My Wonderful Mother

And here's a picture of my wonderful mother on Mothers' Day, doing what she's always done so well- taking care of us little ones.

But I don't Want to Study

Lately I've been feeling the need to justify anything I do other than study. I have my second qualifier (macroeconomics) coming up on Monday and I'm sooooo tired of studying for it. My excuse for this break is that I need to keep everybody informed about my important goings-on (wink wink).

This is where we live:

Here's Justin and me outside our apartment building, about to go on a nice walk to Rice Village. That's one of our favorite things to do.

On Mothers' Day we had a nice lunch with Mama and Daddy and Luke and Amber and kids after church. Then later in the afternoon we went over to Luke & Amber's house for some bocce ball!

It was fun. Also, Sunday, May 9, happened to by my and Justin's anniversary. We went on a date the night before so as not to compete with Mothers' Day, but we did enjoy the top layer of our wedding cake! Mama had kept it in the freezer all year! We were happy to share with the kids and everybody.

Recently when we were babysitting the kids, we gave them an extra helping of berries and cream for dessert. As we sat around the table snarfing down our dessert, Joy, whom I guess has heard "snarf snarf" to describe such an eating situation, looked up from her berries and said "snawf snawf" in a delighted little voice. It was cute. Apparently they don't think of us as real adults- when we were discussing our wedding anniversary, Joy said "and even though you're just kids, you still got married." I sometimes feel that way.

Now I have to go squeeze in a few hours of studying so I don't feel guilty about having fun with the kids later today when we go babysit! I'm really looking forward to being done with qualifiers and getting to work on research and stuff I'm actually interested in.

Reflections on Our First Year

Justin and I are coming up on our first year of marriage! Good for us!

I'm sure every married couple has patterns that they see a lot in their interactions; I wonder how similar those are across couples, i.e. are our quirks unique to us, or are they the same ones that all married people experience? Here are a couple of examples:

Sometimes after we've had a moderate argument, one of us will try to make a joke, thinking "hey, this will signal to my spouse that I consider this argument over and am ready to move on." Unfortunately, this is usually the person who was less disgruntled by the argument, so the more disgruntled person, who may still be in the process of becoming un-angry, feels they're being made fun of. We've observed both parties being guilty of the post-argument joke, but now that we're aware of it we are better about avoiding it. And when it does happen, the other party can simply state "too soon for a joke".

Here's something that I've noticed myself doing: I feel a tiny bit disgruntled (or maybe even not), and somehow Justin gets himself in the path of my annoyance. It escalates, and before I know it I find myself in an argument thinking "what's going on? Why am I arguing with my beloved husband about this? I do not feel strongly about this issue! Why can't I just stop? For some reason I feel committed to this argument!!! STOP! " It's like I'm rolling down a hill too fast to be able to stop.

It tends to happen in the following manner:
Hannah: [frowning]

Justin: What's up? Are you mad at me?

Hannah:[Hm. Maybe he is part of the reason I feel grumpy] Well, I'm not mad, but I'm annoyed that you ... [insert imagined offence]

Justin: What? That's ridiculous! [insert self-defense, plus one degree of intensity]

Hannah: [He's just getting defensive! I must make my point] It's your fault because ... [etc.]

A few lines later is where I start realizing that we're actually becoming angry, and I start wondering why we're arguing.

Recently I had my first realization and successful stop of the pointless argument. It was a beautiful Saturday morning. Justin had spent the morning reading, and I had been studying or doing something un-fun. Around noon we got in the car and headed to an event with Justin's family. The day was so pretty that I felt the only way to fully take advantage of it would be for a day-trip through bluebonnets. So I told Justin it was his fault since he had been reading all morning. After a minute or so I realized what was happening and said, "I'm sorry. I know it's not actually your fault that we've been inside this morning. I just don't know how to take full advantage of this beautiful day and I feel frustrated about that. I should not have blamed you."

Justin said "Wow. That's never happened before. Thanks."

So we're growing!