Reflections on a Marriage

It certainly doesn’t seem like it was three years ago Hubby and I were joined in marriage.

Now, we’ll have been a couple for seven years come September, so sometimes what happened when runs together a bit. We definitely know each other well by this point even though most of the time it seems like we were standing up in front of our friends and family, vowing to be the other’s helpmeet, just a few days ago. So much has changed in that time though.

Three years ago I was working as a sales assistant at Cumulus, and Hubby was preparing for the hunt for his first teaching job. We were both fresh out of college and poised to find out exactly how much we still had to learn. Those first few months were difficult from a materialistic stand point as we struggled to establish our fledgling careers, but we were hopeful. It didn’t take long for us to find our footing.

I became pregnant with our first daughter roughly five months after we were married. I know it seems somewhat rushed. We were alternately encouraged to have a little one and wait a few years first, but you know how we females can get when we start hearing those biological clocks tick away. And even knowing how difficult the pregnancy would be toward the end, how my health would change, and how very hard dealing with post partum depression can be, I wouldn’t change a thing.

Now here we are three years past the day we were married, and this is our second anniversary where I’m well into the second half of a pregnancy. It’s almost funny actually when you think about it.

I’m making a concerted effort to just enjoy this pregnancy whenever I can, even though I had morning sickness this time around when I didn’t so much with Boo, and Sneak seems bent upon bouncing on my sciatic nerve. Unless something drastically changes, I’ll never be pregnant again since we plan to stop at two children, so these last four months are precious.

We’ve weathered a lot of changes, some good, some bad, in the last three years. Hubby has worked in four school systems, all drastically different from the others. I’ve gone from being a working woman to working mother to stay-at-home mom to a work-at-home mom with my own business. We’ve become parents. We’ve gained friends and lost others to distance or just insanely hectic lives, and we’ve said, “See you later,” to a few who have left this world for a better one. We adopted and later lost a lovely if neurotic cat. We’ve endured medical emergencies and vehicle breakdowns, and then we’ve celebrated not only our own triumphs but those of our daughter. Now we’re looking forward to welcoming yet another baby girl into our family and watching Boo transition from toddler to “big girl.”

Seven years ago, I was almost certain I’d end up the neighborhood’s crazy cat lady, living with just a virtual herd of felines for company. Now I have a wonderful, if at times annoyingly overprotective husband, a beautiful little girl, and another on the way. And I can’t imagine a life without any one of them.

Originally Posted 4/9/2008