discovery I just made this morning.  Three of these four pairs will be donated.  The fourth will be going in the trash as the bottoms are terribly frayed.  I know, I should upcycle them and make a purse and a coozie and a lampshade but it isn’t called Keep Donate and Make Some Ugly Shit You Found a Tutorial For On Pinterest.  Exhibit B: Mom Jeans – More Unsightly Than I Knew

To the people of North Carolina,  I may force you to see my stomach while I nurse my baby but I will no longer subject you to the saddle bags created by my Mom Jeans that pretend they are not Mom Jeans just because they are Lucky or some other decent brand.

4.  I am a really lucky girl and I am in a way better head space than I even knew.  My husband nodded in agreement while I said “these look awful on me” and I did not throw something at him.  Perhaps just because he was hiding behind the baby. But I’m calling it progress.

 

Stay tuned to see what I Keep Trash and Donate tomorrow.  I can’t promise more ass pictures.  Not until I get myself a new pair of jeans anyway.

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November

Posted on November 1, 2012 | 8 comments

November means a few different things in the blogosphere.  It’s kind of hard to figure out which way to go.

There’s Movember. I could campaign all month to raise money and awareness for men’s health issues, specifically prostate and testicular cancer.  This is an issue close to my heart.  I could spend the month writing about my father.  Every little girl loves her dad and I am no different.  My dad is a prostate cancer survivor.  And moustaches? I am pretty lucky.  One of my favorite people is a proud wearer of the moustache.  I could write about my dad, post funny pictures of Q and his ‘stache. The posts almost write themselves, right?

I could spend November being grateful. Quite a few of my friends on the Book of Face post a new status every day leading up to Thanksgiving. I’ve got more than 30 things to be thankful for surely.  Shit, in the last month I can zip up almost 30 pairs of jeans that have been in my closet for the last two years without seeing the light of day (what up, p90x! Hollah atch’er girl!) There might be a few other slightly less trivial things I am grateful for.

But what about NaNoWriMo? National Novel Writing Month. A movement that began in 1999 in San Francisco – a month long effort to produce a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. For several years I have been tempted to give it a go.  Creative fiction writing terrifies me.  I am way too chicken shit to start it unless it is on a dare and NaNoWriMo is a good enough reason to give it a go, right?

If NaNoWriMo is too daunting there is always NaBloPoMo – National Blog Posting Month. The first NaBloPoMo was in 2006.  Currently NaBloPoMo is sponsored by BlogHer.  Surely I can commit to a post a day, right?

I’ve had a pretty good run this last week or so in the Blog Universe and I have lucked in to a handful of new readers.  It has resulted in my feeling a wee bit of stage fright.  I want desperately to deliver the funny, the poignant, the truth.  And I am coming up with a fat lot of nothing.    Maybe this is the kick in the ass I need?

It’s November 1st today, guys. Today.  I kinda need to make up my mind. Em gets off the bus in three hours and Lucy is currently asleep in my lap.  My Get Shit Done on the Laptop while Lucy Sleeps time will be over in less than an hour.  And my String Together a Complete Sentence in My Mind time is over the moment Em gets off the bus in a Post Halloween Candy Coma, a coma that can only be cured by more candy.

Speaking of those 30 pairs of jeans… I should probably clean out my closets.  Did you just feel the A-ha moment?! I just had one.

November.  Here’s the plan. You are familiar with the game Screw Marry Kill, I hope.  A list of three people.  You have to pick one to screw, one to marry and one to kill.  It’s a mindebendingly important game among teenage girls and people with nothing better to talk about.  Andy Cohen brought it back to me on Bravo’s Watch What Happens Live (by the way if you don’t watch WWHL you must have really important things to do while you fold your laundry. Click the link above to see Meryl Streep play Screw Marry Kill!)

I won’t be playing Screw Marry Kill all month while hitting you up for Movember donations (although that is a spectacularly clever idea.)  Instead I will put a link to Movember in my sidebar and nag you on occasion!

I will be writing every day this month and participating in NaBloPoMo.  Instead of Screw Marry Kill I wil be playing a game of Keep Trash Donate in an effort to clean out my closets, give a little in the form of donations to my local thrift store and remind myself that there is more to be grateful for in this life than Stuff.

All month. 30 days.  Something I will Keep, something I will Donate and something I will Trash.  The only rules – it can’t be something that belongs to the kids or to MQD. I get cleaner closets and less clutter, you get a peek at what matters to me.

I will start with those jeans in my closet.  Stay tuned for gratuitous ass pictures.

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Balance

Posted on October 29, 2012 | 23 comments

It’s no mystical secret that life is a careful balancing act. Every single decent therapist I have ever spoken to has said within twenty minutes “Well, Kelly, it sounds like you need to find some balance and I can’t tell you how to do that.” Well, I am not forking out $125 an hour for you to ask me questions.

Balance. I have spent my entire adult life looking for it. Work and play time. Ambition and relaxation. Exercise and diet. Save money for your future but live in the moment.

Looking crazed, I thought I’d be gone for hours!! Free as a bird!!

I work really hard to keep balance in my life currently. Take care of everyone else and take care of me. It isn’t easy. I left the house this afternoon with the intention of staying gone for a few hours. I have never been away from Lucy for more than about 90 minutes but MQD and Emily were both home. She had a full belly. She had just had a nap. She would be fine and I needed to get out. Bad.

MQD is pretty good about not crying wolf. I wasn’t gone 45 minutes before he sent the first text “We have a very sad baby.” I was getting my nails done. Yup. I am that shallow. Once a month I take an hour for myself and that is what I choose to do. Judge me, if you like. It makes me feel pretty. I sent him one back “Bring her to me, I can’t leave just yet.” He got things calmed down on the homefront and ultimately I was even able to stop and get milk on the way home. That’s right. I went to the grocery store. Party on, Wayne.

I could have stayed out longer. But I wanted to be home. Walking through stores window shopping or sitting somewhere drinking a cup of coffee wishing I was at home would not make me happy. I took my perfectly manicured fingernails home and strapped on an apron. Emily and I sat on the floor in the kitchen and we grated six zucchinis while Lucy took out every single piece of tupperware we own. And I was happy.

That might have been enough Balance for the day. But enough is never enough for me.

After I whipped up some ridiculously good zucchini bread (slammed full of vegetables and almonds for protein power!) I sat back and thought “I’m not cooking another god damned thing today!”

For breakfast tomorrow my family will have delicious zucchini bread made with love and natural sweeteners. For dinner tonight? I taught Emily how to line up Scoops Tostitos chips and place a loving dollop of canned hot dog chili in each one. Then we put some cheese on those bad boys and slid them in the oven.

Because it is all about balance. Em had a fever this weekend and was under the weather. I told her she could have anything she wanted for lunch, anything at all. She picked salad. SALAD.

My girls will grow up loving vegetables. But some day, many years from now, I hope they will both stumble through a 24 hour grocery store after the bars close and grab some Tostito Scoops, a 79 cent can of chili made with godknowswhat and some cheese. Her friends will encourage her to just put them in the microwave (or cook them with their space-aged cell phones) and she’ll say “No way, man, my mom made these when we were kids and you have to take your time and line up the chips and cook them in the oven.”

If it sounds like I hope my kids grow up to occasionally stumble drunkenly through a grocery store and eat food that is one step above low level dog food, yes, I do. They will also probably buy their vegetables from the farmer’s market and recycle like their life depends on it. And that, friends, is Balance.

It’s not hard to picture her drunkenly stumbling around, actually.

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4 years & 40 weeks

Posted on October 26, 2012 | 12 comments

I love you so much I can’t stand it. I even love it when you look at me like “Damn, you love me so much I can’t stand it.” xo

On our anniversary I write MQD a list of things I love about him. Well, I usually do.

I can picture the look on MQD’s face and the face he will make this year. He will read my post and say “I don’t get a list this year? Four years and you are out of things to say?”

Depending upon my state of mind I might laugh and say “Nope, I only love 1,018 things about you. That’s it. 365 things for the first first two years and 288 things last year. I shorted you 77 things last year.” Or maybe I will get all misty eyed and say “Are you kidding? Did you even read what I wrote?” and he will hug me in the kitchen and do that thing where he sways his hips but doesn’t move his feet with his arms around my waist. I believe he thinks it is dancing.

On October 27, 2008 I went on my very last first date. A few days after that we went to a Halloween party and we danced (with feet moving, slow dancing in the kitchen is its own private art form.) Four years ago.

On our first anniversary I wrote him a list. 365 things I love about him. It made him cry. I was moved because he didn’t do things like that, cry. On our second anniversary I did it again. Again, he cried. The following year my list was 77 items short because I was short on time and we were moving and I was so pregnant I just couldn’t make myself stay up late to finish it the night before. He forgave me. I was carrying his child after all.

This year I had ample time to get my list started early. Every time I have sat down to write it I have come up short. In front of the keyboard weeping I can’t write a single line. When you write Reason # 1 – This Life how do you write a Reason #2.

Michael,

Our first year together you gave me Hope.

Our second year together you gave me Love.

Our third year together you gave me a Family.

In our fourth year together you have given me This Life.

Today is the start of our fourth year. Our baby, our Lucy, started walking this week. And I was not at work. I was at home. I saw her first step. And her second. And her third. She sleeps in my lap for her naps. Because I have nothing but Time.

My dreams are coming true. You did this. I was so afraid to speak them, to admit that my wildest dreams were at home with my family. But I did. And you made them come true. A clever list about how you make perfect pancakes and you look adorable in a bow tie is not enough to demonstrate my love for you. Not this year.

Our relationship has shared much of the last year with Lucy. Having a baby can definitely put romance in the backseat (and not in a romantic, teenage car sex way.) It is only fitting that our anniversary is shared with Lucy, too.

A pregnancy is 40 weeks long. Today Lucy has been on the outside for 40 weeks and 1 day. She has officially been on the outside longer than she was on the inside. And I didn’t miss a minute of it. Because of you.

Four years ago we stepped inside my front door and you followed me. I spun around to kiss you and I have been dizzy ever since. You took my hand and we walked down the aisle after we were married to Tommy Roe’s Dizzy. I was dizzy that day, too.

Today. Four years after our first date and 40 weeks and 1 day after Lucy was born I am still dizzy. I think it’s Love. But I am open to the possibility that I might just be really tired. I’ll just have to check and see if I am still dizzy next year.

I love you. More every day. Hope. Love. A Family. The Life I’ve always dreamed of. I can’t imagine what you’ve got up your sleeve for year number five. Good thing you’ve got a year to think about it. Now come on over here. I’ve got a slow dance in the kitchen with your name on it.

Yours,

Kel

 

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