Shout Out to The Mommy In The House

We were with friends who have a baby and one of them was talking about how hard it is to work and run a household and have a baby- there's always clean laundry piled up and the house is always a mess and there's always a scramble for emergency childcare when the nanny is sick, and someone has to take the pet to the vet, etc etc. Makes my shoulders tense just thinking about the juggling act.

And then I realized that, while my life is really stressful for a lot of reasons, worrying about the household level of detail doesn't exist for me because Laura has made the sacrifice to be home. We don't have to wrangle and scramble and finagle because Laura has essentially put her life on hold to be there for Simon, but has also picked up so many extra things along with that. She takes the dog out most of the time, takes the dog to the vet, takes Simon to medical appointments, does laundry, does dishes, grocery shopping, mailing things that need to get mailed, loads runs and unloads the dishwasher, etc, etc, etc.

It's all the little papercuts that add up to "death by a thousand paper cuts" that I don't have on top of everything else. I don't have to worry about all those things because Laura does them. On top of keeping our baby alive, giving him his meds, his feeds, wiping his tears at the doctors, keeping him stimulated, worrying about his barfing, etc, she does all the household things so that we can keep going. And doesn't get paid for it. And is alone a lot of the time.
I forget sometimes, all the things she does, all the things she is, all the ways she loves and supports our family. So this is my reminder.

She doesn't just do the little stuff around the house. She manages all our money. She has the hard conversations with people when I'm too scared to sometimes. She gets me treats when she's out for herself. She listens to me at night when she's really tired and I just want to talk and talk and talk with her. She loves me even when I'm grumpy and frustrated with clutter and flinging toys about in the middle of a temper tantrum about all our "things" everywhere. She lets me put Simon down to sleep even when I know it physically hurts her to hear him cry and wants to do it herself. But she lets me do it because she knows it's important. She calls me at work just to talk to me. Because she loves me. She manages to do all the stuff I already listed, love our baby, love our dog AND love me. Sometimes I can't believe how incredibly lucky I am.

Oh, and she made and carried Simon. And pushed him out. Of her body. For us. So we could have a child.

I told her tonight, "I can't imagine marrying anyone else in the whole world who would fit quite as well as you do". And I can't. She's perfect, in that way that perfect can exist in real life.