Leslie

Last night I had a dream that I had a husband but it wasn't really MY husband. There was this man in my life and he was there and parenting my children but it was all ...wrong. Wrong because it wasn't Leslie but in my dream state I could not recognize that, in the dream I just knew that it wasn't right, something was off. Then I heard a noise and I was roused form my dream and I rolled over and there he was. Mine own Leslie, quietly going about his morning, getting ready for work and trying his best not to wake me. I was so thankful that he was there, or HERE in my life with me, I was so glad to see his sleepy face in the dim morning light. All became right in my world again and I drifted back to sleep as he snuck out of the house to go earn a buck.
 I woke again a few minutes later and I lay there in the quiet, thinking and remembering and wondering how I ever got lucky enough to have a man like him in my life.
He takes me as I am. All the bumps, bruises, ugly spots...all of the good, all of the bad and all of the inbetween. He loves me for who I am, who I have the potential to be and the girl that I was.
I called him yesterday in the midst of my Easter Basket Shopping Frenzy. This was his afternoon off and this was about the 5th call that I had  made to him, he answered the phone full of patience and wondering what I was calling about now. Well, I needed a tally on plastic eggs, plastic grass and baskets.... He had to call me back with the information as he would have to climb to the attic and drag down my tote of Easter Crap to get that tally. Now, he knows how I love to spoil the kids on the holidays, it's pathological really, but it is who I am. So he told me, you have 4 baskets, lots of eggs, enough grass for two baskets, so if they are getting two baskets a piece you will need more grass...."
That right there is why I love him so and why I am so lucky. He thinks is absolutely ridiculous that a single child would have more than one basket on Easter morning, but he also knows that in the past, my frenzy has taken over and there has been, what we will call, "overflow". He patiently accepted many calls form me on his afternoon "off", he clambered up to the attic at my request...
He is not intimidated by me, he does not do nice things for me just to keep me quiet, he does nice things for me because he is nice, because he loves me and likes to see me happy. And he is tolerant of my child spoilage because he knows why I do it, he understands their origins and my obsessive need sometimes try to make up for things. He understands this because he genuinely and truly loves us all and he does his best every day to be his best for us.

I am not writing these things to brag. I am writing them because he reads my blog and I want him to know how much I love him and that I see him and the multitude of small things he does just to see me smile, or just to give me a hand or just because he is head over heels in love with our kids.