It all started in January 2020. My husband and I were in Napa for New Year’s, and according to our timeline, we were planning on having a child that year (I know you’re out there thinking, “this lady is fucking crazy if she thinks she can plan out her life like that.” You’re right. I am crazy). Now, if you don’t know my husband or me, you might laugh at that previous statement. Yes, we planned this all out over three years before then, when we were first seriously dating and discussing marriage and families.
We met at a wedding in Utah, where my good friend married his first cousin. He was from Chicago, and I was from Boston. We proceeded to date long-distance for three years. Since I was a teacher, my ability to travel was much more limited to my school vacations. So every summer around July-August, we would sit down with our calendars and plan out our visits. We thrive in schedules and planning. They say opposites attract, but in this case, my husband is probably just as type A as I am.
I may or may not take it a step further…there are planners and stickers involved here (definitely where my toddler gets her obsession from).
Little did we know: PANDEMIC, MARCH 2020! We joke that everyone on Instagram was making memes about how the pandemic was the time when everyone got pregnant because they were bored, not because they had this in the works 5 years in the making.
Even though this was our plan, the reality hit a little too hard in Napa. Get me a few wine glasses in, and all of a sudden, I find myself sobbing at the thought of losing my freedom. “This is where wined-up trips to Napa go to die. I’ll never travel again. My life is over.”
My husband, God love him, laughed in my face. Yes. You read that right. I was crying, multiple glasses deep in cabernet, worried my life, as I knew it, would be over, and my husband laughed in my face: open mouth, head thrown back, belly laugh. His next words, though, slapped me back to reality.
“In what world do you think you’ll let me not let you travel?” Ha. He was right. Somehow we’d find a way to make our family and parenthood fit our lifestyle. We just didn’t know how hard that would actually be!
Welcome to REAL parenthood: the kind that demands a bottle of wine and a tipsy Real Sassa to agree to mama-hood in its entirety
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