Loving our prologue

In my continued nesting frenzy, I keep coming across treasure troves of old photos, including these.

Things happened so fast for us in 2004... engaged, married, buying a house, pregnant... that the photo documentation is, at best, poor.

So I am enjoying trolling through the old files, finding a few gems among the mix.

At our wedding, we danced to "Your Song" as performed by Ewan McGregor on the "Moulin Rouge" soundtrack. We are currently in a debate regarding this tune, by the way, and our exact location the first time we listened to it together.

We both remember driving down the road in Hub-D's 1989 Camry, on our way to Improv class, already so smitten with each other after just a couple of weeks. I have posited that this drive occurred on Bay Street. Hub-D has countered that the listening-to-Your-Song-on-The-Moulin-Rouge-soundtrack drive occurred on Divisadero. We have compromised, albeit both very reluctantly, that we must have listened to the song while driving down Van Ness. So EVEN THOUGH the drive totally happened on Bay Street, I am currently working to alter my memory and have it take place on Van Ness, although WHY we would have been driving that route during rush hour, I do not know. All I know is that it must have happened on Van Ness because I love my husband.




Then, in August, after being married just two months, we bought a friggin' HOUSE. It was a troubled house, edging more toward Amityville Horror in terms of new-homeowner-surprises, but we didn't know it THEN. And I love this picture with Hub-D's parents, for so many reasons.

I look at the background, and I now know how much LIFE has happened under this roof since the photo was taken. The cabinets are filled with sippy cups and never-used martini glasses.

The top cubby by the back door is filled, not with artsy vases as in this photo, but a bunch of stuff I don't want Chebbles to play with unsupervised, like bubbles and sunscreen.

This was probably also the last time I wore jeans that didn't have a stretchy maternity band on top, as I was soon knocked up in a big way, with one heaping helping of Chebble McPie.

It all feels like a prologue, the two-year romance of Hub-D and me, then the haste in becoming real grown-ups, then parents. It all feels like a prologue to the day we met Chebbles, and she rightfully took over our lives.

And then THAT time in our lives, the following two and a half years of parenthood, travel, corporate growth, and most notably, reproductive ANGST and agony, was just a lead-up to the arrival of The Jeege, the darling of the hospital NICU and the youngest purveyor of barrettes this side of the Mississippi.

So now we are exactly one month away from pushing all of THIS action, all of the time we've spent getting to know each other -- Hub-D and me, then our first daughter, then our second daughter -- behind us. We have 30 days to look around before Baby Leaf comes hurtling into the world, spinning our growing planet in yet another new direction.

Kid, bring it on. (And I hope you don't mind that we named you "Van Ness"...)