Interview

Wendy at Adoption & Fire has asked to interview those who follow her blog (and she follows ours, too!). I figured I was game...so here's her question for me:

You are celebrating your 11th anniversary being married. What advice would you give a young couple about to be married? How have you grown as a person since you were first married? And has having a child changed your marriage?

You may have noticed I said Megan gave us an anniversary present of walking by herself on our anniversary. If not, we celebrated 11 years of marriage on October 4th. So, to the question...

Advice for young married couples: never say something without thinking how the other person will respond to what you have to say. Always think before you speak. Always. You absolutely cannot take words back, and as much as you apologize for something you said without thinking, they truly can never be forgotten.

Now to the area I'm truly "best" at: advice to newly married (or soon-to-be married) women. There are several things I like to share, but it all pretty much can be summed up in one area. No matter how much you cannot believe it (and don't want to accept it), you are the manager of the household. That does NOT mean that you do it all, it simply means you "manage" the household chores to ensure they get done. The approach you use to work with your husband to complete the household chores is key; it must be teamwork. It doesn't get messy by one person, it shouldn't be cleaned up by one person. That's my philosophy, anyways. And, he truly does NOT see what needs to be done. Honest. He doesn't. Watch the tone in how you ask if he'd be willing to do this particular chore--or better yet list the things that need to be done and discuss who's willing to complete which ones.

How have I grown as a person...well, I'm far more patient, accepting and willing to give the benefit of the doubt than before I got married. I also think that I ask more questions before reacting now, but that could be more to having more education than before, I don't know.

Has Megan changed our marriage. Um, ABSOLUTELY. It took us quite a while to find time to talk about our day with a kid who would only sleep when touching one of us (preferably me). Since she goes to bed so early (back then it was 5:30!), it meant whoever put her to sleep holding her (and thus not talking) until we were ready for bed--um, that means all evening. And since she was awake every 90 minutes or so all night long, whoever was "on duty" (me when DH worked) slept in the extra bedroom with Megan so at least one of us would get some sleep. There was not much time for each other. Period. But, now she's sleeping by herself. She's sleeping more through the night. So that means once she's in bed (around 7pm), we have time to catch up, discuss different household problems, Megan problems/excitements, make decisions, etc. Things are so much better, but for 10 of those 11 years we could do whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted. Now, we have to do everything around Megan's eating and sleeping schedule. It's definitely different, but I think we are enjoying our new life.