Gratitude Tuesday and other stuff

Happy Gratitude Tuesday first of all. Today we celebrate N!

Nick - how could I skip this one? I truly, truly love my husband, and I am wildly blessed to have him.

Naked - oh, and I like to get naked with him a lot.

Nice - if more people were just nice, my days would be so much...well, NICER!

Nanny - this is what I called my grandmother and what Morgan calls my mom. They both were/are pretty awesome at the job!

New - I like new stuff - who doesn't? New clothes, new books, new haircuts, new cars, just new stuff in general. And speaking of new cars...

New Car Smell - Ahhhhh...

Nine months - you can grow some beautiful stuff in nine months, like a new baby!

Nipples - nipples are always nice, but I'm especially grateful to be getting another chance to use them for the purpose God intended. I breastfed Morgan for 18 months, and it was some of the sweetest time I ever spent with her.

Naps - I confess, I nap a lot these days, and I love it! But I have a good excuse, right?

Okay, on another subject...

There's still been no discipline in this house, although Nick has occasionally put on a sterner tone of voice when discussing the lack of clean laundry, which I appreciate (the sterner tone, not the lack of clean laundry). And he did give me an extremely short, very playful spanking with a decorative wooden sign that happened to be at hand. But...I'm still feeling the need. I think it goes back to this:

About a month ago, we had a fight. A big fight. The biggest fight we'd ever had. And I think we were both a little bit at fault, although it was probably more me than him. But in my defense, I was 3 months pregnant and consequently a bit more insecure and unreasonable than normal with no clue why. The details of the fight don't matter and won't be rehashed here, but suffice it to say that I inadvertently hurt his feelings very, very badly, to the point that he didn't even want to come home to me that night. Now he did come home, and we got things worked out the next day. But I have never, NEVER felt the need to be punished for something so strongly. The problem though, is that he was not in a frame of mind to do that, and I certainly was not in a position to ask him to meet a need of mine when I had disregarded his needs so badly. And he just wanted to move past the whole thing. So I let it go. But since then I've felt especially...off kilter.

Of course I'm sure part of that is the shock and adjustment (joyous though they may be) of finding out about the baby. But that's another issue here. First (2 1/2 years ago), Nick wanted a baby. He was prepared for it. He was actively trying with me to make it happen. Then my doctor told us it wouldn't happen. So, our focus shifted. We accepted that it probably wasn't in the cards, although that was a sad point to come to for me. For Nick, well, I think that by that point, it was kind of a relief.

Morgan was big enough that she didn't have to have our attention every minute, our lives were pretty comfortable, and if you looked at the plus side of no more kids, there were lots of things to consider. Like we were making a little better money these days, so we could get, oh, I don't know, a motorcycle. And we could eat out a little more. And we could go to the movies every once in a while, which was very doable, because Morgan was no longer a hassle for babysitters. And we could enjoy things like winning a trip to Hawaii without worrying about leaving an infant with someone for a week. We didn't have to buy things like diapers or formula, and it didn't take us three hours to leave the house. There was no baby carrier to lug into Wal-Mart, and Morgan was finally out of even her booster seat. No giant doctor's bills, no house full of baby clutter, no 3 AM feedings, no losing our family room because we had to make way for a new baby.

And then suddenly...all of that changed for Nick. Like that. All of a sudden he's having to remodel and repaint. He's being asked to go to doctor's visits. I'm bringing home loads of pregnancy books, some of them for him. My waistline is expanding, and I've kind of been a bitch lately. I'm tired all the time, and even though I'm trying to hold back, I know it seems like this pregnancy is all I talk about. I'm alternately sensitive and weepy, then buoyant and annoyingly cheerful.

You see what he's been dealing with? So...I kind of feel like since I got something really nice and unexpected - maybe that means that I have to make a trade-off. Maybe it's only fair that if I'm being so blessed here, then I have to give up something on the other end. After all, it's not fair to ask him to do all that stuff AND run a DD marriage, is it? How much can I ask a guy to give up here? Why should I get to have both dreams when both dreams mean so much work for him?

So I guess my point is, this may not be much of a DD/spanking blog from this point forward. It's still there in me, but I kind of feel like it's time for me to accept that my life is beyond blessed just the way it is, and it would be ungrateful for me to insist on more, especially from the man who has given me so much.