Tiny Love Stories

Happy Valentine's Day! 

I love that Valentine's Day is a day to celebrate love. I don't think it has to be romantic love, I think it's a perfect time to remind your friends, your parents, your children, AND your significant other how much you love them.

I was inspired a few weeks ago by the series that the New York Times does called "Tiny Love Stories". I love reading those! They tell small stories in 100 words or less that show what day to day real life love looks like. I love them because they are so realistic and attainable. Growing up watching Disney movies and reading fairy tales I was given this false expectation of what love looks like. While love can be found in big gestures and fairy tale weddings, it is more often found in the small things done every day to remind the people around you how loved they are. 

I meant to write down a bunch of my own tiny love stories, but I only got around to writing three, so I guess I'll just have to make my own series of tiny love stories and share them occasionally. In the mean time, if you have any tiny love stories from your week that you'd like to share, I would love to hear and today is the perfect day to spread the love, don't you think?

January 15, 2020
I was feeling kind of down when Ryan came home late. I asked him if he would get me strawberries with sugar. Even though it was almost 10 pm, I sat on the couch and watched him carefully cut up a plateful of strawberries and carefully sprinkle every inch with sugar the way I like them and then bring the plate over to me. He then told me not to overdo it (because last time I ate too many strawberries while pregnant, I threw up) but he let me eat them all because I wanted to. 

January 18, 2020
I stayed up way too late and knew I would have trouble waking up on time. In the morning, I slept SO late that I was sure Rose would be upset with me for getting her out of her crib so late, but when I went into her room, she smiled at me and gave me her pacifier to put away and was excited to show me her stuffed horse that she sleeps with. It never ceases to amaze me that no matter how bad of a mom I feel, my baby always thinks I hang the moon. 

January 20, 2020
I had the stomach flu and was throwing up and Rose was upset that something was wrong with me, so Ryan got her ready for bed, tucked her in, and then when I stopped throwing up he got our bed ready for me and tucked me in. He hugged me for a bit to warm me up and then told me to go to sleep even though it was only 8 pm and normally this would be our only time to spend together without Rose around. 

Here are a few other instances of little daily bits of love from the last few months that are not in tiny love story form:

- Another throwing up story: When I still had morning sickness, I was throwing up in the bathroom and Rose came in and was concerned. Then she left the bathroom and came back and tried to hand me the tv remote, which is one of her favorite things to play with. She could tell that something was wrong and she wanted to help and cheer me up by giving me one of her favorite toys.

- Working nights was really difficult for me after I got pregnant, and I hated leaving the nights that I had work, so over Christmas break, Ryan applied for my job and I quit and now he is working 2 jobs (68 hours a week) and seriously lacking in the sleep department so that I can stay home with Rose and prepare for this other baby to come. He just works SO hard for Rose and I and rarely complains about work or how tired he is and he never makes me feel bad for getting to stay home. He amazes me and I feel SO loved because he is willing to do something so hard for us.

- I have an overactive imagination and frequently have nightmares, and they only get worse when I'm pregnant. Since the day we got married, Ryan has always insisted that I wake him up if I have a nightmare, and he isn't always home when I have one, but when he is, he still wakes up to comfort me if I do. (Even though he doesn't get nearly enough sleep!)

So, I guess what I'm trying to get across is that love manifests itself in the little things. The daily kiss when Ryan goes to work, or the fact that he STILL opens the car door for me after being married for 3 years. The sweater that he bought for himself so he could stay warm at work that he ended up giving to me because I loved how comfortable it is. When he offers to zip up my shoes because my stomach is getting to big for me to do it myself. And every time he tells me how beautiful I am when I'm feeling less than beautiful because of my changing body.

The stories that I'm sharing are mainly just about Ryan and Rose since I interact with them the most, but tiny love stories can be for anything that helps you to feel loved and important. They can include the times your parents answer the phone when you're having a bad day and will talk to you even when it's inconvenient. Or when your dad offers to call your doctors billing office to figure out the health insurance stuff so you don't have to. Or when your aunt buys a plane ticket for your cousin to fly to Florida with you so that you don't have to do a 4 hour red eye flight 7 months pregnant with a lap toddler all by yourself (true story. And I am SO grateful. That's happening next week.) Or it can include when you forget to grab the car seat from the car before your husband goes to work and your brother offers to drive to Sam's club to grab it from your car and bring it back to you so you can leave the house (happened this week), or when a friend brings you a note on Mother's day to thank you for being her friend and inspiring her as a mother. etc etc etc.

All I'm saying is that if you look for it, I'm sure you can find the tiny love stories in your life that will remind you that you are loved and important and remembered, because you are. You might not have someone buying you expensive jewelry or writing songs for you or sweeping you off your feet with grand gestures. But, I believe that if you pay attention, you'll see that people love you in a lot of different ways.

What better way to show love than by squishy face kisses?

Three Years Baby!

Somehow, another year has gone by and Ryan and I have now been married for THREE years! I was looking through all the pictures that we have together and trying to gather my thoughts about how I feel about it and about how I feel about him. Part of me is thinking "Only three years? It feels like we've been together for way longer than that!" and another part of me can't believe that three years have already passed.

Second date

I wrote a blog post that I'll share on Valentine's Day about how love manifests itself in the little things, and it really does. With Ryan working so much and me being so pregnant and grumpy all the time, we just don't have the kind of romantic love that I was sure we would never stop having when we got married. I'd like to think that we can still be in the honeymoon phase if we want (mostly because so many people told us that it never lasts and I'm stubborn!) but honestly, life has a way of kicking you in the butt and making it difficult to keep up with all that lovey dovey stuff that you do when you first get married.

I used to make dinner for Ryan every day and some days I'd make all of his favorite foods to surprise him, or I wrote little love notes and hid them in different places for him to find. We lit candles when we ate dinner and we always ate dinner together. We made out a lot. We went to bed together and woke up together.

Using my new camera for the first time. This was when I was pregnant with Rose. 

Now, Ryan works three nights a week so our sleep schedules are very different. And I go through phases of cooking and not cooking dinner depending on how I feel. And every time we try to make out, a little toddler who is obsessed with her mom starts throwing a fit and pushes her dad away because she thinks Mom belongs to her. *insert eye roll*

Our trip to California when Rose was about 9 months old. 

But something else that comes with a life together is a depth to the love we share. I feel safe when I'm with Ryan. I feel secure. I feel loved. I'm honestly blown away by how hard Ryan works to take care of Rose and I. No one knows me better than he does. And I was so worried when we got married that we would run out of things to talk about, but it's been 3 years and Ryan is still my favorite person to talk to at the end of the day, and I still want to tell him about every tiny detail of my day, including the fact that I washed the dishes or woke up late or cried over something silly or whatever, I want to tell him everything. 

We have a system. We work together. We figure things out together. We're tired, and we don't get to go on dates nearly as often as we'd like. Life is stressful and exhausting and overwhelming. We argue and we get frustrated with each other. But we always talk through it and figure things out. Every morning when I study my scriptures and say my personal prayers, I thank Heavenly Father for putting Ryan in my life and allowing me to have the life that I have. I wouldn't trade it for anything.

VERY pregnant with Rose.

And, it helps that Ryan is still the hottest guy I know, still opens my car door (and all other doors) for me, and is always making me laugh. For all that's changed over the last three years, he is still making my dreams come true, he still makes inappropriate jokes, he still gives me the best forehead kisses, he still hates getting his picture taken, and he still loves me and puts up with me and my hormones on a daily basis.

You'll never guess what this picture is from. haha

Here's to three years and infinity more!

Oh and, if you are bored and need a rabbit hole to go down, here are all of my anniversary and wedding blog posts from the last three years. :)

Our Love Story/How We Met

My thoughts on marriage at 6 months

Our First Anniversary and some wedding pictures

Our second Anniversary and why we picked the Provo City Center Temple

Probably our most recent picture of the two of us. (We almost never get pictures of just the two of us anymore, I'll have to work on that. He probably does it on purpose.)

On Finding Purpose

I graduated high school in 2013, so almost 7 years ago. In that 7 years I have gone through a lot of transition. My plans for myself have changed over and over again. I moved from Texas to Provo, Utah to start my college experience at BYU. At first I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. I started out wanting to do graphic design, then I switched to photography, and then when I didn't get into the photography program I wasn't sure what I wanted to do and I decided to just focus on my general classes until I figured out what I would be a good fit for. 

After a year and a half of school, God let me know that against all of my determination not to, I needed to serve a mission. That was probably one of my first big life plan changes. It turned out to be exactly what I needed, and I ended up loving it. As a missionary, I really felt like I had purpose and knew who I was and what I was doing. (And I met Ryan there, so that turned out to be a huge plus.)

After my mission I went through transition after transition pretty fast. I went back to BYU August 2016 and switched my major to Family Studies, I started dating Ryan that same month. We got engaged in November, married in February and then I found out I was pregnant in September. 

When I was 8 months pregnant I graduated from BYU and then Rose was born a month later. At first I was planning to be a stay at home mom, but then I felt like I should apply for a graduate program. So, I studied for the GRE, took the test, got a job at The Heritage Community for clinical experience, and applied for the Marriage and Family Therapy program. I didn't end up getting into the program but I stuck with my job at Heritage for a year. When I got pregnant again I wasn't planning on working for very long but we had come to rely a little bit on the income I was bringing in, so I stayed as long as I could. 

This past December I quit, so that I could spend some time focusing on just Rose before baby 2 comes in April. 

So, I've been a full time stay at home mom for a little more than a month now. And I'm finding it kind of really difficult for me. 

It's hard to figure out where those feelings of difficulty are coming from though. 

I love being Rose's mom and I have a hard time imagining anyone else watching her during the day besides me. (Even when I was working last year, I worked nights and was with Rose during all of her waking hours. She never even knew that I was gone.) I have a little bit of anxiety and I can't bring myself to NOT be the one doing the majority (or all) of her raising. 

But I also enjoy working and making money and using my talents and I have a hard time feeling like I have much of a purpose. I think that has something to do with the world we live in where women can do and be anything they want, and I feel like I'm not accomplishing very much by staying at home with a baby. Especially since I have a college degree that I worked hard to get. 

But I also know that raising children is nothing to sneeze at and is a great work! That God loves and needs mothers who love and bring up good people in the world. I know that motherhood isn't easy and that it takes a lot to be a mom. So, it's important for me to not feel like I am "just" a mom. 

So, I guess what I'm saying is that it's complicated and I don't know how I feel about this transition. 

Rose isn't a great conversationalist yet. She has learned lots of words, but most of our conversations go like this: "book? book! book. book. book. book!!!" "Rose, do you want me to read you a book?" "yeah" "Can you say please?" "peez" "Okay, bring me a book." and then I read her a book that isn't really all that interesting. And we point out the hats and animals that show up throughout the book and maybe a few other things that she may recognize and have words for. 

I'm also 30 ish weeks along in this pregnancy and feeling it. So, I'm tired and my body aches and following Rose around can be a little tiring. 

Ryan is working 2 jobs now (which adds up to about 68 hours a week). Plus a 2 hour class on Tuesday and Thursday nights. One of his jobs is working a night shift 3 nights a week, so on his days off for his other job he sleeps during the day. And we are sharing the car, so he uses it most of the time to get to work and school and Rose and I go anywhere that we can walk. (Luckily, that includes the rec center, the library, and if we are feeling extra adventurous, Center Street.) 

So, I don't get a lot of time to talk to Ryan anymore or have his help with Rose. Being a stay at home mom can feel kind of lonely and monotonous. 

With all of this going on, I have been trying to figure out how I feel about being a stay at home mom, and how I feel about who I am as an individual, and what my purpose is and how I can find meaning in my life the way it is right now. 

This week in particular I have been praying about it and here are a few of the things that I have learned that have helped me. 

1) I learned from Kristen B. Hodson (on instagram, you should go follow her if you are a woman, she's awesome.) that when you become a mother, it's important to think of yourself in present tense not past tense. So, instead of saying "I used to be really interested in learning about family relationships, or I used to love to paint" to say "I love learning and I love painting." and then to make time to use and develop those talents. So, I've been taking Rose's nap time and the nights that Ryan is gone at work to write on my blog, or do things I love to do, and I try to spend less time wasting time scrolling through social media. (I'm not perfect, but when I stick to it I notice a difference in my happiness.)

2) I try to take my job as a mom seriously. In my last blog post I talked about my goal to be more intentional in 2020 and I have so much more joy in motherhood when I intentionally spend time with Rose. Instead of just skating through each day waiting for it to be time to put her to bed, I try to come up with ways to help her feel loved, empowered, important, and to help her learn. We go to the library a few times a week to pick out books, or I color with her, or I've recently started trying to let her help me cook or bake instead of having her play in her room by herself while I'm in the kitchen or trying to get it done during her nap. I pick things that I enjoy doing and don't feel bad for not playing with her the way other moms do, and we have fun. And she behaves really well because she's getting the attention she needs and deserves. I'm far from perfect, and I still have days where I let her play while I sit on the couch and scroll through Instagram or I'll turn on the tv, but the days seem to go by faster when we are more intentional and try to have more fun. 

3) There is a season for everything. I will not ALWAYS be a baby mom or a toddler mom. This phase is tough for it's own reasons but someday I will have a chance to go back to school and keep learning and maybe even find a career that I love. If I'm learning anything as I grow up, it is that time flies by. I can't believe that it has been 7 years since I graduated high school. Or that Rose is almost TWO. *starts sobbing* And so, I want to take the time to really enjoy this phase, and cherish the time that I have to be "just" a mom. 

4) I'm realizing that maybe I don't have just one specific purpose. After Clay Christensen passed away last week, several people mentioned his TED talk and that it was life changing and I thought maybe I should take the time to listen to it. It's called "How Will You Measure Your Life?" I didn't understand a lot of what he was talking about because I tried to listen to it and exercise at the same time and I'm terrible at that, but one thing I heard him say was that after he dies, when he stands before God, He doesn't think God will ask him how successful he was or how much money he made but rather how he touched the lives of individual people. I'm not paraphrasing that very well. Here is a quote from his talk:

"I’ve concluded that the metric by which God will assess my life isn’t dollars but the individual people whose lives I’ve touched.

I think that’s the way it will work for us all. Don’t worry about the level of individual prominence you have achieved; worry about the individuals you have helped become better people. This is my final recommendation: Think about the metric by which your life will be judged, and make a resolution to live every day so that in the end, your life will be judged a success."

There! Isn't that a cool way to think about life? So, right now, the impact I'm making may not be very big, but I have the ability to do my best to be a wonderful wife to Ryan and really lift him up. And I have the ability to be the best mom I can be to help Rose grow up feeling loved and important and strong, and like she can do anything. And I can do the same thing for each of my future children. I can also reach out to my friends and take the time to help them feel loved and remembered and important. I can smile to people at the grocery store and talk to the cashiers about how they're doing. I can just make sure that when I meet someone, I try to leave them a little better off than when I found them.

I'm sure there will still be days where I feel down, lonely, tired, bored, and like I should be accomplishing something more, but I think I'm on the right track to finding meaning and purpose in my life and making the most of every situation I'm in.

This is a picture from a trip Ryan and I went on when I was pregnant with Rose and still experiencing morning sickness. I felt gross, but I love this picture because Ryan likes it and he's the one that took it and I feel like sometimes it helps to see yourself through the eyes of someone who loves you.