I still remember that euphoric feeling of those first dates with the hubby. I would get butterflies in my stomach when I heard the loud rumble of his old white Ford pickup turn down my road. It didn't matter to me what we did as long as we got to do it together. Then came the excitement of getting engaged and the stress of planning the wedding.
The best words of advice we ever got was from my grandmother. She told us that marriage is work, it's not always fun but if you put in the work and the effort it will be successful. She's such an amazing woman!
Those first years of marriage were fun and challenging at the same time. You are figuring how to merge your two lives into one while still keeping your identity. We waited a good four years into our marriage - much to the chagrin of the inlaws - to try and have our first baby and we were as naive as any first time parent and boy were we in for a surprise!
That time, as most new parents will tell you, was the hardest time we had ever faced in our marriage up to that point. We were both exhausted and struggling to be new parents we didn't have the energy or time to focus on each other - and that was just with one baby! This repeated itself after W was born and then double the stress and struggle after the twins were born. But eventually we always managed to muddle through the sleep deprivation and diapers and seemed to always come out the other side stronger!
These days with four energetic, crazy boys, a full, ever changing work schedule for the hubby, and my daily struggle to survive domestication we do sometimes struggle to find time for each other. Not to mention the ever present, invasive force of electronics that I am way too guilty of.
By the end of the day when the kiddos are all in bed, I am exhausted. This is usually the only time the hubby and I have to ourselves and I either struggle to stay awake or immerse myself in my iPad. I always feel guilty about pulling the iPad out or picking up a book to read that had been sitting next to my bed for weeks. I am slowly getting better about the electronic usage. The iPad is not constantly in my hands these days. Daily I face the guilt of trying to do something that I want instead of something our relationship needs...time together.
It's so hard sometimes to balance all these roles. I'm a mother, a homemaker, a wife, a daughter, a sister, a friend....and the list seems to go on and on. And as a typical woman the guilt of not enough energy put into one area causes me to neglect others, especially myself. I know I need to put time into things that I enjoy, but after the kids, the hubby, the house...there's not much time left and I usually opt for sleep over time for myself - partly why I started this blog, making time for me!
But as I always say: I'm a work in progress. The hubby and I will run errands without kids, we try to make date nights happen - as often as is feasible, I try to get him to take kid-free walks with me, we've taken a couple kid-free vacations and he's gotten me hooked into playing Madden 25 seasons with him - he's the Chiefs and I'm the Giants of course! (Go Big Blue!!) Let me tell you, playing a Madden game with toddler twins climbing all over me, a four year old yelling at me that he's starving, and an eight year old wandering back and forth in front of the tv is not an easy feat! That should be an Olympic sport!
I've heard from other parents that is does get easier as the kiddos get older to put more time into your marriage, and I think we're slowly getting there. There is no one else I want to grow old, turn gray and hopefully beat at the Madden Super Bowl some day than my hubby!
Until next time!
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