Childhoodtake2!

He's the one you call for.
He's the one that signs you up for all of your stuff.
He's the one that gets you ready every. single. morning.
He's also the one that tackles night time routines.
He's the one you love two claps.
He's the one you look like.
He's the one that worries most about you.

He's the one that asked me out.
He's the one that got down on one knee to ask me to join him in forever.
He's the one that puts up with my crazy.
He's the one that has embraced my family's crazy.
He's the one that worries the least about us.

He's the one that sets schedules for you.
He's the one you spend your summer with.
He's the one that plans our vacations.
He's the one that plans our days.
He's the one that loves adventure.
He's the one that needs big breaks.

He's the one that celebrates your milestones.
He's the one that is never sad anything is over.
He's the one that loves your first and your last everything.
He's the one that asked for you, he's the one that realized we were now a complete family.
He's the one that wanted this life, always and forever, you were always a part of him.

He's the one that had the hardest time letting Mia go.
He's the one that I got to watch fall in love with her.
He's the one that adores Pearl, and I got to watch them fall in love too.
He's the one that walks her, he's the one that is so patient.
He's the one that realized we needed to wait and heal.
He's the one that also realized I couldn't live without her.

He's the one that won't let any of us walk away angry.
He's always the first to apologize.
He's the fixer, he's always putting us back together.
He's the one that built our house.
He's the one I see in every corner of it.
He's the one that is always trying to make us happy.
He's the one that loves us, so much he can't see straight.
He's the one that laughs, his job is to be silly.
He's the one that has so much joy, naturally sitting in there, and we're the ones that need to remind him of that.

He's the one you get your eyes from
he's the one you get your childhood joy from
he's the one you want to make happy
he's the one you really adore.
He's the one we can count on.
He is the one I count on.
He's the one that knew we were it for him.

He's the one that is more simple.
He's the one that doesn't question much.
He's the one that hasn't met someone he doesn't like.
He's the one that sees the good in everyone.
He's the one that has a good heart.

He's the one that forgets a lot.
He's the one we love.
He's the one that needs constant reminders that all of this is crazy messy goofy love.
He's the one that needs constant reminders that this is childhood.
He's the one that needs constant reminders that this was his childhood.
He's the one that needs constant reminders that this was him, always him.
He's the one that needs to be reminded that he will never be loved and needed this much again.
He's the one that we love.
He's the one that we love.
He's the one that we love.
He's the one that won't ever let us give up.
He's the one that won't ever walk away.
He's the one that expects you to move mountains.
He's the one for us, he's the one for me, he's the one that put this family together.
He's the one that we love.
He's the one that we love.
He's the one guys.

"The book of love is long and boring
No one can lift the damn thing..."

Our book is long, our story is old, our lives are filled with the perfect kind of boring.
And as we celebrate each and every single year of us and together, I want you to know that I have found a comforting peace with our story.
I adore our story, I love how perfectly imperfect it is.
I feel our ups and downs.
I adore our story, and I am proud to be writing it with you.

Our boring is filled with schedules and routines and "have tos".
Our days do not look like a romantic movie, nor are they filled with wild romantic gestures.
They are simple but crazy,
they are long but passing by too quickly,
they are the perfectly imperfect and yes, boring.

"...It's full of charts and facts, some figures and instructions for dancing..."

And so, our dance continues because our music isn't going to stop.
The two kids who grew into the us of today, their music and their dance, it goes on and on.
So, dance with me. We don't need the instructions anymore.
We know how to hold each other, how we fit, how to move together.
Hold me in your arms, kiss the top of my head and tell me, like only you know how, that everything will be okay. That our love is strong, and can outlast all pain, all diseases, all heartaches.
It can outlast days with the kids that make our heads pound and our tempers take over.
It can outlast the long work days and long work weeks that quickly turn into long work months.
Because I love it when you dance with me.

"The book of love has music in it,
In fact that's where music comes from.
Some of it is just transcendental,
Some of it is just really dumb."
"But I,
I love it when you sing to me.
And you,
You can sing me anything."

There is music in this life that we created, this life that we decided to create.
And our story is filled with songs and memories of all of us.
There is music in our memories, in our wrinkles, in the hair that is starting to gray, our bodies that don't look like ours.

"The book of love is long and boring,
And written very long ago.
It's full of flowers and heart-shaped boxes,
And things we're all too young to know."

Our story begins when we were young...young and starting our lives.
We found each other at the end of one period in time and the start of forever.
The start of adulthood, the start of real life.
Our journey, our story, our book started. Growing up, growing together.
Never could we have imagined that one night that the two 21 year old kids would be here, today, living this life, this remarkable and overwhelming life.
Never could we know the weight of family would feel this full?
Never could I know that you would take away my pain, my anger, my lifetime of fighting and pushing away?
Never could we know that we would find peace, but in the oddest of places, like through our own fights, our own molding and changing, our own reflection of how we want things different and how we will never let each other go. Things we're all too young to know.

Did we know we would create this, create them, create home and family and this overwhelming love?

Did we know how little they would be and how fleeting time would become?
Did we realize that we need to work even harder on us while parenting them?
Did we know that the words "I take you to be mine" would weigh this much? It would be this heavy, it would carry with it joy and fear and peace and frustration and anger and laughter and tantrums, and woes and happiness and sadness.
Did we know that it would make my crazy even crazier and at times kill the joy that lives so naturally in you?
Did we know I would find my second chance through them, that we would protect them but realize that we have to let them go, each day a little more.
Or, were these all things we were too young to know?

And here is the best part...
our story isn't done.
We are still writing, we are still editing and rearranging the pages, writing a long and painful and joyful and remarkable chapter each and every year.
We will make sure we all have a happy ending.

"And I,
I love it when you give me things.
And you,
You ought to give me wedding rings.
You ought to give me wedding rings."