Life is Like a Song

Wow. How fast time has flown by. It seems like just a couple months ago Nic and I stood in front of one another, our family, our friends and our Lord, reciting our marriage vows to one another. Vows we made for the rest of our lives. But here we are, one year later. One year more in love.

Of course, all this week, Nicole and (especially) I have been more nostalgic and cheesy. Saying all the usual lovey dovey things to one another. Asking the usual inquisitive romantic questions, like, "What are your favorite memories so far," or "Has it been what you were expecting?"

To answer the latter question first, it's been better than we were expecting. I mean, we both had high expectations, but our first year of marriage has been so much more fun, easy, joyous, exciting and blessed than we could have ever expected or hoped for. God truly knew what He was doing when He brought us together. While we know it won't always be an easy road, we're thankful that the mountains are more like plateaus and the valleys more like brief dips.

Now, the first question was one we smiled about as we thought of our individual responses and eventually answered each other. Obviously, the big memories make the list, like our honeymoon, the holidays, finding out Nicole was pregnant, summer vacation, shopping for our baby when we found out "it" was a "she," the birth of Riley, and so on. But it's not just those that make marriage so wonderful. Rather, it's the little things. It's the fact that even one year later, my wife still blesses me by packing me lunches and writing funny and never-repeated names for me on the brown paper bags; today I'm "one righteous dude," in honor of Ferris Bueller. They're the memories of me looking forward to coming home every Friday night for us to go enjoy our date night. It's the memory of our weekends sleeping in together, curled up under the covers playing footsies. Memories of me getting to care for my pregnant wife when she felt nauseous. They are joyful, beautiful, even "small" treasured memories that constitute my answer to that seemingly simple question.

And now, here we are. We can actual answer in years instead of months when asked how long we've been married.

On the night of our anniversary, after a weekend of celebrating, Nicole brilliantly decided we should start an annual tradition: dancing to our wedding ceremony's first song. Holding each other and slowly spinning in our bare feet to Etta James' At Last, I lost myself in Nicole's arms and quietly leaning on the song's lyrics:

At last
My Love has come along
My lonely days are over
And life is like a song...

How true those words are. Thank you, Nicole, my love, my wife, my best friend, my hero, my lover, my desire, my better half for making them true. For everything. Especially for saying, "I do."

New Site Look...

For those of you who have been asking about Riley and pestering us for some more pictures, visit her blog, LifeThusFar.com for some of the latest. Yes, Riley, to answer your question, you are cute. Dang cute!

Also, you might notice that I'm following my daughter's lead on technical stuff already. Basically, I feel the same way she does on most of the new features. And like her, I have no idea how to get back the nifty little blog header I created, but with our site's new color scheme, it wouldn't work as well anyway. Hope you enjoy the new site. And let me know if you would like to see it improved in any way.

Breakfast with My Daughter

I’m sitting here at Einstein Bros Bagels, enjoying breakfast and a beautiful morning with my daughter as Nicole enjoys a little more of that sleep she so loves and misses. People pass by, peak into her car seat at the little pink bundled body and ask the usual questions. How old is she? How much did she weigh? What’s her name? They coo, tell me she’s beautiful, and move on their way.

The amazing thing is answering that first question about Riley. She’s four weeks old tomorrow. It’s already going by so fast. And she’s so much bigger than when we first brought her home. She seems even bigger than she was a couple days ago.

And partaking of my environment here, enjoying my bagel and coffee, saying hello to and answering curious passersby, I watch parent after parent with their small children walking into the store for their own breakfast and time with their family. Pretty soon, I’ll be in their shoes, with a two year-old, three year-old, four year-old, asking how old the new father’s or mother’s child is. It’s going to go by so fast. I just know it. I’ll just have to enjoy everyday as I have it.

Now, I know I haven’t written in a while. Too long if you ask me. But somehow, days have been passing by faster than usual. At night, I’ve been falling asleep without trying, even on the floor sometimes. It takes more out of you than you realize… and I’m not even the one that stays home with her during the day. I typically hang out with Riley right when I get home, which is her “fussy time.” And also, I take weekend mornings so that Nicole can sleep a longer and get the rest she needs and, in my opinion, deserves.

There haven’t really been any major parenthood surprises… yet. We’ve just been taking it one day at a time. Nicole and I have made it a priority to not let the little bambina stifle our regular lives, though. By day three, we took her out on the town for walks and shopping. By day four, Nicole and I left her with our aunt so that we could go have dinner together. By day six, she saw her first movie. And now, Nicole and I are back on our regular Friday night dating schedule. It’s the best advice I can give new parents and something I knew was critcal—still making “just us,” Nicole and me, our marriage, the number one priority. We know so many people that have let their babies take over their lives. But I think, if you do that in the beginning, it eventually transfers into later years. It becomes the norm.

On the humorous side, Riley makes Nicole and I laugh all the time. The faces and noises this girl makes give us good reason. We’ve come to recognize her different types of cries, which helps in a big way. Her wail means “I’m freaking hungry and I want boob milk.” Her short little breath of “ah” is her fake cry, her “Come over here and hold me” cry. Her little constipated cry translates into, “I’m gassy and you need to burp me.” That last one is true, too. She can poop with the best of them. Riley’s farts even wake us up at times. It’s incredible the amount of bodily noise that this beautiful little lady can generate.

She makes us laugh unintentionally, too. Last night, for instance, when I was kissing all over her little head (something I often do) and I kissed her lips, she thought my lips were a nipple, so after one kiss, she opened up her mouth and went to lay a smackaroo on me faster than you can imagine. She tried to open mouth kiss her daddy. Nicole and I were roaring.

Also, Riley has had her fair share of baths at home now. While she likes the warm water, she doesn’t like being naked. She’s just not an exhibitionist. So, when you start washing her body, she starts to wail. Nicole says that, if you walked into our home when Riley was bathing, you would think that Nicole was stabbing her to death. Seriously. It’s an amazing cry. And she gets so upset, she poops. All over. It’s funny talking about it, but it’s so sad and pathetic when it’s happening. Truly and utterly pathetic. We have one picture of Riley that I’ll post later, of her in the bath, unintentionally imitating her favorite child actor of the 90s, McCully Culkin—her hands are plastered on her cheeks as she screams. It’s hilarious.

For those of you wanting pictures of the little beauty, visit LifeThusFar.com, where I’ll be adding a "photos" section, with updated snapshots. It’ll be the best way we can show you and everyone else that loves our daughter how much and how fast she’s growing. Look out for that within the coming week.

I’ll be back with more as soon as possible. I have material up the wazoo. On a side note, this coming Sunday marks our one year wedding anniversary. It’s crazy to think that within a 21-month period, Nic and I started dating, got engaged (six weeks after starting to date), married each other (nine months later), got pregnant (six weeks after our wedding) and had Riley (nine months later). Wow, I didn’t even realize the six week, nine month pattern going on until I wrote it out. With a new little one, we can’t have quite the anniversary we wanted, but next year will be sweet (we’re thinking Hawaii) and we have a different reason to rejoice this year anyway. For the addition of Riley Grace, our beautiful and beloved daughter, to our family.

Thanks for your patience waiting on this post. If nothing else, updating all of you and writing out my thoughts is fun for me. Now it’s time for me to get Riley back to mom. She’s starting her hungry cry.