Eight Years

March 18, 2006

Yesterday was Chris’ and my eighth wedding anniversary.  I can remember some of the previous seven, but not all of them.  On our first anniversary, we celebrated by taking a long weekend to Bull Shoals Lake in Arkansas.  We stayed in a little cabin on the lake and because it was off-season, we had the place mostly to ourselves.

Year old cake with a kiss.

We went on a couple of hikes, played board games and cards, and watched a movie or two on the little box TV mounted in the corner of our living room.  We ate year old wedding cake and day old Oreos.  We relaxed and talked and enjoyed each other’s company.  We were 25 and child-less, and although we had jobs and bills and a one bedroom apartment to tend, we were care-free.  It still felt like we were play-acting at being adults.  I cooked and cleaned and diligently put away money into our savings account; Chris worked his 40 hour work week at Boeing and maintained our cars and appliances.  We fought over whether we should stay in or go out, and how much of our free time should be spent together or apart.  But we would always make up, make out, move on.

By our second anniversary, we had Allison.  She was just four months old and a truly horrendous sleeper, but we were already enamored with her.  We no longer fought about free time, because there wasn’t any.  We were no longer playing at being adults, but learning how to be parents.  I asked my Aunt Pam to watch Allie so we could go out to dinner to celebrate year two of marriage, just Chris and me.  We dropped our baby off in her pumpkin seat with a bottle and the diaper bag and drove the few miles to Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse.  I can’t remember what I ordered or what we talked about (probably Allie), but I remember feeling both liberated and lonely.  I had done my hair and make-up and squeezed into a pre-pregnancy dress.  Chris and I were just a young couple out on a romantic date and I felt pretty and lucky to be with my handsome husband.  But by the end of dinner I desperately needed to nurse and we wanted to see how Allie was doing, so we rushed back to my Aunt’s and Uncle’s.  Allie fell asleep on the way home and miraculously stayed asleep when we carried her into the apartment.  Her anniversary gift to us was sleeping an unprecedented six hours straight.

2nd Anniversary

We moved from Florissant, Missouri to Renton, Washington in the Fall of 2008.  Chris’ job with Boeing required the move, and I couldn’t have been happier.  He was working 60 hour weeks and often weekends, but I was surrounded by friends and family.  My mom came and spent the day with Allie and me every Tuesday, and she babysat for us after Chris got home.  We had date night every single week, and we knew we were spoiled.  For our third anniversary, we spent our first entire weekend away from Allison.  My mom and dad kept Allie while we drove down to the Oregon Coast.  We stayed in a hotel right on the beach of Yachats.  Chris, exhausted from working long hours, was content to stay in our room and read or nap.  I had a spa treatment on the third floor and soaked in the whirlpool overlooking the ocean.  We walked along the beach and into town.  Mom called to tell us Allie had her first ear infection, and while we were concerned, we knew she was in good hands.  She also said her first clear word, ‘yes,’ which she enunciated carefully and slowly: yee-esh.

The view from our 3rd anniversary hotel room.

Our fourth anniversary is one I can’t remember clearly.  It would have been 2009; we were still living in Washington, though we had moved from our apartment to a rental house we found on Craigslist.  I was two months pregnant with Nicole, but we were still reeling from the miscarriage we had in November, hoping that this baby would be okay.  My morning/afternoon/evening sickness was so bad that Allie spent an inordinate time in front of the TV watching Sesame Street, Word World, and Sid the Science kid while I lay on the couch eating corn chips and drinking coke to keep from throwing up.  I’m guessing we celebrated our anniversary by going out to dinner or to a movie, but I honestly don’t remember, and I can’t find any pictures that commemorated the event.

In June of that same year, Chris’ job moved us to Maryland.  We had decided to drive, and I can remember tearfully piling into our SUV and pulling away from my parents’ house.  Allison had an ear infection, an eye infection and a bad cold, but she handled the drive like a champ thanks to our portable DVD player.  I was six months pregnant and miserable with a cold and the remnants of morning sickness.  I was in a cough medicine induced fog until about the 5th day of our trip when I finally felt well enough to realize what an incredibly long drive it was.  Chris drove the entire time, all nine days, from Arlington, WA to Lexington Park, MD: almost 3,000 miles.  When we reached our destination he was rewarded with an incredibly cranky two year old and equally cranky wife.  We both spent the first week and a half alternately crying and complaining.  Sorry, hubby.  But that’s what you get when you take your fairly pregnant wife away from her family and transplant her into a state with 105 degree heat indexes and no relatives.

Nicole was born in October, a week late but perfectly healthy, and we settled into life on the east coast as a family of four.   By the time March rolled around, we had a few friends in the area that I trusted to watch the girls while we went out to dinner at a locally owned restaurant with a bay view.  However, Nicole and I both woke up sick on the 18th, and we exchanged our night out for a night in with early bedtimes for the kids and a mediocre dinner cooked by yours truly.  I actually would have been hard pressed to remember this anniversary, our fifth, but I mentioned it in a blog.  I also made Chris a movie compilation of our first five years together, which can be seen here if you have six minutes to waste.

The next three years passed in a blur of moving (again--this time back to Missouri), buying our first home, pre-school, kindergarten, holidays and everything else that keeps a family of four ticking along.  Though I have vague recollections of the St. Pat’s parades that must have preceded our anniversary each year, I really couldn’t tell you what we did to celebrate years six and seven of marriage. 

Anyway, this brings us to yesterday, March 18, 2014, our 8th anniversary.  We knew it was coming and we spent some time reminiscing the night before, but we didn’t discuss any plans.  At about 4 o’clock in the afternoon, I called Chris to deliver the happy news that we were, for the second time, victims of credit card fraud.  Because that is the kind of phone call you make when you’ve been married for eight years.

At the end of the call, I asked what Chris wanted to do for dinner.  He suggested going somewhere in Historic Downtown St. Charles, and I agreed readily.  I debated doing my hair and getting dressed up, but it appeared that both kids wearing pants would be the priority.

Look Mom, we are wearing pants!

By the time I finished cajoling kids into pants, socks and coats, Chris was home and we were able to leave for dinner.  Nicole talked the entire way, and Allison kept trying to fall asleep.  We joked about how we spent the first three years of her life trying to get her to sleep only to have her fall asleep at the most inopportune moments now.

We picked a restaurant at random and walked in.  It was completely empty but for us, so we had our choice of tables.  We all squeezed into a booth, but not before the girls had a nice long fight over who would sit by mommy and who would sit by daddy.

While we waited for our food, we had a rock, paper, scissors tournament.  Chris came in first followed by Allie, then Nicole.  I came in dead last.  Which is fine because despite being a pretty obnoxious winner, I’m a very graceful loser.

After the tournament, Allison and Nicole took turns singing “Let it Go” at the tops of their lungs.  Nicole in particular has just the one volume: loud.  Very loud.  You may not understand what she is saying, but you can be darn sure she is saying something.

When dinner was over and Nicole had asked for ice cream for the umpteenth time, we decided to make our way back to the car.  The river was just about fifty yards from the car, so we walked over to take a look.  We passed the, and I kid you not, “Never Die Garden.”  Apparently the garden had survived both the drought of 2012 and the flood of 2013, but it looked like the winter of 2014 had pretty much finished it off.

Never say die!

Our last stop of the evening was at Dairy Queen for blizzards for Chris and me and cones for the girls.  Nicole won the prize for the slowest, not to mention messiest, ice cream eater in the history of the world, a title I believe she held with pride.

1st Prize.

Our marriage has changed over the last eight years.  There is less romance.  Fewer grand gestures of love.  Chris eats sunflower seeds in bed and leaves his socks in little balls on the floor of our closet.  I let the water run the entire time I’m doing dishes and am prone to irritability and crankiness.  My palms no longer start to sweat and my heart doesn’t race every time that I see my husband.

But we have acquired much in the last almost decade.  We have a shared history now, inside jokes.  We are at ease.  Comfortable.  Happy, mostly.  I still think Chris is kind, smart, hilarious, and good looking.  So much so that I’ve always thought he’s a bit out of my league.  I see him in the line of Allie’s jaw and in Coco when she raises one eyebrow.  It has been eight years since we said ‘I do’ and it hasn’t always been easy, but it has always been worth it.