questions

Why does the barfing always start in the middle of the night?

It was eleven o’clock and Llama Papa and I had just settled into bed when we heard baby b. crying. Llama Papa jumped out of bed, “He doesn’t sound right,” he said.

And he wasn’t.

Which brings me to my next question: When we’re dating, why do we spend so much time going out for dinner and the movies? Why don’t we care for barfy children instead? Because, honestly, I can’t think of the last time Llama Papa and I went out for dinner by ourselves. But barfing kids? We’ve done that on a fairly consistent basis.

We dated for three years and asked each other important questions in the process. Neither of us took marriage lightly, and in many ways, we went in with our eyes wide open.

I expected to make sacrifices in marriage, I really did. But self-sacrifice is so much easier in theory, isn’t it? How can any of us know how we’ll handle barfing kids in the middle of the night? How can we predict life with little sleep, and the enormous grace that will be required in order to simply survive, much less, survive without being crabby at the people we love most?

When I think back to our courtship, I’m grateful for all of the fun memories we made. When we married, I knew Llama Papa well enough to know he was, and is, a man of integrity and godly character. What I didn’t know was that he was also a man willing to get up in the middle of the night and wash vomity sheets and rock a barfy baby.

And that, my friends, is what it’s all about.