Don’t skip this post.

Credit: someecards.com

Dear husband,

Happy Birthday!!!!

I’ve been working on this blog for just about five months. I’ve been writing for you,  I’ve been writing for us, and I’ve been writing for the hopes that I can learn, grow, and be with you for the next 60 years (we’ll be really old then!).

So for your 29th plus a few birthday, I’m sharing it with you!

I hope you’ll read it and know how much I love and care about you and cherish our marriage. I love writing about our marriage, but our marriage is about us, not just me, and I want you to be a part of it. Sharing is good, right?

So I hope you’ll forgive me for being secretive and not sharing this blog for the past five months, but instead see that I’m trying to learn what makes you tick, what makes you happy, and how I can be a better wife. I’ve learned a lot so far.

But there’s still a lot of learning to be had; after all, we’ve got 60 more years to go!

So I wanted to ask you a very important question; Will you co-write this blog with me?

You’re a great writer, and I think we’ll learn a lot about each other and entertain a few people along the way.

What say you?

Update:

My husband woke up this morning very sick with the flu (which I gave him)! He was sweet enough to get up for a second and open his other gift (the watch), but I held off on giving him the card I made that had the URL for this blog. He was a bit zonked out; I figured I’d maybe email the URL to him; if he gets up later to catch up on work emails or something, he’ll find my note in his email box. I can’t wait for the workday to end so I can get home to him!

Update #2: I emailed him the URL. The suspense is killing me!

Update #3: He IMed me and let me know he’s reading it! He loves it! The bad news – he’s starting at the beginning and has not made his way to the end yet. This could take a while!

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Anyone utterly confused should catch up here. Anyone wishing to encourage my husband to write with me should leave a comment on this post!

#39: I’m hatching a plan. Can you help?

Tomorrow is my husband’s birthday!

I know I really wanted to share this blog with him for Christmas, but since we’ll be with family for Christmas, I’m starting to think I really need to refine my plan.

I don’t  want to share this blog with him in front of family; I want it to be something special just between the two of us! And since tomorrow’s his birthday, and I have the evening to myself tonight (he’ll be out with some friends), I’ve got some time to tidy up the blog and make him some sort of special card from scratch. The printing of the blog from blog2book isn’t going to happen; there’s no time!

So here’s the plan for tonight:

• Wrap his watch and write a nice note, suggested by reader liveinhusband.
• Make him a homemade birthday card.
• Make him a SECOND card with the URL to Witty Wife’s Marriage Project
• Write a ‘For my husband’ blog post for him to see when he arrives! I hope he’ll say ‘yes’ to writing with me!

And the plan for tomorrow:

• Get up early and have coffee and breakfast ready for my husband.
• Give him the homemade birthday card and gift.
• Secretly slip the card with the URL into his bag so he’ll see it when he gets to work!

Sound like a plan? Any other ideas?

#34: “I’m surprised you haven’t somehow contaminated me with this food and sent me to an untimely death.”

Credit: Food Network

Ok, that’s not really what my husband said, but I imagine that’s what he was thinking as he said, “Wow, honey, dinner is great tonight.”

You all know I’m not the best cook, and for the most part don’t even really like to cook (since it involved making a mess, then cleaning said mess.)

On Tuesday, I stayed home with the kiddo because our daycare was closed. I can barely cook dinner when I concentrate, so imagine my horror when I realized I’d have to take a crack at it with my 11 month old half walking, half crawling around everywhere. I’m not a big fan of just sticking him in the playyard or the exersaucer; I feel bad, plus he just screams at the top of his lungs anyway.

But since I was home with him, there was no excuse for me not to have dinner on the table when my husband got home.

I ended up trying out some honey mustard chicken. I didn’t even think to marinade it ahead of time; I just threw together some Dijon mustard and honey in a bowl, and swirled the thawed chicken breast around in there for a few minutes. I threw them in a pan stovetop and cooked ‘em on up. I think what helped was throwing a little more honey on them RIGHT at the end.

Served with baked brussels sprouts (ends cut, cut in half, in olive oil with a tad of mustard) that I baked in the oven at 400 degrees for, oh, I don’t know, forever, it seemed like!

But, seriously, he LIKED my dinner! I’m getting pretty decent at this whole ‘wife’ thing!

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Some other things:

 

• Be sure to visit Witty Wife’s Marriage Project on Facebook!
• Use my marriage project to work on your marriage!
• Have a marriage project idea for me?
• Want to share with me something you did in your marriage? I’d love to feature you!

#31: The obligatory pre-Thanksgiving post: What are you thankful for?

Credit - IKEA.com

What’s a good way to keep track of all the things we’re thankful for as Thanksgiving draws closer? I don’t know, but my friend Mrs. C. emailed me with a great idea.

She passed on a fantastic project from one of our favorite blogs, Young House Love. In today’s blog post, John describes how he and his wife, Sherry, created their own jar for writing about what they’re thankful for. Each day, they’ll write something on a piece of paper that they’re Thankful for, and on Thanksgiving, they’ll read them.

No peeking until Thanksgiving!

I’m going to adapt this project for my family, as well. This weekend on a trip to IKEA, I bought several glass jars, one of which is still empty and will do the trick (see picture above.)

I will not be etching the glass as John and Sherry did, as I’m not that creative, and I’d probably etch right through our counters. Better to not ruin my apartment.

I think my husband will play along, as he’s all about building family traditions as of lately. This could be a good one.

Here’s YHL’s finished jar:

 

Credit: YoungHouseLove.com

So now I have to get thinking… what am I thankful for? There’s lots that I’m thankful for; that we both have jobs, that we’re all healthy, etc, but I’d like to find more specific examples of smaller things I’m thankful for as well.

What are you thankful for?

Updates: I had every intention of doing this, but life sort of got in the way. There’s always next year.

#28: Dinner, work, kids sports, abortion?

Does your husband talk a lot? Mine does. We talk about a lot of things, but naturally, what’s going on at work or our kids are frequent topics.

It’s no secret; the older my husband and I get, the more conservative we’re becoming. I don’t necessarily mean Republican conservative (though it’s no secret I don’t consider myself a true Democrat anymore), but I mean in a fiscal sense, and in a morals and values sense.

Last night I saw an ad on tv for Victoria’s Secret. Ten years ago, I probably wouldn’t have given it a second thought. Last night, the ad I saw at 7:30pm practically bordered on soft porn. See for yourself:

I have an almost 7 year old daughter. How do I explain to her that when she’s an adult, dressing up sexy for your husband is a good thing, but flaunting your sexuality like these women on tv is a bad thing? How do you explain this when your 6 year old doesn’t even know about these sorts of things, but it’s thrown in their face and they ask about it? Thankfully she didn’t see this commercial, so I don’t have to address it this moment.

However, this leads me to the fact that I’m becoming getting more conservative, and so is my husband.

A few nights ago, before the Victoria’s Secret commercial, he actually brought up abortion. Abortion! We were sitting on the couch reading (since baseball is over, and all), and he told me he had been thinking about it and the arguments for allowing it, and the arguments against it. We discussed it probably for a good 40 minutes or so. I won’t even get into how the discussion went (it’s not that relevant), but what is relevant is that he felt comfortable bringing up something like that with me.

Was I a good listener? Eh. Sort of, sort of not. Essentially, his views on the topic were changing, and it caught me off guard. But the point is, my husband doesn’t just talk about work, kids, and sports. And when he feels comfortable talking about tough topics with me, it’s my job to be a good listener, even if I disagree. I think trying to be a good listener will keep him feeling comfortable bringing up interesting or tough topics.

Reason #5 – Would your husband encourage you to go away for a weekend with your sisters?

Mine did. At first it felt like a trick. Like, “Why does he want me to go away? Is he up to no good? is he sick of me?” You know, all the general paranoia stuff.

My older sister is a world traveler. She’s traveled a lot for work, and she’s also traveled because she’s a professional athlete. China, Australia, Netherlands, South Africa, England, Guatemala; you name it, she’s been there. Now, she’s been hounding me for a bit to go on a weekend trip with her. I haven’t been on a weekend trip with her since early 2004 when we drove from New England to Virginia Beach for a WEEKEND (for a conference she was going to.) That’s it!

I do see her quite often, however. As you may have noticed from some of my posts, I live in Washington, DC. My sister, by air, lives only an hour away, so she flies down to (or through) DC quite often.

Finally my husband said to me a few months ago, “Why haven’t you planned this weekend trip with your sister yet??”

Really?? I’ve WANTED to go, but as a mom who loves her family, I’ve felt pretty guilty about planning a trip to California, or Vegas, or Colorado, or WHEREVER for the weekend so I can hang out with my sister and have fun!! I felt guilty abandoning the kids and my husband.

But most of all, I feel guilty going out and having fun without him! He works just as hard as I do!

He told me to worry not, and plan the darn trip. Isn’t my husband amazing??

Well, it’s planned. Tomorrow afternoon I will be flying to Florida with my sister (who was awesome enough to fly here first to meet me, and then head down with me!) And guess what, my other sister already happens to be down in Florida on vacation with her boyfriend, so I’ll get to see her too. And if you can believe that, can you believe that my father and grandfather will be in Florida, too? They drove all the way from New England to pick up a car (my grandfather is an antique car buff), so I’ll get to see them, too! What a weekend!

But, “Florida?? Kind of boring, no?” I’m sure you’re asking.

Yes, I think Florida can be kind of boring, except when your sister was able to win a lottery and purchase tickets for the second to last ever space shuttle launch!!!

That’s right, on Monday, we’ll be seeing STS-133, the space shuttle Discovery make its last flight. How exciting! I got to see STS-49, the maiden voyage of Endeavor, when I was younger, but I think I’ll appreciate this a whole lot more since I’m older.

So a whole weekend in the Orlando area with my sister, before the launch.. what to do, what to do…

Update:

• The launch was scrubbed
• I ate dinner at the House of Blues at Downtown Disney
• My sister and I drank lots of Bailey’s on the rocks on our flight down
• Did you know they call Panama City, Florida (a stop on our flight) the Redneck Riviera?
• My 15 minute stop in Panama City, Florida, was the first time in my LIFE that I’ve been in the central time zone. I’ve been to Eastern, Atlantic, and Greenwich, but never anywhere west of eastern time.

Marriage Project Assessment #4 – Bake, Cook, Ego-Boost and Clean your way to a Happier Marriage

At least, that’s what I’ve been doing to work towards a better marriage. Not that there’s much wrong with it to begin with, but it seems to me that it’s easier to tend to your marriage when it’s not in trouble.

Well, all this cooking, cleaning, and loving up my husband seems to be making a HUGE difference (either that, or he’s found and reading my blog!) I started this blog to work on things I can control in my marriage (as opposed to using this as a place to vent about marriage and my husband). I can’t control my husband. I can only control me.

As I’ve mentioned several times before, the intent here is to better MYSELF in my marriage, but then unintended consequence here is that my husband has been just amazing. He’s been communicating a lot more than he EVER has. I mean, he talks a lot (we love to talk about anything and everything), but as far as communicating about feelings, emotions, or dealing with issues, that’s always been a little struggle for us.

So yesterday, when he IMed me about some errands we needed to get done, I was feeling particularly lovey, and I told him out of the blue, “You know, you’re a GREAT husband and father.” And he wrote back, “You know what, THANK YOU, that means so much to me.” Who knew?? I thought I’d get a standard “Thanks.”

Last night, I got home before he did and got to work reviewing my cleaning planner. I did some dishes, got dinner started, got coffee ready for the morning, and finished folding the laundry. I had quite a bit done before he even got home. We watched the rest of the Yankees game together (Yeah!!! They Won !!!!!!.) Then we went to bed super-early to watch the Giants against the Phillies. At 9pm. We just kind of cuddled, and it was incredible. Then out of nowhere, he tells me how happy he is in general, how glad he is that I’m his wife, and how glad he is that I’m the mother of his child. He also went on to tell me that he’s made an effort to try very hard lately – my hangups are staying clean and orderly and keeping my head on straight, his is that he tends to get a little angry and let things bother him. He told me that he’s trying hard to not place blame every time something small goes wrong, and he apologized for sometimes placing that extra blame on me when it’s not warranted.

Wow!

Am I making a difference here?

Furthermore, our marriage IS good already. Do you think for people who are having marriage troubles could follow the same steps that I do and receive the same outcome, even if they think their spouse is at fault? If they work on the ‘small things’ like I am, could their spouses outlook improve as well as an unintended consequence?

 

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Some useful links:

 

Archive of my marriage projects

My marriage project assessments so far

What is this marriage project all about?

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