Saturday, March 15, 2008

This Is Love

You know the honeymoon is over when you keep getting a whiff of stink, and you finally ask your husband to smell your armpits. "Smells fine to me." Then you smell his. "Nope, not your pits." Then you smell his crotch. "Not overly stinky." Then he smells yours. "Not stinky."

This is obviously love, folks.

We often wonder how eharmony really knew that we would be a good match. How did it know our personalities would mesh so well? How did it know that our sense of humor would be amplified in the presence of the other?

Who would have thought that a computer nerd from Tucson and a proofreader from Wisconsin would come together so well and make such perfect children together who were not hit hard with the ugly stick?

Being parents to Ben and Anna is our favorite part of life. Watching Chris delight in my children, giggle at Anna, rest his head against Ben's... Ah. That's the sweetness in life.

This year also revealed a new dimension to our relationship. We are challenging each other daily on our weight loss goals. Partners, compatriots, coaches. I'm so proud of him for every time he makes a decision to break an old habit, every time he trudges out of the house at six am to go work out at the Y before work. He's melting before my eyes.

Even our discussions about his job fill me with a certain joy. The overwhelming tech lingo gets a little ... well ... horribly annoying ... but the discussions about what he can do about things that bug him at work, how he can relate to someone, how he can change his perspective on something. We talk about something, and then he comes back later with a report on an important step he took in a positive direction. It's thrilling to know that he actually values my advice on matters beyond diaper cream and toddler meals.

If you were to stop by our house this weekend to wish us a Happy Anniversary!!, you might see the following, which I feel kind of sums up where we are in our life together right now:


It's the dry erase board where we write down our grocery list during the week. He started the chaos by adding "Bongo drums" to his list of milk, tortillas and formula. I added "hockey stick." It went from there. Every day we'd add something new ourselves and giggle at what the other wrote. This is our marriage: the melding of the practical and the comedic relief.

Happy 3-Year Anniversary, dear one. Thank you for the nightly back scratches, for leaving the toilet seat down, for not stealing the covers *all the time*, and for letting me be the crazy-ass person that I am. **Nuzzle**