Thankful Thursday

This week we have had a lot of snow and ice.  The weather has been bad enough to prevent Andy from going into work for a little while or having to force him to go home early.  Lyman has had snow days too.  I love the obligation free feeling of being forced to stay home, cozy in my house with my family.  I also love how the snow falls on everything making it blanketed with white.  It makes even the ugliest things like trash cans look beautiful.  I'm not a fan of the cold so if I could just some how make it feel like 70 outside while everything is pure and white then I should think I would be quite happy in the winter.  I am thankful for our little winter storm.  Ill also be quite thankful when spring actually arrives in Ohio though.

I'm not sure if I have memory loss or if perhaps the time space continuum has actually shifted but I only just blinked and when I looked upon my littlest baby she was beginning to look less like a baby to me and more like a little toddler.  I'm not sure how this happened or when. It makes me a bit sad to see her face maturing out of that baby roundness.  I talk to her and all of a sudden she knows what I am saying and is responding.  I ask for kisses and she leans her face into my cheek to bestow open-mouthed pats on my cheek.  If I say "bonk" she leans her head and lets our foreheads touch.  When I ask her where her baby is she toddles off (walking!!!!) to get her baby and bring it back to me.  Then she takes her pacifier out and gives her baby open-mouthed kisses.  When did my time with her as a baby slip from my fingers?  I am thankful though for slobber kisses and bruised foreheads for now.

The other night I was teasing my husband about getting old.  I know we are relatively young but we have been married for nearly 9 years now and I am starting to see glimpses of our lives and futures together - where we really, truly grow old together.  I always anticipated we would grow old together but now I am seeing it happen.  It all started when I saw a picture of my husband from when we were engaged.  He looked so baby faced!  I don't think he really has aged much in his appearance but in that look in his face from that picture I saw all the things he had yet to experience with me.  When I look at him now it isn't so much that he looks old but that he has those memories of us in his eyes.  His look tells a story of 9 yrs and three children.  I remember how silly and young we were.  We haven't really changed but it is fun to see our love mature through tender moments along the way.  Just now as I was sitting collecting my thoughts to continue this post I was caught up in memories and I looked around at my kids playing a few feet away at the table.  I remember how each one added to our family a different element and adjusted our marriage in a new way.  They were all babies once too.  I am most thankful this week to have awakened to the loveliness of what our marriage journey has done to both of us.  I hope a few of my wrinkles and wayward curves tell as much of that loveliness as the grey hairs and eye creases on my husband do.