Our Love Notes

Anthony is a quiet and private person. He lives his life the way he wishes too and mainly keeps to himself, he does not use any form of social media as he cannot understand the desire to know about peoples business. For this very reason, I don't very often talk of him or of our relationship here or in any other form of social media. I try to respect his privacy as much as he respects my need to share. But, this blog is to be a gift to my Daughter one day. I am using this space as a way to document our lives together and the lessons we learn and teach each other. I cannot give our story to my Daughter with a big Anthony shaped hole in it. He is a part of me, a part of her and a very important part of our story.

Anthony is my partner, my best friend, my accomplice and my support. He is my warmth and my resting place. He is, for me, the calm and the logic that I am lacking and I am for him, the fire and the passion, that he keeps hidden. He challenges my intellect and he gives me direction. I challenge his emotions and remind him to show them. Together we combine and we are for each other, what we have always been without. He is my opposite and I am his, but together we form a team.

Like most relationships, we have had our ups and our downs, we have our trials and our triumphs. We fight, we play, we cry and we laugh. We are just two people who are trying to make it and who sometimes forget to make the other one feel great. All relationships have a fictitious beginning, you know, how we pretend to love the tour de france because he does. Or they pretend to be romantic with flowers, because she wants that. Then once you have them, the truth comes out. There are no flowers and the tour de france will never play on this television while I am in the house. 

Sometimes we let the romance die out, sometimes we revert back to living our lives separately and we forget to do those little things that say to the other, "hey, Im thinking of you and I love you". So, we have had many discussions and arguments between the two of us, about how we aren't letting the other one feel the love. Conversations about how we are getting swept up in the whirlwind that is life as parents and we are forgetting about life as lovers. The thing is, we don't spend much time with just the two of us. We don't have many people who we can call upon to take Evelyn so that we can have that special "us" time. So we need to find other ways to do this. We need to be a little more creative in the ways that we take each others breath away. We need to create moments amidst our daily family life to let the other know that even though we can't run away for the night, I still want you.

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For Evelyn's first birthday, we were given a packet of bath crayons. I thought to myself, "Wow! Gee thanks! Another mess I'll have to spend hours scrubbing away". I know right, very appreciative gift recipient here! Evelyn was too young to play with these so they were packed away for a later date and swiftly forgotten about.

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One morning I woke up and I dragged my tired feet into the bathroom to find inspiration beneath the hot stinging needles of the shower. I washed the nights bad sleep away and scrubbed in some energy and revitalisation. And as I turned off the shower taps, I found some real inspiration. I found my smile for the day. I found a moment, which took my breath away and made me feel more then loved. I found Anthony's feelings and emotions, which I rarely get to hear, scrawled out in bright coloured bath crayons on my shower screen. My heart melted and my day was made. 

And now, this has become an almost daily ritual. He will write to me and confess his love, and I will wash it away and return the notion. Each and every morning I look forward to getting out of bed and letting my heart skip a beat. 

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I thank my friend Zelda, every morning, for that packet of bath crayons. They have breathed a little spark and fire into my relationship that was becoming a little drab and forgetful. They have given us the inspiration to remind each other that we love each other. They have given us fun and they have given us romance. 

~~~

There is joy in things as small as a packet of crayons, that even we adults, can learn to find.

***This post was read and approved by Anthony before posting, who requested I add the following disclaimer***

This all originally started with a nice big red letter on my fridge, written in a whiteboard marker, it took us two nights of intensive scrubbing to get it off! Sometimes, romance can backfire!

**Fridges are not whiteboards**

Linking up with Diary of a SAHM IBOT for the first time - thanks for having me :)