the littlest notebook

Valentine's Day Chocolate

I never thought I’d say this, but I cannot wait to pop! I do honestly enjoy being pregnant, but being this big is getting a little old. The third trimester must be the hardest lap for me. I can’t see my shoes anymore, and it makes me breathless to put them on. Well, I have another two-and-a-half more months to go!

And I am so, so grateful for my husband. Of the two of us, he is the one whom sleep loves. Me, I need to do stuff, cross things off my list, and check the water faucet again before I can get some shut-eye. I was never a very good napper, but CW can fall asleep standing up. So I recognize the sacrifice when he regularly lets me sleep in in the mornings, even after he’s been rushing that assignment late into the night. Some mornings, he’s up at 6:30, and he only gets to rest past midnight. Maybe there’s something in the coffee they sell here.

I’d like to think it’s love, though. When we first came to Urbana, CW and I quarreled a lot. I was not used to not feeling useful, and was easily flustered by the then-incomprehensible bus schedules and whatnots I had to negotiate to just live. I felt I had given up my life, my dream job, my friends, and everything I had grown up with. Unlike a project at work, there is no easy, direct correlation between the amount of resources I invest in motherhood and how well my child actually turns out. And it does get hard to give myself a pat on the back when I am faced with a red-faced, crying toddler demanding what he cannot and should not have. Thankfully, many prayers, deep conversations, and a few good books later, I came to see that motherhood can never be a career or any satisfying substitute for one; it is a relationship. I also came to see that my husband cared deeply for me.

It is not easy to make life work here. We have to figure most things out by ourselves, and learn from our mistakes. But I know in the last eight months, I have regained much of the self-confidence I seemed to have lost in my dark teenage years. And our time here has really been beneficial for our family. I will never say our marriage is rock-solid. It is a fragile thing that too many a callous word carelessly left festering can erode, and sometimes the mere tone of how something is said can sour the best ambience. We need Jesus every day to save us from ourselves, and we need His spirit to humble us constantly. Perhaps it is because life is harder, we work harder at it. I realize with gladness that we don’t fight that much anymore, and that I have grown more secure in the knowledge of my husband’s love for me.

CW is not someone who would say mushy things, so in the course of our five years together, I have had to learn how to read his language, and in turn, how to show my appreciation for the person God made in him. And it must be tough being married to the most unromantic woman on earth. On Valentine’s Day, my husband showed up with a box of chocolates. And he predictably retorted, I knew you’d say this, when I predictably said he should have saved the money. CW had chosen the gift very carefully: on the lid, there was a button that you could press for music, so the gift was a toy for Ian as well. I hope he wasn’t really annoyed, and that I appeased him enough when I praised him for being considerate, and for the good value in his choice. Yah, erm, right. There is no end to learning, especially when it comes to the heart.