Babies Make Four: 9 Years and Counting...

Oh, Dillon. Here we are 9 years into our marriage. It feels like a blink of an eye and an eternity in the same. Since we've been together since we were 16 & 17 respectively, I really don't remember much of my life before you.

Sometimes I feel like we promote all the good on social media (and on my blog), so let's get real. I leave chip bags opened without rolling them down and you leave a trail of dirty clothes to the bathroom. Sometimes I resort to making pizza rolls for dinner because I'm too tired to cook and you always want me to go into details about the book I'm reading (while I'm reading it). I'm unreasonably irritable some days and sometimes you just don't want to talk and just want some quiet (you're probably thinking "Will Katie ever shut up?") You leave beer bottle caps on the cutting board, right above the trash can and I leave our laundry piled up overflowing into the bathroom (or it gets clean and sits on a chair for 2 weeks because I don't get to putting it up).

But the good, oh it is so good. I wish I could go back 15 years and tell my teenage self what an important roll you would have in my life. How you would become my best friend and the father of my babies. How we would hold hands at our grandparents' funerals and go and see concerts together and sleep in late on Saturdays and watch each other graduate from college. How things might not always be easy, money may be tight, but it is just money and in the end and we're lucky because our fridge is full and we've got a roof over our heads and we have each other. How when I feel down and out all I have to do is shoot you an email at work and you write me back within 10 minutes telling me it's ok to feel sad sometimes and then you give me a huge hug when we get home.

I don't know quite how you do it, Dill. You work 16 hour days and come home and tell me to go sit down because you'll clean the kitchen and wash the bottles like you think that I've somehow worked so much harder than you (here's the shocker, I probably haven't). And you do it all without complaint (unlike me, who complains all the time). You give everything to your family and for that I am so thankful.

I've watched our family videos lately from when we were both kids. I find it funny that we're in each other's home videos, somehow orbiting around each other when we were little but never intersecting our lives until my senior year of high school. We sang in the same Christmas programs, I cheered for your football team in elementary school, we were interested in the same things but our paths never crossed until the end of high school when for some reason, I decided it was more important to give up band my senior year of high school so that I could take a 4th block art class. The same one you were in. Such a small decision in the scheme of things, but oh how that has shifted the course of our lives.

You're a good egg, Dill. I'm glad you chose me, that you went to prom with me, that you stayed with me during the craziness of college and long distance, that you asked me to marry you and most importantly that we continue on as partners in our marriage and that you continue to choose me day after day.

I am so, so lucky to have you. Love you.