In Appreciation

I have been reading some new blogs lately, and I admired Lickety Split’s post on five things his wife has done in the last week that impressed him or made their relationship feel positive.

It is true that I sometimes over-focus on the negative in my relationship. As FTN and Taja have noted, sometimes a quest to improve things can be mistaken for eternal dissatisfaction by our partners, and sometimes it is even mistaken that way by me. Since I have a lot to be grumpy about at the moment (work is just insane), I will draw inspiration from Lickety and take this moment to appreciate some of the things the Big Dude has done this week. So here are mine:

• The man is still doing the night shift every night. Sometimes the Little Dude has woken up very early and the Big Dude has stayed up until the more civilised hour of 5am or so before handing him over to me for the morning shift. Ya gotta love a man who lets you sleep.

• I really enjoyed our cuddle session of the other night. And he gave me a decent tender, moist kiss, too. No dry pecks for me!

• Although I have been working long hours and so more of the childcare has been falling on him, he has not complained about it, even when he has clearly been feeling very ill.

• We are very short of spending money at the moment as we are saving in order to move house. The Big Dude can be prone to implying that I am a control freak about money and effectively demanding more spending money than we can really afford. But it has been weeks now, and not a word so far. He has really been cooperating on our financial plan, which does not come naturally to him.

• While admittedly tofu night was not a complete success this week, at least he initiated it. That was the third time he has initiated something without me having to ask, and it has been a long time since that happened. I feel like he is really trying.

So, there we are. Anyone else feel able to try this exercise? I won’t tag anyone, but maybe we could spread a little appreciation of what we do get around Blogland.

I feel a little song coming on:

Count your blessings/Name them one by one...