Things that make life worth living

I imagine that this could be an extra long entry, for there are so many wonderful things that I could think of. But specifically, there are two that come to my mind. Not in a particular order, the first is my daughter. After spending two full days with her, from sun-up to sun-down, I am ever amazed with her. I rarely get the chance any more to spend this much time alone with her. Now that I work full-time and Andrea stays home more our roles have reversed from when Mia was younger. What a difference a year or two has made. I mean here is a little person, of three whole years and she is speaking, having her own thoughts, dislikes, likes, wants, desires, and needs. And man is she ever able to express them and ask for those things.

I realize that I often do not give her enough credit. One of the things that she has started to do is asking to dress herself. What this means for Andrea and me is that she will go to her room and pick out the clothes she likes and we can do other things, like actually have five minutes to ourselves. What this means for Mia is that she often looks as if she picked out clothes blindfolded. While Andrea and I used to care an awful lot about how she looked, we have now come to the realization that it is of no importance at all. Sure she may look as if she just crawled out from the bottom of a laundry basket filled with mismatched linens or just landed on Earth from a far away planet that values putting stripes and checks and plaids together, but wow is she happy and proud of herself... And there is no replacing the look that she has in her eyes after she does something for herself.

The second one is my wife. While I have spent all this time alone with Mia, what I have realized is that I miss my wife. As you may remember from yesterday's post, Andrea and I have rarely been apart. Well, here we are on the second marathon day for her and I realize just how much she does and how much I need her. When one is with their partner day in and day out, it is easy to forget what the relationship is all about. There you are staring at the screen over the top of your feet noticing that your show is a rerun and not noticing that the feet next to yours are your partners. This, at least for me, is something that has happened at times in our relationship. Having her gone has brought all this back to me and reminded me that I have chosen to be with Andrea for a reason and that maybe the next episode of friends, the one that I have seen 14 times, can be missed and instead I can ask my wife how her day was.