At the request of some who have asked for more info about our No-Gift Birthdays, I thought I’d explain a little. When Freckles was turning 3 I found myself down in the playroom, sorting toys and packing some away for charity. Some had barely been played with. I thought of the time and expense those toys had cost the people who had picked them out for him. I thought of how many toys we were holding on to not because my child liked them most, but because of who bought them for him. I thought of how many more toys were coming at this upcoming party and how long we would hold on to those ones, too. Mostly, I thought of how unnecessary it all was and how there had to be a better way. For the next couple years, we played around with birthdays for my oldest 2. We tried themes, one year buying a fish tank and encouraging people to help fill it with fish and accessories as a gift. Which was nice until the fish that your best friend gave you dies. So that was a no-go. Then we tried nothing. Bring nothing, we said. Just yourselves. People still brought toys. Then that next year my youngest son was born and my friends wanted to host a Baby Shower. Except, my goodness I had more than enough from my last babies. I couldn’t possibly need more. So since Dh was deployed in Afghanistan, I decided instead that if my friends wished to bring a gift to the shower, it could be a generic gift for a new mom/baby and we would drop them off at the Regiment to be given out to all the new moms giving birth…
Today my DH turns 30 years old. That’s right, 6 months after my big 3-0. I’ve heard nothing but obnoxious comments the whole time, too, so it’ll be nice to be back on even playing field again. Now 30 is not old, per say, but I met him when we were 13. Not many wives have been around their husbands long enough or early enough to have ‘grown up’ together. But we can. 13 years ago when we started dating, I thought he was pretty great. But I have to say that was only a fabulous preview of who he is now. Last year, I wrote this post about him. It is called “Because Love is Worth Missing Sometimes“. And it still is. I still mean every word. Being his wife is one of my many undeserved blessings. If I think back to the 19 year old man I married, back when we still paid as much in car insurance as we did rent because if his age, back when he could still eat a whole pizza himself and back when he was much more convinced of his own invincibility… it seems like he is so much different now. Looking at the pictures of us on his 18th birthday, pictures when he left for Basic Training, pictures from our wedding day, we look so much younger. Don’t get me wrong. He still can’t grow a beard if he tried and he still has an amazing babyfaced smile that makes my heart melt. But we’re not the young kids on the block anymore. There was a time when everywhere we went…
