parenting

What We’ve Learned about Love in a Decade of Marriage

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 1 Comment

What We've Learned about Love in a Decade of Marriage (Photo: Young white man and woman in sepia-tone standing in front of a giant wine barrel)

Looking up the aisle, I swallowed and blinked to hold back tears. There stood my husband-to-be, my best friend, the person I had spent the last five years of my young life loving. He seemed to be shaking just a little in his tux, his hazel eyes looking back at me.

Walking down the hallway in work today, I hummed Billy Joel’s “You’re My Home” to myself. “Wherever we’re together, that’s my home.” I thought of my husband’s smile and smiled back to myself.

On the day you get married, people say you have your whole life ahead of you. What they don’t tell you is that life is made up of a series of years, months and days, each with their own rhythm. Even though ten years sounds like a long time on your wedding day, it doesn’t feel that way when it rolls around.

Instead, it feels like a collection of the ordinary and extraordinary, the good and the bad, the hard and the easy, with both of you together at the center. At least that’s how it felt to me, when my husband, Chris, and I celebrated our tenth anniversary.

In that decade, Chris and I learned a lot about each other and marriage. We’ve been through hospital stays, international travel, crummy work hours, living in multiple places, graduate school, and having two kids.

Here are a few things we’ve picked up along the way:

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Growing Through the Seasons

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Growing Through the Seasons

My years are measured in seasons now, not months or years. Each brings a flurry of activity and opportunity for growth.

Fall:

Roaming the local pumpkin patch, we find the most perfect bumpy, little pumpkin for our little boy. Around campfires and hay bales, we breathe in the cooling air.

The leaves shift colors and drift down. As much as my two-year-old loves jumping on the bed, he’s never jumped in leaves before. We start with a slow-motion fall, easing our way down with giggles and flailing. After a few jumps, he piles the leaves into the wheelbarrow by the armful.

The week before, we had stripped the garden, pulling out monstrous tomato plants and prickly squash. Now, we empty the composter, scraping the sides of the dark sludge and shreds of newspaper caught there. We break down the straw bale that held our Jack o’lantern, layering it in with the compost and leaves. The pile nearly comes up to my son’s head.

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Saying Goodbye to my Childhood Home

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 9 Comments

Saying Goodbye to my Childhood Home

The Victorian-influenced sun and moon wallpaper, that I felt so grown-up picking out. The musical theater posters on the wall, including one from West Side Story signed by the touring cast. The photograph of two manatees kissing at Homosassa Springs that my dad took when I was in third grade. The glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling, interspersed with painted clouds. All fundamental elements of my childhood bedroom, now all gone. Instead, it’s some other child’s bedroom, empty and awaiting his dream of what he wants it to be.

Last month, my parents closed on my childhood home in upstate New York so they could move closer to us. They sold it to a young family with two small boys. Like my parents 30 years ago, the mother and father were excited about the good school district and suburban neighborhood. While I’m glad everything worked out, it’s still a bit bittersweet for me.

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The Saga of Transitioning from a Crib to a Toddler Bed

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 8 Comments
The Saga of Transitioning from a Crib to a Toddler Bed
Most three-year-olds are not still in cribs, having transitioned to toddler beds long ago. But in this case, Sprout is not “most kids.” He’s never tried to climb out of his crib, uneasy with scrambling down where there isn’t obvious hand and foot-holds. Because there was no great need, we put off the transition as long as possible. But with his third birthday passed, a potty-training blitz coming up, and preschool approaching, we figured it was time. It was only slightly more chaotic than we expected.

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Things My Older Son Does as a Big Brother that are both Adorable and Annoying

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 7 Comments
Things My Older Son Does as a Big Brother that ar Adorable and Annoying

Nope, these aren’t my kids. I don’t like sharing photos of them, so stock random boys it is!

Returning to work, one of the first questions people ask is, “How is [Sprout] doing?” And my answer is consistently, “He really loves his brother. But he’s a bit aggressively affectionate.” While I’m grateful that he adores his brother, sometimes the ways he shows it aren’t very appropriate. Oddly, even though we’re freaking out, Little Bird hardly ever seems to mind.

Here are a few of the things he does that are sometimes adorable, sometimes a Very Bad Idea and most often, both.

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Things My Newborn Has Reminded Me Of, None of Which Are Babies

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 2 Comments

Things My Newborn Has Reminded Me Of

When a baby is born, all of the adults gather around, ooohing and ahhhhing. Inevitably one of them says to the parents, “Oh, they look just like you!” This is obviously not true. Babies look far more like each other than their own parents. In fact, my baby has actually reminded me of a variety of animals far more than me or my husband. With Little Bird having recently moved out of the newborn stage, here’s an inventory of things he reminded me of:

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A Failing Garden and Thriving Family

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 2 Comments

Text: "A Failing Garden and Thriving Family; We'll Eat You Up, We Love You So." Photo of a garden with a few very small plants growing in it, surrounded by a fence and mulched with straw and leaves.

My garden is sad. Or at least I’m sad about it. But a combination of bad luck and slight neglect is reminding me where my attention needs to be right now.

Photo of groundhog and groundhog baby in a yard with green grass and a turtle-shaped toddler pool behind them.

My garden is feeding a fellow mommy!

I’ve planted corn, broccoli, melon, beans, peas, basil and tomatoes so far. The May rains of Biblical proportions washed away our broccoli seedlings and corn seeds. The first round of bean sprouts failed, along with the melon sprouts. A hungry animal stripped the leaves from the second round of bean sprouts, along with the vast majority of my pea sprouts. (Possibly our resident groundhog – she did that to the sweet potatoes last year.) Hungry birds looking for worms dislodged the sweet potato and few sprouts that remained.

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