We watch Teen Mom and 16 and Pregnant.  I’m not sure why, although I think the two are excellent cautionary tales.  Several times an episode one of the young women will say something about hoping an experience will change the baby’s father in a positive way, and I inevitably yell back at the television Choose your babydaddies wisely!  The young men don’t seem to change, on the whole.  The decent ones seem decent, if immature.  The awful ones stay awful.  The women get sad around the edges.  I don’t think any of them change much outside of life experience.  I don’t think anyone changes much, not without a great deal of effort.

DJ would always have been a good father.  Even if we’d had the worst luck as teenagers.  Even if we’d had unfortunate timing as struggling twenty-somethings.  In our thirties it might not always be easy – but let’s say easier.  I think you can tell a lot about parenting potential long before there’s a baby.  Or an embryo.  The trope about how a man treats his mother is telling.  Also the one about waitstaff.  But what you really want to know is how he treats you, and that’s more than romance and holidays.  Several winters ago I noticed that my windshield was always mysteriously clear after snowstorms.  DJ shrugged and said he was waiting for his car to warm up anyway.  He thinks his best qualities are the acceptable minimum.

I’ve been telling people that this pregnancy is like being a Roman emperor without the bloodshed.  DJ has found a million ways to make my life easier, from changing our sheets by himself to bringing me water while I recline on the sofa.  He’s read as much as I have about baby having and raising.  He’s doing a good job of making me feel the most important without making the grandmas feel unimportant.

There’s that other trope about showing your daughter you love her by being good to her mother.  I have, in my life, found the opposite to be true as well.  So, really.  Choose your babydaddies wisely.  They don’t change much.

Last year we revisited our honeymoon and bought a lot of wine.  I put on makeup and set up the tripod.

This year we stayed home (except for some really great dinner plans, and I have not been good about getting us together in pictures.  I haven’t been good about pictures at all for the last few months.

So DJ and I just did a quick arm-out snap.  We didn’t get dressed nicely, and I didn’t even brush my hair first.  This is two years of marriage.  Sometimes you don’t brush your hair.  We did make out a little, though.  It’s important to keep your priorities straight.

While in a meeting on Wednesday I was host to an hour long exhibition of kicks and bumps.  I was sure they could be felt from the outside if only I hadn’t been in a conference room and trying to be professional. That night I lay down and eagerly waited for the gymnastics, but nothing. Nothing! On Thursday night I impatiently jiggled my belly, remembering the ultrasound technician shaking things to get some motion a few weeks ago. A few seconds went by and I felt a firm tap back. DJ put his hand where mine had been and we waited. TAP. It was fantastic. Weirder and better than I ever imagined.

In One Hundred Years of Solitude there are a few paragraphs I’ve been thinking of often. I think the woman was a Remedios, I can’t remember which one. She’s pregnant, and described as turning or focusing inward, utterly ignoring the world. Fourteen years after my first read, now I understand. It’s tempting. I want to be the same person I have been in all of my relationships, but the change is here. This, more than anything, scares me. DJ and I are not the same couple we were a year ago. Now we talk about our family and I am more mom-shaped every day, and what else was I expecting? But it’s uncharted territory. I hope we won’t lose each other, and if we do I hope we will find our way back.

Someone asked recently if I consider myself a perfectionist. I said no, because I do not do things perfectly. She laughed at that and said that was a perfectionist trademark. I don’t know. I’ve never really considered being a perfectionist. Should I be? What would that be like? Would there be some freedom from trying if I knew the goal was perfection and therefore unattainable? Probably not. I consider myself a try-er. I try. I rarely think it’s important to be the best compared to others, but I am disappointed if I could have done better had I tried harder. But that is always true. There’s always a little more to give, in hindsight.  Do better next time.

On that note, I am about to try for a run. There will be some walking, and it will be slow. But trying feels good.

Best one.

Shortest one.

Newest one.

Scheduled to arrive during blizzard season 2012.

A long time ago DJ gave me a diamond solitaire necklace.  The first diamond I’d ever owned or worn.  It was on a gold chain and I absolutely loved it despite wearing very little yellow gold at the time. I wore it daily, removing it only to shower and sleep. Until one weekend I was visiting him at school and in getting dressed I must not have fastened it correctly. It slipped off my neck and was gone, never to be found. I was sick about it.

Not long after that we were engaged. (For the first time.*) We went shopping for a sparkly solitaire which now I know he couldn’t possibly have afforded. Later I gave it back, and to this day I don’t know what happened to it. Well, that’s not quite true. I think I do know, but I’ve never wanted the confirmation.

There was short time after our engagement ended when we tried dating again. It didn’t go smoothly; I was still hurt, he was still whatever it was that didn’t make sense to me. Just dating wasn’t working, and neither of us thought another engagement was the answer. But we weren’t ready to give up entirely. That Christmas DJ gave me a pair of tiny diamond earrings set in yellow gold. I stopped wearing them when we stopped working. Eventually I had them reset in silver in an attempt to make them just earrings. But I’m a sentimental person, so that didn’t really work.

Several years passed and when we found each other again I wore the earrings more frequently. I said once that I still wish I hadn’t lost that diamond necklace all those years ago. A few months later DJ gave me a small box. Inside was a diamond solitaire necklace, a little brighter than the one I’d lost ten years ago. Of course I cried, because although the necklace is beautiful it was never really about the necklace. I love the replacement and wear it often.

After our second engagement (which seems to have stuck) not all the conversations were fun. A great-aunt asked if I really thought it would work this time. An uncle asked if the ring was bigger. Of course, I said. Don’t you know, if you put a diamond ring in a drawer for five years or so, it grows considerably? After a while it was funny, but it’s a fact.  The second is bigger than the first.

For our anniversary DJ gave me a lovely pair of diamond earrings, quite a bit larger than the first pair. They’re almost embarrassingly nice. He says he’s running out of jewelry to buy for me. Which might be true, I am very much a plain jane at times.  It’s a funny problem to have.  I’m bragging, I suppose.  But not really about the diamonds. 

*I am certainly biased, but I think it’s a good story.

A week ago we watched Tom Ford’s A Single Man.  The main character loses his partner, and midway through the film it was clear he had also lost his dogs.  The dogs too!  A hysterical lump bobbed in my throat and I grabbed at DJ’s hand, squeaking that he and Reilly were not allowed to travel without me.  Ever.  We both laughed, me lumpily. 

In so many ways I don’t know what I would do without him.  He picks me up when I’m sad, calms me down when I’m nervous, kills the spiders and supports my urges to take on wild projects.  He’s kind to my family, generous with his, and the first person our dog sees every morning.  Who else would yell “We built a potamus!” over sitcom credits?  Who else would even know what that meant? 

I know not all marriages are happy, and not all marriages last.  I hope we have whatever it is that makes it work.  To this point I think that we do.

I love that guy.  It’s been a very happy year.  More, more, more please.

(this image: Bow Tie Photography)

More about that wedding here.

We napped. We watched movies. We ate pie from a farmstand. We screwed up the zoom on the camera. I went for one single pathetic three mile run up and down the main road past our B&B.

We went antiquing. I bought a silverplate champagne bucket. DJ held tiny things in his enormous hands to make me laugh.

We spent an afternoon in St. Joseph, and killed an hour reading over hot chocolate.

We had dinner at an Italian restaurant that was a resort in the 1930′s, now tucked quietly in a residential neighborhood along the lakeshore. It was delicious.

We also went wine tasting. I didn’t know that Michigan had vineyards, but it does. Trivia: it’s on the same latitude as Washington State, and roughly the same as the south of France. Different soil and weather, of course – but lots of grapes.

 

DJ’s aunt and uncle gave us a stellar wedding gift. They arranged for our B&B to pack a picnic basket (with wine!) and deliver gift certificates to three nearby wineries.

This aunt and uncle actually got married at Round Barn several years ago. They no longer host weddings, but they have excellent wine, and recently also vodka and beer. (Try the cocoa stout. Trust me.)

On our last day we had an amazing lunch at Tabor Hill’s restaurant.

We ordered polenta fries with truffled aioli, and a lobster-scallop “cigar” with a sweet/spicy dipping sauce. Those were just the appetizers, then we had lunch!

We finally figured out the camera zoom.

So now we’re newlyweds. Newlyweds with two cases of Michigan wine in the guest bedroom. That ought to get us through the first few days weeks months.

Although, at the moment I am most excited about handing my bouquet to Katie so I can hold DJ’s hands. Walking back down the aisle together. Sneaking glances at his hand with a ring on it. Doing the stand-and-sway to a sappy song. Celebrating a life ten years in the making, and worth every minute.

But then we had this discussion over e-mail.

Me: I’m excited to hear what you wrote. Unless you are going to have {friend} get up there and yell WHO FANCY NOW! Because that would be stealing my idea.
DJ: You can have “Who fancy now.” {Friend} is going to holler “Who gonna check me, boo?” and do the head shake thing that goes with it.

We are a very romantic couple.

I listened to Mike Dougherty sing Janine over and over the first summer that DJ and I were re-dating. It was 2006. I was 25. It was exactly the right sound for how I felt then, and now it takes me back. To 25 and humid lake breezes and the agonizing wait from Wednesday to Friday.

We hadn’t yet told our families, but Katie and Chloe had already heard quite a bit and thought it was promising. I thought so too.

The sleepless lyrics made me feel romantic about my insomniac habits (since reformed.) But the thing that really stuck, really resonated with me then, was being so besotted with someone that you couldn’t get enough. In that respect, not much has changed.