My simple pleasures

Although there have been some detours and unexpected twists along the way, my life to this point has been fairly predictable. I have always aspired to be a grown-up wife and mother and here I am, wife to a wonderful husband and mother to three darling children. While I am living my dream life, I have realized that the things that matter most to me are different than I thought they would be. As a young girl and teenager, I imagined a fairy tale existence with my over-the-top romantic husband who would bring me flowers on a regular basis and surprise me with candlelight dinners on special occasions. I knew that my children would always be perfectly dressed, well-behaved, and eternally charming (they would definitely never have runny noses and I would most definitely never wipe their noses with the bottom of my T-shirt).
My life as a wife and a mother has changed some of my views and reality has been settling in. But I have learned that I wouldn't trade my life for anything, and that while most of my pleasures could be called simple, they are treasures to me. Reality is that I have a wonderful, amazing, thoughtful, and practical husband who thinks that buying flowers is a waste of money and doesn't have any interest in candlelight. Instead, he lets me sleep in and never complains when I don't make him breakfast or lunch (which is, unfortunately, almost every day). He comes home from work and instead of eating and immediately leaving me again with 3 children while he goes home teaching, he invites the older 2 to go with him so that I can relax and put the baby to sleep. He surprises me on Saturday mornings with my kitchen table moved and him on his hands & knees mopping, just because he knows that I want to get it done but can't do it by myself. Reality is getting cozy with him on the couch after the kids have gone to bed and watching some episodes of Reba that we've been trying to watch for 2 weeks, only to barely get through 1/2 of the first episode before dozing off to sleep. I love you, honey.
With a brand new baby recently added to our family, my dreams of having spotless, well-behaved children is fading further into the sunset. Some days we barely get out of our pajamas and get our hair combed, but every day is special and sweet. Some of the simple pleasures I enjoy with my children are: watching my newborn baby drift off to sleep in his own bed, after nights of not sleeping anywhere but my arms; seeing the delight on my 20-month old son's eyes when I say, "sure do love ya" and listening to him say "Mommy...silly"; watching my almost-4 year old daughter do a somersault without hands (almost a front flip) and listening to her telling me that "Some mommies have jobs. Mom, you should get a job and Dad could stay home with us. What do you want to be? You could be a doctor...you could be a builder...Mom, what do you want to be?" Madlyn, the only job I ever want is to be your mom.
My life as a wife and mother is busy and hectic and sometimes very, very difficult. But I am right where I want to be and I hope you can enjoy reading about the pleasures that I experience every single day.