In honor of Husband's 38th birthday today, I wanted to re-post something I wrote a few years ago. All of it is still true and not much has changed except we now have one more child who delights in him. He continues to amaze me and there really isn't much I can add except this:
You are my very best friend and I cannot imagine walking through this world without you by my side. Thank you so much for this beautiful life.
Happy Birthday, sweetie. I love, Love, LOVE you.
Originally written August 22, 2005
This one goes out to Husband, who may or may not still be reading my blog. I don't speak of him often....my son seems to permiate my every thought these days.... so I thought I would share a little about the other man in my life!
Let's start with the fact that he has, for the time being, become the other man....second fiddle, if you will. He has accepted this temporary situation with much grace and understanding and has been nothing but supportive over these past 6 months of new parenthood. But if I am totally honest, this shouldn't shock me at all...after knowing him all of these years I would expect nothing less than what he has so freely given.
He wanted to have kids long before I did and sat back patiently until I felt I was ready and gave him the green light. Over the subsequent year it took for us to get pregnant, he remained his calm and patient self as I turned what had started out as "let's just stop using birth control and see what happens" into an elaborate math and science project of temperature, cycles and peak fertility days. My need for control is incessant, to say the least....but he just went with the flow. When I finally gave up on my experiment and went back to the original plan of just letting things happen, we, of course, hit pay dirt. He didn't bother with the I told you so's...he was just too damn excited about a baby to care how it happened.
He was so good to me during the pregnancy, especially on my darkest most hormonal days during that first trimester when it seemed all I did was cry, laugh, sleep, eat and cry again. I once stopped talking to him for two days because he is a Republican. Seriously. I couldn't imagine a worse affront to me and my growing child. Now, this was not new knowledge, mind you. It just really pissed me off on that particular day. But he just took it in stride and bore no grudge once I decided to talk to him again.
As the pregnancy progressed and we started all of those classes they recommend you attend, he started to share with me how scared he was about the impending birth and how he was really worried that he would be of no use to me or the baby once we got home....the last time he even held a baby was 27 years ago...caring and nurturing one was beyond his scope of understanding!! The classes helped with the parenting part, so all we had left was the actual birth and he was worried sick that he would pass out or wouldn't be able to help me. But he held up like a trooper. He helped as much as he could, but back labor was not something we had been prepared for so his best efforts went unnoticed...at least where my pain was concerned. But he tried and I was grateful. When it became apparent that a C-section was the only way our boy was going to be joining us, he set aside his fear of blood and all things medical and sat by my side, holding my hand while they worked on me. As soon as our son was born he followed him into the recovery room and never left his side. I have a beautiful picture of he and Liam in our room just minutes after the birth. He is feeding him for the first time and they are both blissfully unaware of the fact that I was still on the operating table, rapidly losing my blood. When I finally(& thankfully) made it out of surgery 2 hours later, he brought Liam into see me. He knew how much I was looking forward to bonding with our son those first few minutes after he was born, and since I didn't get to do that, he was bound and determined to make sure that I would get to see him and hold him before anyone else. He left his parents waiting in the lobby for 2 1/2 hours just so I could be the first to see him. I will always love him for that.
Fast-forward to life at home these past 6 months. When Liam was at the peak of his colic, Husband started coming home at lunch every day so that I could shower, or eat or just go for a walk. Liam's screams did not faze him and that 45 minutes of solitude saved my sanity. Now that the colic has passed, he continues with his daily lunch visits. But now it is not to aid me in my mental health or personal hygiene but simply to see his son. And let me tell you, Liam lights up the minute Husband walks through the door. He adores his dad. And rightly so. My husband has a knack with kids that I was completley unaware of. It probably helps that he is a bit of a dork...and I mean that in the warmest most respectful sense of the word. He is goofy and proud of it and our son delights in him! He is able to interact with Liam on a whole other level than I am. He is the entertainment, I am the comfort. He is the ocean, I am the safe harbor. Our roles couldn't be more defined.
He thinks of things to do with Liam that would never cross my mind. Saturday I came downstairs to a gale of laughter to find my husband and my son singing and dancing to Radio Disney. They were doing the Cha-Cha and something Husband called the Charlie Brown...when he demonstrated, it looked like the old Cabbage Patch with a little White Man's Overbite thrown in....but nonetheless, Liam was having a ball. It's no wonder that Liam's babbles consist soley of variations of da-da! And yesterday afternoon Husband was giving Liam a lesson in crawling because as it stands right now, he is only able to crawl backwards and it's really pissing him off. So there was my husband offering demonstrations and then manually moving Liam's legs and arms so that he was able to propel forward at warp speed.
And their conversations are a riot. Husband just talks to him as he would any old person on the street...no baby-talk for him. The other day I overheard him explaining to an especially gassy Liam the benefits of blaming farts on the dog. Priceless!
So there is a not-so-brief description of my fella. I realize that it mostly has to do with him as a parent but that's because I have learned more about him in the last 6 months than I have in all of the 8 years I have known him. He is a good man, a good husband....but as a father he just SHINES!
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