Dave is the best. I mean, I don’t talk about him much here, just because, but today, I’m going to get a little mushy. Maybe a lot mushy.

I’ve been sick for weeks. I’m definitely BETTER now, but I’m still coughing, still have a sore throat, and still just not100%. Still, way better than I was. And every night, I’d offer to sleep in the guest room,and every night, Dave refused.  When my doc mentioned I should try a humidifier, I dug out one that we own, but Dave didn’t think that was good enough. "You need steam!"  He went out and bought the ol’ Vicks Vaporizer (and the menthol stuff!) and has made it his mission to fill it each night when we go to bed.

Two nights ago, I HAD to go grocery shopping. I used to like it, but more and more it feels like a chore, and so every time we make the list, I say "Are you coming with me?" and he says "no."  It’s sort of a running joke between us. When it comes to splitting household duties, we pretty much have shaken it out so that it falls across gender stereotypes, but it works for us — Dave does all of the outside work, mowing, raking, shoveling, trash, car maintenance, furnace maintenance, weatherproofing, etc etc etc, while I generally take care of dishes, laundry (though he has taken to carrying it up and down the stairs as a result of a Forensic Files type show we saw several years ago, where a woman slipped carrying laundry up the stairs and got her head caught somehow, and died, and infact WASN’Tmurdered by her husband  — the ep was so disturbing to Dave that anytime I head for the stairs with a big load of something, he says "HEAD!" as a warning…) cooking, grocery shopping, and taxes. We both share the actual cleaning-cleaning, though I usually do the kitchen and he does the living room, and any vacuuming, because of my allergies. Anyway, yeah, it’s all gender-typical, but it works for us.  SO! My POINT!

We make the list, and I say "Are you coming with me?" and he said yes! Such a stupid little thing, but he came with me and did all the heavy lifting and stuff, and it was cool. Just a stupid little thing that made me happy.

At night, we curl up and he feels around for the baby, and talks to it, and the other night he confessed that he expected to be really emotional when the baby was born.  When I asked him what he meant – emotional canbe so many things — he said "Overjoyed. Unless I have to ask questions like ‘how rare is it?’ or ‘what do you mean, you’ve never seen one like that before?’" 

We’re still working on names, we think we have a boy name, and the girl name I love he’s okay with, but not realllly into it. He thinks it sounds nerdy, which DUH, the kid is going to err on the side of geek no matter what, but when I google image-searched the name, the first dozen or so were of really hot scientists. Real scientists, too, not like, porn scientists. He’s still not convinced.  And we haven’t even GONE to middle name territory yet, not at all.

I love my husband. When we were dating, and i was working the late shift doing tech support, if there was a biug storm, I’d wake up to find my car shoveled out. He’d come over before his day started (we weren’t living together then) and clean my car out so I wouldn’t have to.  That kind of kindess didn’t go away when we moved in together, or when we got married, andI don’t expect it togo away when we become parents, either.

Dave is a quiet man. He’s a bit antisocial, would rather spend an evening in than out, and can seem very reserved when you don’t know him.  I’m more of the social one, and I sometimes wonder if people look at us and think "huh, BO-ring." But together, us, we just work together. We crack each other up, we love each other, we respect each other. We are really kind to each other, and to other people. Dave is FUNNY, damn funny, but he’s so dry, people sometimes don’t get that. (Which is funny, because I was once written up for ‘being too funny.’ My imediate supervisor wrote it that way, because HE got my humor, but apparently other people didn’t, and thought I was just nuts or something.)

Anyway, I love my husband, but even more, I really, really LIKE him. I like hanging out with him. I like knowing that we take care of each other in our own ways, and I like looking forward to the future of parenting together. I know it will be hard, and that it’s something you can’t really prepare for, but I think that having such a solid base to start from is a pretty good jumping-off point.