Ode to a husband who loves me on the occasion of my 39th (gasp!) birthday

Birthdays for moms, as I have mentioned before are a tricky thing. It's not like we get time off for good behavior, a vacation day or sky writing or anything like that. But sometimes, even in absence of anything spectacular, a really great birthday comes along. My birthday was such a thing this year.

The night before my birthday, my DH took me to a wonderful churrascaria for yummy all you can eat meat (I served my mission in Brazil and a churrascaria is a native Brazilian restaurant idea where you have tasty Brazilian side dishes, yummy cheese breads and then roaving gauchos carrying long spears of perfectly seasoned and roasted meats offer their wares to you until you burst or say uncle, whichever comes first) The food was divine. The server was a native Brazilian who chatted with me about the tastiest regional dishes from the areas where I served (que saudades!) and the company was impeccable and lovestruck (well at least he better be!) (dinner had to be the night before my actual birthday because the 1/2 off coupon we had wasn't good on Saturdays--so dinner was yummy AND cheap(er))

The next morning, there were basketball games to attend and the general activities of regular Saturday life of a big and crazy family. And DH did the games without me. Perhaps this doesn't seem like a big deal to you. But since the bulk of my days lately consist of wrestling with kidlets solo and since watching my offspring develop sports skills is sapped of all joy when it must be done while wrestling with younger siblings AND since I have watched many other games and was really just wanting a "free" Saturday, being relieved of game duty was the perfect birthday gift. It also gave DH some one on one time with each athlete. Win-win!

On the way home from Z's game, DH picked up the yummy cake I requested. I have mentioned my store-bought cake prejudices. Well, there IS one kind of store-bought cake I like and that is the Nothing Bundt Cake. They are divine, if a smidge on the pricey side. I requested for this birthday, and DH delivered, a Red-Velvet cake. Oh, yummy! Also on the way home, DH and Z stopped and selected a lovely bouquet of flowers for me (of which, in my delinquency to post, I can no longer show you a picture, because it's too late and they have died, but they were lovely). This is wonderful for more than one reason. 1) I love flowers 2) It was a totally unsolicited bit of wonderfulness on DH's part and I am all about unsolicited bits of wonderfulness on my birthday, they are called "surprises" and 3) DH was teaching his darling Z how mommies, ie, women, like to be treated and that lesson is golden both for his future treatment of me and for his very future treatment of future women in his life. Yeah!

Somewhere in the middle of the day o' games, I got to go on a long unhurried run by myself. It was lovely, it was energizing, it was perfect. I was talking to my sister today about trying to find non-food rewards to give myself in lieu of actual sugar based treats. The problem being that non-food rewards are either pricey, time-consuming when we least have any to spare, or both. Long unhurried runs are high on my list of good non-food rewards which are difficult to actually treat myself. So, another wonderful gift facillitated by my DH.

Last on the list of little wonderful pleasures of my birthday, was dinner. We didn't go out because we did that the night before. But I didn't have to cook either because DH went and got take-out --Panda Express orange chicken for the less adventurous of the family and yummy (and cheap!) thai food for the grown-ups. Yum Yum Yum.

Even though I told him, I don't think DH gets how wonderful this birthday was for me. There were no fireworks or expensive and extravagent gifts. Just fine-tuned attention to my needs, wants and personality. My complaint lately is one of being invisible, of being neither seen nor heard in this crazy chaos I'm supposed to be managing. This birthday I got the best gift of all: I was seen; I was heard; I was not invisible. What love!