Reminiscing about the pre-kid days! Good for the heart.

It’s my husband and I’s anniversary week.  I always like to write about him and I, especially at this time of year, it’s just so fun to reminisce.  We had this oozing with love courtship and wedding. It was perfect and lovely, so I just love thinking about it.

And it seems healthy to remember! Like yours, (especially if you have kids) the majority of our days are so filled with the mundane. You know, with the feeding, clothing, and providing for the needs of the small beings in our house. “Mom, can you zip this up?” “Mom, can I have a snack?” Or, “Mom, which way is the front of my underwear?” Our kids are so young, that honestly we barely spend any time not thinking about them. It’s mostly just not possible right now.

Over the weekend we took the kids hiking and to Snoqualmie Falls, on the way back we were reminiscing about a time when we made that journey just the two of us.  I was pregnant with our first child at the time.  Thinking about that moment, I looked at my husband and just blurted out wistfully, “Wasn’t that wonderful when it was just the two of us!?”

We both laughed after I said it.

You know what I mean!

Obviously we love our kids.  But I remember those days when it was only each other occupying our attention. No one was waving from the back seat with, “Mom, I need to go poop,” or repeating the word “Cracker. Cracker. Cracker.” until you produce the identified preferred snack of the moment.  For a second I had this visceral experience of what I was feeling that day when we were in the car together on that same trek, just the two of us and my belly. And I felt this simple wistful longing for the days when the only way we ever had to turn was toward each other.

From the moment my husband and I got together our “us” was dramatically “right” in a way that neither one of us had ever experienced before. The simple way to put it was, it just always felt (and still does) like a “Yes.”

When we started dating, neither of us had any big plans of where we thought we would end up. You know how you can do that sometimes? Or at least I had with one or two relationships in my history of dating (age 16-36). My husband (then boyfriend) certainly didn’t. He was always of the opinion that he would never have kids, and he likely wouldn’t chose to marry either. And I, I don’t know, I was just too busy having fun and feeling so right with him to really think about where we were going– the present just occupied all my thoughts.

The best way to describe it for me was that it just always felt like home. And when I saw that and felt that, and it had romantic sizzle, I didn’t think about much else.

Like say, “Hey, how about, we have a baby and get married?”

But that’s how it happened. Well, technically we did get married first. But also technically, we did conceive our son first as well!

I love thinking about how it was my “I’m never having children” boyfriend who was the first to say, “We should definitely have this baby.” And agree wholeheartedly that “if we’re going to have one, we’re going to have two.” And then ask on bended knee, “Will you marry me?”

But even more than all that, I love thinking about how for each of us, without any discussion or wondering or planning or figuring; from the moment we started dating, we were nothing but a “yes.”

It’s such a fine foundational place to start and remember. It’s such a lovely thing to realize and re-realize and re-realize, that the ground that we stand on, hand and hand, holds nothing but the sweet hum of YES.

Because, just like I said to my husband last weekend, “You know life is FULL of the mundane. And it would be, whether you were sitting here next to me or not. I’m just so glad it’s you I get to discuss all this boring stuff with– it makes it all so much better!”

Thank you Jason Culp for being my one and only­­– for always. Thank you for an incredible courtship, for two beautiful children, and for being the warm hand in mine that always makes everything just right—even if when our other hands are busy wiping bums. 🙂

More about me and my man:

10 reasons I love you honey or a short and incomplete synopsis of why I agreed to marry you and have your babies

Naked Wedding Reminiscing 

10 unlikely actions that create a blissful wedding (at least they worked for us)

I remember vividly the first time I saw my husband