100 Happy Days Challenge: Day 37

My three positives for yesterday (day 37):

1. The painting of the spare room downstairs is underway! This is important because, as you may remember, the spare room upstairs will become the baby's nursery, so the queen bed that's in there needs a new home. This led to our decision to convert the room downstairs to a playroom/spare room. Once this room has been painted and carpet has been installed, the bed can be moved down there, leaving baby's room ready for paint, laminate, and mommy decorating action.

I meant to take before photos of the room downstairs, but I got lazy. I will do a separate blog post on the progress of the room(s), but I'm really excited to see how they look when they are finished!

2. This is another general one, but yesterday I felt supremely grateful for the stability in my life. Sometimes, hearing about other people's unfortunate situations and bad choices really puts things into perspective. I was reminded yesterday that not everyone has stability in their lives, in their relationships, and for their littlest people, and it makes me sad for them, and even more thankful for the life that I have and the life that, together, Jeff and I strive to give to Carter.

I used to work at a law firm and so many of the clients and their stories/bad decisions always served as reminders to me that my life was pretty darned great. I remember reading one file in particular. A young woman was higher than a kite on something, took off all of her clothes and broke into an apartment building. She was arrested. She was picked up by the police -- naked as a jay bird. I remember looking at the date on which the incident had occurred and on my calendar I had written "dinner with Krystal and fam." My best friend and her two kids (she only had the two munchkins then) had come over for supper and that was how I spent that evening. Drinking coffee and visiting with family. It felt like one of those profound moments where how blessed you are really hits you.

3. Flowing from #2 - I'm thankful that I have a partner who is so committed to the life that we have built and who is committed to working with me to keep it stable - both for him, me, and our children. I am so deeply in love with this man; I am so thankful he chose me; and I'm so thankful that he was the choice I made. He spent his evening last night working with my dad on the playroom/spare room downstairs. It must sound so ridiculous of me to say that knowing this, thinking about it, makes me emotional, but it does. When I think of the other people/men in the world who chose to do something other than putting their family first, it really highlights for me that this is not the kind of man I married. I married the kind of man who puts me first. Always. Every damned time. He puts Carter first. And he puts the baby, growing inside my belly, first. And he's mine.

 

I HATE the phrase "man up," for a lot of reasons that will, someday, be laid out in a blog post. What does it mean to be a "man." I will admit - I don't really know. But whatever it means, I think it's safe to say that Jeff's got it covered.