the month of ♥

our wedding anniversary AND valentine's day in 1 month?! according to chris that's almost (but not quite) as stressful as my birthday and christmas being in the same month. not to worry though- he made it through the celebrations unscathed and now has another year's reprieve before having to deal with the duo again.

"romance"... a word with such an ambiguous, subjective meaning. i looked it up on the internet and i swear the most common definition i came across was "a love affair". i was like- "well, jeez. that sounds fairly horrific to have go on during a marriage. let's try to find a different definition." and then of course, according to chris "romance" is an arbitrary term without any real definition- apparently people just pretend to know what it is and act accordingly. but, no matter what definition we're going for here, i'm just going to skip all pretenses and submit my opinion that it is a tad difficult to feel romantic in any sense of the word when one is very ripe with child. although i'm sure i could muster up enough energy to be coy and flirtacious if i really had to (and by that i mean really really had to), this year it felt much more appropriate to be straightforward and sincere. lucky for me, chris is all about straighforward sincerity (i love that man so much).

so on february 2nd we celebrated our first year wedding anniversary. chris was a darling and took me out to a trendy little restaurant that we frequented often back when we were first dating. not only was it SO nice to have a break from making & cleaning up after dinner (i had worked very long hours that day), it was also nice to reminisce about our first year together as marrieds in the place where we started out years ago. of course, all of this happened while i indulged in a giant bistro-burger and garlic fries... something i'd have NEVER done back when we were dating- you know, back when i had a dainty appetite and didn't feel like smelling of garlic the whole night (oh, how pregnancy changes things).
-oh yeah. and chris had a "bistro-pizza". because, you know, chris loses his super-powers if he doesn't eat pizza at least once a week.

for the celebration of our 3rd valentine's day together, we had an awesome date lined up at grossmont hospital's women's center for a new parent tour. we were the only ones in the group that evening (i guess people don't want to go to the hospital on valentine's day? how strange...), so it ended up being a more intimate experience than i anticipated, which was really nice. it was such a relief to be able to pre-register and take a dry-run of where we're supposed to go on the big day (preparing tends to calm a lot of my anxieties), and we were both impressed by the facility and the staff. as chris and i walked back out to our car he reached his arm around me and began planning our "for real" visit with tender excitement. it touched my heart to hear him. his presence with me at that moment was the sweetest valentine's gift i've ever been given.
-oh yeah. and afterwards we went to the souplantation. because i wanted to. ;)

so anyhow. back to "romance". i never found a conclusive definition. apparently, according to the internet, the general idea is that romance is some sort of ambient sensation that is relatively short-lived. meh. if that's the case, who needs romance anyways? i say a healthy base of good old-fashioned love is much more important. i promise that googling "love" renders much better results than googling "romance". love'll put up with essence of garlic-fries and voluntary hospital trips any old day. beat that romance!

taken 02/13/2011- the day before valentine's day.