My husband said the sweetest thing to me today: “Thank you for choosing to stay home with our child.” How wonderful is it that he knows, despite my joy at the prospect of doing so, it is still a sacrifice in some ways? He also gets that it isn’t an easy job. During another conversation, I was saying that during the week I would have the baby’s crib on my side of the bed (we’ll have her in our room for a little while when she gets home) and get up with her since he has to get up and go to work. His response? “I fully intend to get up with her during the week. You will need your rest so you can keep up with her all day. You’ll need that sleep more than I do since you’ll be home alone all day. I just go to work and sit on my ass all day.” Go ahead girls…big sigh at that one.

I joke about him being a geek but he is the most amazing man. I don’t know how I got so lucky. He’s almost perfect and really wouldn’t totally perfect be a little annoying? Like those beautiful size 0 blonde super model types with legs up to here that you want to hate but can’t because they are so damned nice and have a brain to boot? But sometimes his good traits are a double edged sword.

What happens when you are trying to pick out a paint color for your home? Do you hear “yeah, that’s nice – can we go now?” or “that looks like the last 12 paint chips you showed me”? Not my husband. He actually cares about those things. Sometimes it is nice. It’s nice to know he cares about how our home looks. But sometimes, it is a pain in the ass. I knew exactly what color I wanted to paint our bedroom: periwinkle. He didn’t like the periwinkle. He wanted green. So we bought green paint. Now we are talking about what color to paint the future nursery. I again am lobbying for periwinkle. He just turns up his nose at it. If I insisted, he would let me have my way. But since he does care, I spend a lot of time trying to find something we both like. I think we finally found the colors.

But I will put up with the interference with my ‘artistic vision’ to get wonderful comments like “Thank you for choosing to stay home with our child.”