If you are a dreamer...

When I was younger, I always envisioned the type of parent I would be. 
When it came to playing with my kids, I always thought I'd get down to their level and play with them, and dress up or pretend to be whatever character they wanted me to be.  To pretend that my kid was a dog if they said they were a dog.  To make food into funny faces and do things to encourage creativity. 

And then real life happened.  I became a full time employee, a homeowner, a wife, a cook, a maid, a mom, and then a student.  And though I want to be able to play with my daughter in the way that I pictured I would, I find myself being a little too aware of the time and my giant to-do list to do some of the things that I thought I'd do.  Or at least to do them as regularly as I'd thought I would.  I find myself starting to color with my daughter only to get up after few minutes to clean the kitchen or get lunches together.  Though we do lots of fun things together, like our morning dance parties, going to the zoo, hitting up Trail Dust Town, popping popcorn and watching movies; in the area of make-believe, I am no Mary Poppins. 

Monday night, Brylee asked if she could sleep in our bed.  We let her do this sometimes and then when she falls asleep we take her into her room.  Sean went to bed early, and as he snored next to us, we talked about all kinds of random things.  Then she asked if we could go to the zoo.  My normal response would be "No, they're closed."  Or, "The animals are all asleep."  Or, "Maybe we can go this weekend."  But for whatever reason I said "Yeah!  Let's go to the zoo!!  But, we have to pretend."  So Brylee and I proceeded to take a virtual walk through the zoo, talking about all the animals (we've been so many times that we know by heart what order they're in at our zoo), and I'd ask her what they were doing and she'd tell me that the otters were swimming or the monkeys were swinging and making lots of noise. We fed the giraffe, played in the splash area and got to see all the animals that aren't always out when we visit the zoo in real life.  And when we were done with the zoo, complete with stopping at the cart to get popcorn, she wanted to see her favorite animals one more time.  So I asked her to take me to them and tell me about them.  We visited the tigers, polar bear, otters and the monkeys- it was adorable listening to her describe what she saw in her mind. And after that we said good-bye to the animals and went home. 

By the time we were done, she was pretty tired.  She kissed me, told me that she loved me and had a lot of fun at the zoo with me and then she fell hard asleep.

This was by far my favorite moment that we have ever shared.  It was the longest that I have ever engaged her in a pretend situation, and it reminded me how important it is to develop her imagination.  I think we'll go to Disneyland next.  :)

If you are a dreamer, come in,
If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar
A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer...
If you're a pretender, come sit by my fire
For we have some flax-golden tales to spin.
Come in!
Come in!
-Shel Silverstein, Where the Sidewalk Ends
(My favorite book as a child and one of the first books I bought Brylee)

Love Languages

Ah...love languages.  We've all heard this phrase but do we really know what it means?  And how important this is in our relationships?  I didn't.  I knew my love languages and Sean's, but until I read The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman, I didn't know what a big deal this whole business was. 

My primary love language is acts of service.  My secondary love language is quality time. 
Sean's primary is words of affirmation and his secondary is physical touch (typical man! haha). 
Let me just tell you, I suck at words of affirmation. Like really bad. Which means that my husband's "love tank", as Dr. Chapman calls it, can easily run on empty unless I am intentional about affirming him.  To help me (and take some of the awkwardness out of telling my husband every day, "Honey, I really love ______  about you"), I wrote the words "I love you because..." on my bathroom mirror with a dry erase marker.  Each day I write and new message to him. Then Sean started writing them back to me.

Now I'll be honest, although I like to read the little things he loves about me, this is not my love language so it doesn't do for me what it does for him.  But the thing about love languages that I've discovered is that not only do I need to speak his love language to him, but I also need to let him speak it to me...because that, to him, is showing me love.  And I know that if I tell him not to write me these compliments on the mirror because they make me cringe more than woo, it will discourage him from showing me love- in any language. 

I am a big fan of doing things for my family.  I like to cook, and make things that they can use, and do things to make our lives easier.  Sean likes to have a clean house and good meal, but he could care less if I found the perfect way to organize the linen closet.  I also like our quality time to be playing games, or watching a tv show together or just talking.  Sean considers quality time to be hanging out in the same room together.  Like right now...I'm blogging, he's playing his video game.  And to make sure that I don't kick him off anytime soon, every once in a while he looks over at me and tells me that he loves me.  Like I'm not on to him.  But, more often than not, our quality time looks like I think it should.  And that's because Sean also knows that he needs to speak my love language and let me speak it to him. 

There have been times in our relationship where our "love tanks" have run on not just empty, but in the negative.  And that's because we're both the most stubborn people we know.  If Sean doesn't do something that I've been asking him to do (like, um, prime the master bathroom for paint...just a random example...) it's really easy for me to use the thing that makes him feel the most loved against him.  I can tell him that he's lazy and he never listens to me and make him feel like he's not a great husband. Not very affirming.  And then, in addition to not doing my "acts of service", he decides not to spend quality time with me.  So I decide that there won't be any physical touch.  (Don't be pervs....this can be a hug, a back rub or a kiss...not just s-e-x).  But do you see the cycle?  And Sean and I have been on it before.  But almost 5 years in to our marriage, I am learning (yay!) that the best thing to do when he hasn't done something that I've asked him to do is to leave all the supplies on the floor next to the bed so he steps on them when he wakes up remind him how much I love it when he does things for me that I can't or don't have time to do, and what a great job he did with the last project. 

I'm not saying that this can solve all marital problems, but I do know that nothing bad can come of being intentional in making sure each other's "love tanks" don't run on empty. 

Date Night

Sean and I have never been "daters". Even when we were dating, most of our dates were just hanging out and watching our favorite tv shows and movies together or playing a board game. 

Over the years I've had several friends ask me why Sean and I don't go on real dates.  And I didn't know how to answer them.  Why didn't we??  We like each other. A lot. And we go out to eat as a family almost every Sunday afternoon. So why couldn't we go out to a nice restaurant, just the two of us? 



I talked to Sean about it and we started putting money aside for date nights.  We'd end up spending it on something else, but neither one of us made a big deal over it.  This continued even after we were married with a child, when everyone told us it was really important to go out on dates together.  So if it was so important, why couldn't we do it?

Sean and I were out to dinner recently, doing our norm- watching other people, scarfing down our food and talking sporadically about...I don't remember what, but it wasn't exciting or interesting. (Am I the only one that thinks that "date" talk should be fun and exciting and you should laugh a lot so everyone around you knows that you're having a good time?) Anyhow, not that I had been thinking that there was something "wrong" with our relationship, but I had a moment that night where I realized that Sean and I just aren't the dating type.  Never have been, never will be.  And that's okay.

We have better conversations from the comfort of our couch, or at the kitchen table eating a homemade meal. Our "dates" usually happen after we put Brylee to bed and then head downstairs to watch the latest episode of Modern Family, or a movie, or we talk and play a game.  Ok, sometimes he plays Modern Warfare 3 while I zone out on Pinterest.  Ok, I'm usually on Pinterest no matter what we're doing.  But I swear I'm really good at multitasking.   Other times we stick Brylee in her stroller and we walk around a track nearby for an hour or so. And even when Brylee stays the night with Sean's mom and dad, we might run some errands and then go right back home to lounge.  And we like it that way!

The point is that we make time for each other, to talk to each other and do things that we enjoy together.  And I love that we can do those things in our pajamas!