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The First Four Years
Jul. 4th, 2007 06:47 pmTomorrow is four years since our wedding. Since early childhood I've had some confused ideas about the first four years of married life, but I see now that Manly was right - time to keep on keeping on, because there were too many variables beyond our control, to begin with.
Being a full-time stay-at-home parent is hard for me. Being employed in a normal, hours-restricted-by-the-boss job is hard for Rob, though other than the hours he's in the right career. We both love our jobs. We're both in constantly improving mental health.
We love our home. It's still too full of stuff that might be useful one day, but we're gradually getting rid of that and having space instead. It's full of baby artwork.
We love our family, though we are often too stressed to enjoy time together unless we get away somewhere neutral, like Kew or the Zoo or similar; even down to the swimming baths will do, but home is always full of work we ought to be doing.
We're growing together, I think. It's hard to see where I've changed to be like Rob, other than caring less and less what others think and following my own way more and more, though not as quietly as he does it, but I can see where he's changed to be more like me, such as speaking out more and thinking over information before accepting it even if it's not his area of expertise. Other stuff too - we have the same haircut.
How we are and how we'd like to think of ourselves are different, of course, but we are, together, learning to accept how and who we are, and work on living with and developing that. Just the fact that we've both, slowly, moved away from trying to (appear to) be the people other people wanted us to be is amazing progress.
Being a full-time stay-at-home parent is hard for me. Being employed in a normal, hours-restricted-by-the-boss job is hard for Rob, though other than the hours he's in the right career. We both love our jobs. We're both in constantly improving mental health.
We love our home. It's still too full of stuff that might be useful one day, but we're gradually getting rid of that and having space instead. It's full of baby artwork.
We love our family, though we are often too stressed to enjoy time together unless we get away somewhere neutral, like Kew or the Zoo or similar; even down to the swimming baths will do, but home is always full of work we ought to be doing.
We're growing together, I think. It's hard to see where I've changed to be like Rob, other than caring less and less what others think and following my own way more and more, though not as quietly as he does it, but I can see where he's changed to be more like me, such as speaking out more and thinking over information before accepting it even if it's not his area of expertise. Other stuff too - we have the same haircut.
How we are and how we'd like to think of ourselves are different, of course, but we are, together, learning to accept how and who we are, and work on living with and developing that. Just the fact that we've both, slowly, moved away from trying to (appear to) be the people other people wanted us to be is amazing progress.