Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Four years

Today is our fourth wedding anniversary.  It doesn’t seem like it’s been that long.  Four years is all of college.  We certainly haven’t been married that long, right?  Plus, since I got married two weeks after graduating, this means I’ve been out of college for as long as I was in college and that can’t possibly be right.  I’d say it feels more like two years, even though the math on that doesn’t work since we have a two-year-old.  Maybe it’s because for the last two years our anniversary has been overshadowed by bigger events. 
On our second anniversary, I was 37 weeks pregnant and we had to travel to my husband’s hometown for his grandparent’s 50th anniversary celebration.  I was NOT pleased at being that far from the hospital (four hours) and I was just generally grumpy at that point.  I wanted everyone to leave me alone. Including my husband.  I was totally fine being still pregnant as long as I wasn’t expected to do anything else, like travel or go out to dinner or make small talk about how big I was.
Please tell me my face won't swell like that this time.  I looked horrific.
Our third anniversary really feels like it never happened. My sister got married 3 days before our anniversary.  It was a big wedding that took up the whole weekend between the rehearsal, rehearsal dinner, wedding, and next-day gift opening.  I don’t think we celebrated our anniversary at all, other than a nice dinner at home (with the baby). I continued to say we’d been married two years for months afterward.
Now that this picture is over a year old, do I have to take it off my blog banner?
This year, even though I’m not quite as pregnant (34 weeks), the baby is still overshadowing the anniversary.  Plus, I’m already in the don’t talk to me, don’t touch me, don’t take me anywhere, just leave me alone phase.  It’s not as pronounced as it will be in a month – I wouldn’t say I’m grumpy all the time yet – but I definitely don’t feel like celebrating, unless it’s with a nap.
Really, May is just so full of celebrations that we don’t see the need for another one (Thomas, my Dad, my SIL, and Meg all have birthdays).  What we need is more downtime!  It’s funny, when we planned the wedding for exactly a week after his birthday, Thomas bemoaned the fact his birthday would never be special again.  He thought the anniversary would overshadow it and we’d only have a cursory birthday celebration.  It’s turned out to be the other way around.  Plus, have I mentioned he’s not even going to be around this weekend?  He‘s flying to Fargo to run a marathon on Saturday – wish him luck!
Anyway, I actually think it’s nice it feels like it couldn’t have possibly been four years.  Time flies when you’re having fun.  I like that we have such a good life together we don’t need to make a huge deal over anniversaries.  (Not that people who DO make a big deal over anniversaries don’t have a good marriage/life.)  If you look at all we’ve done in the past four years it seems like a lot.  I started working full-time, got my Masters, we bought a house, and now we have (almost) two kids.  It’s been a wonderful four years and I can’t wait to have many more.
Four years ago:

Now:

(Yes, that’s the same guy.  He’s lost 160 pounds.  I kind of feel like we need new wedding pictures.  The only problem is I’ve gained a lot of weight.  Maybe someday we’ll both be skinny at the same time!)

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