There are a lot of things I could write about this cartoon.  Many years before Rob and I had children, I watched my sisters and incredulously declared, "Wow, you just have to entertain them all day long.  If you want to read a book or write an essay you can't do it! The children are always there!"  There's a lot to say about where I was then compared to where I am now. Or at least where I should be now.

There are a lot of things I wish Rob and I could negotiate in a contract.   Provisions could include things such as the following:

• Ellie and Matt shall not demand food or toys or games while Mom is feeding Tessa
• Only one child may cry at a time
• Any period of sleep shorter than one hour shall not constitute fulfillment of a nap
• Decisions concerning meal time and menu, approved activities and outings, bath time and duration, and bedtime routines shall be made solely by Mom and/or Dad.  Children may provide limited input but may not display any displeasure at the final decision.
• No child shall have a meltdown in any public place, including but not limited to those places (e.g. libraries) that require quiet from their patrons.
• Except in case of severe injury or potty accident, children shall not request the presence of Mom and/or Dad during the hours of 8:00 pm and 8:00 am.  Itchy skin, imaginary scratches, mild thirst, or lack of doll/bear in bed do not constitute severe injury.
• Failure to abide by any provision shall constitute a breach of contract, entitling Mom and Dad to damages including but not limited to the following:  allow the injured party 1 or more hours of complete quiet, during which time the injured party may take a nap, read a book, or pursue any other leisure activity; clean all toys without parental supervision; entertain another sibling by any means resulting in smiles and happy noises from the sibling being entertained; other remedies created and requested in the sole discretion of the injured party.

There are lots of things I could write about this cartoon.  But for now, I'll just give a big public expression of gratitude to Rob, who came home a little bit early from work yesterday and immediately sent me out to explore the world on my own.  I went to my favorite bookstore, ate in the cafe, worked on my Sunday School lesson, and read books about parenting.  I stopped at the store to replenish our supply of baby foot and Vitamin Water and arrived home four hours later feeling cleansed from the week.  Turns out, the parenting books indicate that our children's behavior is pretty typical, and we're not complete parental failures.  Now if we could only get that contract in place...

On the Occasion of Seven

Seven years ago today Rob and I were married in the Salt Lake temple.  Seven years!  Really?  Because seven years seems so, well, substantial.  But here we are at the start of 2011:  three children and going on six years in the same house and job for Rob.  I guess that means we're adults of some kind.  I love this candid of us on our wedding day, just basking in the glow of eternity.  Rob will tell you that he's not basking:  he's explaining how uncomfortable his tuxedo shoes are (sorry I made you wear those, babe) and asking how many more pictures we have to take in the winter cold, followed up by how pretty I look.

Here we are now, a little more grown up, on a rather chilly day but in much more comfortable shoes:

A month after our wedding, on our first Valentine's Day together, Rob gave me the domain name "teamlesan.org."  A geek gift, he said, from my computer geek husband.  It was romantic:  a technological representation of our new family unit.  Geek gifts have since become something of a tradition with us; or, rather, they occur with such frequency that I have decided to call them a tradition.  But of all the wonderful geek gifts I have given and received over the past seven years, my favorite is still teamlesan.org.  Perhaps I've infused the domain name with more meaning that it had at the time Rob chose it, but isn't that how love works?  What starts as something small and simple becomes bigger and more meaningful as time moves forward.  So there's my romantic anniversary message:  love is like a domain name...

Happy 7th, RCLIII.  I love being on your team!