I’ve seen a few bloggers do posts like this in the last few days, and I love it for a few reasons. It’s a great way for me to look back in a few years and remember what my year was like. It’s also a great way to point out some favorite posts from the past year to any new readers!

January

I wrote about my struggle with pregnancy weight gain and accepting my new body shape. I started eating in the style of the Real Food movement, something I am still doing today. I started answering questions on Formspring, and kept doing so even when it felt like everyone else was dropping out. To date I’ve answered almost 3500 questions! That’s a whole lot of talking about myself :). Baby was going to arrive in a few moments and I knew the time would go by in a blink, so I started thinking about the post-partum period.

February

I talked about Good/Better/Best, and I’m still working to do better each day. We stressed about what we would name T1. I admitted that I pee my panties a little bit sometimes. We had a snow day in Dallas (very rare) and I went exploring in a wooded area near my house, coming frighteningly close to getting lost!

March

I gave you a tour of our apartment at Villa Miranda in Dallas. I made baklava for the first time, something I would most definitely like to do again. My stomach exploded with stretch marks, a part of my pregnancy that is still with me to this day. I had maternity photos taken by my friend Bethany! I devoted a post to my caring and devoted husband. I was showered with love at my baby shower. This was an exciting month, but the highlight was most definitely finding out that we were moving to Chicago!

April

I wrote about how I had been preparing my body to have a baby. I tried live blogging general conference, something I’d like to do again in the future but probably won’t happen now that I have a baby to entertain! I was getting so little sleep that it started to consume my thoughts, which of course led to a post here on That Wife. I wrote one final letter to T1 in embryo. Finally, T1 arrived! I wasn’t producing enough milk, which starved our son, and so I started supplementing with formula and wrapping him in a biliblanket to treat the jaundice which resulted.

May

I posted the story of T1′s birth, and tried to answer your birth questions. I wrote about how we are paying for our expenses while at business school, even though TH isn’t currently working. Stopped breastfeeding. Ignited a whole lot of controversy why I wrote my interpretation of the LDS views on mothers working outside the home. Highlighted ways that blogging had made me a better person. I had the first of many awful OBGYN appointments. My diet changed once again as we drastically cut back on the amount of meat we consume.

June

We used cloth diapers! I wrote candidly about what post-partum recovery is like. Let’s stop using “retard” and “gay” is derogatory terms! We buzzed T1′s hair, which made you all a little crazy. I realized that mommy blogging kind of sucks sometimes. Yet another sucky OBGYN appointment. That Food Diary was launched. I showed what it’s like to take care of a 4 month old. We had a little family outing at the Dr. Pepper Festival in Dublin. I took a little break from blogging.

July

I fed the missionaries, which was a big deal because it was my first experience trying to cook a meal for guests and manage a baby at the same time. I caught on to the idea of voting with my food dollars. We flew to Washington for T1′s baby blessing. T1 had two notable firsts, swimming and laughing. I became obsessed with the farmer’s market.

August

I’m a baby-wearin’ mama, and changed my eating habits even more drastically. We found an AMAZING apartment. Sadly, this caused us to give up cloth diapering. I spent time with e-friends at a pool party at my apartment building, a soda shop in Dallas, and in Boston.

September

We moved to Chicago and suffered through weeks and weeks without internet. I was able to spend some time with long-time reader Sophia and the Chicago bees. I attempted to save money and dye my hair myself, which was most definitely not a good idea. I grossed a whole lot of people out by creating a placenta print and posting pictures of the process. I came to terms with being a self-taught photographer. That Wife Book Club was launched! We struggled with juggling our baby at church, and I talked about postnatal cuddling. No internet was stressful, but TH not having a passport weeks before we were set to leave for Europe was most definitely a low point for us.

October

We went to Europe!!! (A trip I still need to post about in full.) I stressed about greeting my in-laws with a kiss, they introduced T1 to solid foods. I advocated for less helicopter parenting. T1 dressed as the Sleep Bandit for Halloween. My parents came.

November

T1 gained two teeth. I dressed up as the housing bubble and TH was a mortgage backed security for a University of Chicago MBA party. I officially lost 25 pounds. I attempted to go to Ikea alone with a baby, which was a very bad idea. We spent Thanksgiving in Washington after the wedding of TH’s best friend brought to the Pacific Northwest.

December

We want to shave T1′s hair yet again. I finally finished revamping my Jenna Cole sites. I pulled off a holiday party for That Wife blog readers, with about 10 people in attendance, and vowed to do that no more than once a year. I posted my thoughts on motherhood so far, T1 started crawling, I spoke in church, we joined some CSAs, and I showed what it’s like to run around after an 8 month old all day. We didn’t buy T1 anything for Christmas, and we decided we won’t be telling him Santa is real. We flew to Utah for 7 days and spent some time at a house in Heber City with my parents, we were spoiled by the amount of gifts we received and I felt a little guilty because I am so fortunate. Our entire family loved this way of spending Christmas enough that we’re considering repeating it next year.

Two years,

New baby,

40 extra pounds of me around the house,

And yet…

He still looks at me like this. Like I’m the best thing that’s ever happened to him.

I think I’m the lucky one.

Here’s to yet another year of choosing each other.

The 1st Anniversary

This post needs a preface. I believe sex is sacred, for bringing children into the world and bringing couples closer together. Our current culture is far too casual about sex, promiscuity is widely accepted and media turns the act into a joke with little emphasis on the consequences of such a cavalier attitude toward something so special. My goal with this post is to offer my perspective on postnatal sex without making light of it. If you know me in real life and the thought of me writing about my experience with intimacy after baby is a little too much I suggest you stop reading now.

Read more →

Somehow, though I shouldn’t be by now, I’m still sometimes surprised by the little things you guys pick up on. Sometimes I expect comments on the little things I slip in because I put them there purposely to get a reaction, but most of the time I let my word vomit spill out over the screen without giving much thought to how vastly different we all are and the ways I could never imagine you might react to the things I consider commonplace.

The latest example of this manifested in a comment left by one of my favorite e-friends, Cate, on my Thanksgiving post:

Also, gotta say, I found it weird how you put a smiley after the bit about how the women did the washing up while the men relaxed. Does this really make you smile? Did the women do most/all of the cooking too? (I’m not judging, I’m just interested. As I’ve said before, you and I have so much in common, but then some things about our lives and attitudes are so different, it makes me find those differences extra fascinating because of the similarities I think.)

I love Cate because she’s able to call me out on stuff without coming across as rude. I really believe her when she says she isn’t judging me. She acknowledges how different our backgrounds and beliefs are, and it’s true, we are very different. But then we also have lovely similarities that make me hope we can meet up for elevenses someday with our babies and compare notes.

But to answer her question…

This year for Thanksgiving TH and I were given three different assignments, to bring sparling cider, a dish made with green beans, and a pie. I went out shopping for all of the ingredients and bought the Martinelli’s all by myself*, came home and prepared them all without any help from TH (a process that took several hours), and washed all of the dishes after it was all over. Although I do not know for sure, I imagine the experience was similar for my cousin in regards to the amount of participation her husband had with dealing with the food and planning of a holiday meal for 12. Her husband did carve the turkey, but I don’t think that would satisfy many in a discussion like this about gender stereotypes and assumptions of female roles as that is a job typically deferred to the man of the house. (Presumably because it involves meat and knives(?)) The other two women in the group were single so they did not have husbands to ask for help. When the meal was finished the women gravitated toward the kitchen with handfuls of dishes and began rinsing and drying while the men made their way to the game room to watch football or the living room to sit and talk.

Source

When laid out in such a simplistic manner, life looks rather unjust for the women, does it not? If only life were so simple!

We stayed at my cousin’s house for about 5 hours on Thanksgiving day, and then we drove home and TH sat on the couch and began to work. He worked through the evening, through the night (first night of no sleep), through the next morning, through the afternoon, through the evening, through the night (second night of no sleep), got up and went and took the GMAT (scored 10 points better than his previous score!), came home and worked through the rest of the day, into the night, slept 4 hours or so, got up and went to church for 3 hours, came home and worked through the afternoon and late into the night once again. He stumbled into bed a few hour after midnight, the first time we had slept in the same bed for several days, even though we had been in each other’s presence the entire time. Periods of non-stop work like this present every few months, the rest of the time he pulls 60-80 hour work weeks on a regular basis.

What does my life consist of? I sleep in as long as I want. I spend hours and hours each week writing posts for That Wife and Jenna Cole. My “job” consists of doing something I absolutely love, creating photographs. I’ve made no money so far, only spent it at a very rapid pace.

So yes, I may seem oppressed because all of the household responsibilities are on me. I do the cooking, the cleaning**, the laundry, take out the trash, vacuum (sparingly), the grocery shopping, and all other typical housewife duties. But my husband works himself into the ground to put food on the table, a roof over our heads, clothes on our bodies, fancy cameras in my closet, and all of the other things we need/want in life. If not being the one who has to work for “the man” means I have to make a pumpkin pie from scratch all on my own and then clean up the dishes afterward please sign me up!

I have 6 aunts that I grew up seeing on a regular basis (we all lived in the same state for much of my childhood so getting together for many different occasions throughout the year wasn’t very difficult). Though things are a bit different now, as most of my cousins are out of the house or old enough to care for themselves, when I was younger I believe all of them were primarily SAHMs***. My mother worked outside the home when my parents were first married because they were dirt poor, but through much of my childhood she did not. I believe it was the same for most of my cousins. Most of these women are married to farmers, men who work themselves tremendously hard from March-October. During the busiest times at harvest/planting I was lucky to see my dad for 30 minutes in a day, as he would be up around 5 am, eat breakfast before I left, eat lunch on the tractor, and come home to scarf down dinner before heading back out again to work late into the night. My paternal grandfather is over 75 years old and still puts in many hours every week driving back and forth between central Washington and northern Oregon to care for his ranch. My maternal grandfather is over 70 and still works all day every day running his dairy. In my family, the men work hard, and the women can see that. Though caring for children, digging through mountains of laundry, endless rounds of putting food on the table and cleaning the mess up again can be exhausting and frustrating, the women are still the ones who manage household affairs, almost exclusively. When it comes time for Christmas celebrations, Thanksgiving dinner, or family reunion potlucks, they do the planning, the cooking, and usually the cleanup.

If you were to show up and look at Thanksgiving or Christmas as an isolated experience, you might see what the women do and how the men act, and judge the entire thing as unfair and in need of change. But when you back away and see my uncle baling hay all day and all night to get it in before the rain comes, my grandpa herding cattle in the oppressive heat and the biting cold, my dad bouncing back and forth between running his business and managing the harvest of acres of land from July-October, my own husband pulling back-to-back all nighters because his manager paged him once again with a request that has to be fulfilled by an early morning meeting, I think it’s a little bit easier to understand why we women aren’t complaining about our lot****.

With these experiential examples noted I must add my religious beliefs to the mix as well. The LDS Church is very clear in its declarations concerning the roles of men and women in the home. The importance of having children is well understood by members and so when one marries the usual assumptions concerning parenthood revolved around “when” not “if”. In a letter written by the Church leadership the roles of mother and father are clearly outlined:

By divine design, fathers are to preside over their families in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families. Mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children. In these sacred responsibilities, fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners.

Whether it is because of my own familial background or because of my religious belief system I watch each Thanksgiving go by with the women doing most of the work. And when I joined the world of adulthood I rolled up my sleeves and happily learned about the perfect mashed potatoes and what not to do when attempting to make one’s first batch of homemade rolls. I may grumble and slap a few pots on the counter with unnecessary force during the cleanup, but somewhere inside of me there will be the memory of 5-month pregnant Jenna, the night after the night after Thanksgiving 2009, stumbling to the bathroom for her 3 am visit to the porcelain throne to relieve her aching bladder. She’ll glance over and feel a pang of grief at the sight of her sleep-deprived husband on the couch for yet another night, scrambling to get his slides polished before the sun comes up and his boss comes a callin’. That Jenna, even with her swollen ankles and bursting bladder, with a body working so hard to grow their baby, knows that a few dishes and yet another load of laundry are the least she can do to try find the balance necessary to make a marriage work.

*It should be noted that TH has been walking with a cane for several days now, and was relying on it heavily around Thanksgiving so it’s possible I could have sent him out for stuff if he had been well, although I don’t think that would have been the case.

**TH was the last one to clean our bathroom though and he did a superb job. I love him.

***Stay At Home Moms

****I admit we do complain. My mom complained. I complain. It’s still hard not to feel under-appreciated, or get caught up in the “my role in this relationship is just as hard as yours game”. But I’m not fighting to switch places with him or lessen my workload by adding more to his (at the moment, things will change when the baby comes and he has been sufficiently warned). Our workloads are currently not even close to being balanced in their current state.

Today marks the first of what I know will be many wedding anniversaries for us. How do I know? Because we are going to make it happen. We aren’t soul mates. We were never “meant to be”. We chose this, and we are going to continue to choose to make it work for the rest of our lives and beyond.

I’ve written a lot about our wedding, 29 posts to be exact. If you want a detailed summary of the entire experience visit my last post about the wedding experience and scroll down to see a list of links to all of my recap posts.

For this anniversary post I went through a few thousand photos (literally) and chose 5 that describe some of my favorite moments of the day.

I can remember the way I felt at our “first look” so clearly. The endowment ceremony and time together in the celestial room the day before had been so calming. Everything felt so right, and we couldn’t stop smiling at each other. I felt sure I wanted to be with him forever.

This was moments after we walked out of the temple as husband and wife. Right behind the camera stood a ring of our closest family and friends, clapping and cheering and waiting to come forward to hug us. We really did it! We were married!

I hadn’t placed a lot of importance on making sure we got a classic temple shot, but now I’m so glad we did. A year later and the scaffolding on the spire doesn’t bother me at all. Pretty golden Moroni can still be seen and it’s truly what is inside that matters. Our sealing in the temple means absolutely everything to us. It gives us an eternal perspective when marriage is hard. It’s what will keep us from ever giving up.

The first dance was just one of the many my new husband showed me how much he cared about me, and what he was willing to do to make me happy. He took some lessons with me, practiced with me, and on our wedding day he got up and performed in front of everyone. One year later and he still continues to make sacrifices for me and for our marriage.

I think this photo describes the way we approached our marriage in the beginning. We jumped in head first, giving it everything we had and learning a few tough lessons along the way. I love my husband ten times more today than I did that night, and I expect that love to grow exponentially each year. When we welcome the baby into our lives next April we’re going to have to work even harder to keep our marriage strong, but I think we’re up for the challenge.

I chose him. He chose me. We’ll continue to choose each other, eternally.