love letter.

when my musicboy walks around the world, he sees treasure everywhere he goes.  if he sees a coin on the street, in a parking lot, or anywhere where its been abandoned, he picks it up.  he's excited by it.  he doesn't care if it's heads side up or any other superstitious nonsense. he simply sees it as treasure, and claims it.

i sometimes think that's why he saw me when no one else really did.

--

yesterday, after church, he kept looking at me sort of strangely. i'd been having a rough weekend, not feeling well or myself and fretting (per usual) about how to fix it all, but he'd been pretty zen about it all.  not unsympathetic, you understand, but just not freaked out.  it's what he does. it helps me stay centered, most of the time.

but when it was time to cook dinner, he just kept looking at me in this way that i didn't understand.  like he was worried, though at that very moment i felt quite cheerful and much more back to my old second trimester self than i had been in several days.  i kept asking him "what?"

and he finally just wrapped me up in a giant hug and told me how much he loved me and that he never wanted me to be sad.  i nearly cried, it was so sweet and unexpected. 

and then he helped me cook. 

--

we're beginning to really prepare for the whole birth thing now. i went to the library and stocked up on books, after an initial perusal of birthing class options in gainesville led me to be less than excited to pay one quarter of a month's pay on a birthing class that sounded like not exactly what we wanted anyway. 

i've picked the collective brains of friends who did it the way we want to do it (thank you, friends! even if i haven't told you yet, your words have planted seeds that have sprouted into incredible determination and focus), and we watched "the business of being born" the other night. i read the bradley method book, which i like in lots of ways but feel like i'll be moving more than they want me to (which is okay--i'm all about adaptation) and musicboy has read his coaching bits. 

we're going to start practicing guided breathing and relaxation exercises tonight. 

i think we're both in this strange place where we don't want to let the other one down. i know that i want to be strong, not just on the day that Baby Girl comes into the world but on all the days before and after, and the kind of wife that he deserves and the kind of mom he wants for his Baby Girl.  i think he wants to make sure that he can do all that i need him to do on that day, when i'll be (genuinely) entirely in his hands as a coach.

he doesn't seem to understand that it's not just that day, but the sum total of the days before that make such an arrangement possible. the every days when i trust him and tell him things and share life and chicken pasta and days full of sickness and stress and magical moments of silly laughter with him.

i don't think he realizes that he already coaches me every day. 

he'll be so great at it. he has no idea.

--

we're nearing the end of our days as just us, which is strange and otherworldly to imagine. i'm not sad, really.  people say, perhaps, that i should be, though i don't understand how an event so prayed for and so wanted could possibly bring anything but joy, except in the sense that it brings change.

change isn't bad.  change is just change.

what's hard for me to imagine is how i could love him even more. i know i will, though. i know that the moment he holds that little girl, my heart will explode. 

that will be something to behold.  i can't imagine it. not even a little bit.

but Baby Girl will bring magic. that's only the littlest part of it, but i am so grateful that there will be someone else in the world who looks at him with eyes of wonder and impossible love. 

she'll be wrapped around his little finger.

she won't be the only one.