Eight Years

Clothilde actually took this picture.  We had an exciting beginning to our day today, which I won't describe.  It involved the toddler in the bathroom alone for a few minutes and lots of emergency laundry.

Yesterday was our 8th anniversary.  Not too bad for having been married relatively young for our times at 22.  We celebrated over the weekend with a dinner of grass-fed steak, salmon and shrimp sans enfants, because Mirin and Rose were off at a cub scout camp out with my dad and my mother-in-law was kind enough to watch Clothilde for a few hours.  It was a very peaceful, quiet meal.

Recently Rose got a ballet book for her birthday last Tuesday that had the story of Swan Lake in it.  It inspired me to get out Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction by Sue Townsend, which has many amusing references to  swans.  Somehow I started reading it aloud to Ethan while we were alone (it is not child-appropriate at all, but it is so funny), and we have been enjoying reading it together in the few times that the big kids are employed elsewhere. 

For our anniversary we bought two books for ourselves - Ben Hewitt's Homegrown and a book called Shop Class as Soulcraft we discovered through an online article.  We got two books because we have had trouble sharing in the past.  We are thinking we will read them out loud, too.  It is nice to experience the books together at the same time.  Otherwise we always end up reading long passages out of context to each other. 

I can see this becoming a family tradition, like our seven-year tradition of reading Washington Irving aloud in the fall that came about just after Rose was born.  Ethan had been ill with an unpleasant stomach bug, and at 40 weeks pregnant I requested he stay away so I wouldn't catch it just before having to give birth.  He stayed for a few days at his parents' house and picked up a collection of Washington Irving's stories to read while he was sick.  He liked them so much, he read them to me while I was recovering from Rose's birth a week later.  I love family traditions.