Up All Night

A lot of people mistakenly get married hoping marriage will solve their problems. Marriage actually creates more and bigger problems. If you don’t have a strong foundation, any little wave can come crashing your house down. Before marriage, life is one exciting date after another. True love is tested when you get married making the biggest commitment of your life, living together finding all the faults of each other and yet loving waking up and going to bed with that person every day. True love is when you’re crazy in love about the person and to show it you:  make the morning coffee, take out the trash, vacuum, pay the bills, make the bed, get her flowers, buy him basketball cards, watch football with him,  and drink Armenian coffee with her even though you hate to. 

You now not only have each other’s relationship to maintain but you both have sets of friends, families, siblings, cousins, coworkers; and to maintain those relationship you’ve got to invest time.

Unfortunately things with friends and family change because now you’re a family of your own and you’ve got to make boundaries and prioritize to first nourish and maintain your relationship of a husband and wife and if you have a baby then you know your life becomes smaller but better. This is the transitional time that you might offend a lot of people especially single friends. But it’s ok, because soon enough they will write their own stories and meet you at your page.  

Our weekends are now spent playing with Emma, visiting our parents, attending family gatherings, and helping them out with things like setting up the backyard umbrella, church, laundry and grocery shopping. This might sound like a boring life to some but for me it’s the ordinary simple things that bring fulfillment and happiness at the end of the day. Even though we don’t see our friends as much as we used to and like to we are always thinking of them and trying to create opportunities to see them as we do with cousins. We no longer stay up all night clubbing, partying, or bar hoping but we stay up all night telling stories, watching movies and laughing together. 

EC

Your baby needs a Family

Notes from Babywise chapter 1

Too often, parents lose sight of this fact, getting lost in a parenting wonderland of photos, footsteps and first words. Baby becomes central to their existence. Yet the greatest overall influence you will have on your child will not come in your role as an individual parent, but in your joint role as husband and wife.

Great marriages produce great parents.

A healthy husband-wife relationship is essential to the emotional health of children in the home. When there is harmony in the marriage, there is an infused stability with the family. A strong marriage provides a haven of security for children as they grow in the nurturing process.

The goal of parenting is not simply to avoid excessive anxiety, but to create a world of confidence by what we do with each other as by what we avoid doing.

To be a good mom or dad, all you need is to continue as before.

To improve the quality of the parent-child relationship, parents first must continue to evaluate the quality of their relationship with each other.

Too often when a child enters a family, parents leave their first love: each other.

Rather than welcoming children to the family, children are treated as the center of the family universe.

Achieving balance:

1. Life doesn’t stop once you have a baby. It may slow down for a few weeks but it doesn’t stop.

2. Date your spouse. If you had a weekly date before the baby, get back in the swing of it as soon as possible. A friend or relative is capable of meeting your child’s needs and the baby will not suffer separation anxiety from one night. If you never had a date night, start now!

3. Continue those loving gestures you enjoyed before the baby came along.

4. Invite friends over.

5. At the end of each day have “couch time” talking about the day’s events which takes place before the children go to bed. This will demonstrate expression of togetherness. Children actually are assured of mom and dad’s love relationship through this tangible demonstration.

To excel in parenting, protect your marriage. Also resolve to be your child’s parent, not a peer. Potential peers are everywhere. Yet the child has only one mom and dad. Don’t let your baby down. Governing that life is in your child’s best interest.

Friendship with your child is a positive long-term objective, so exercise patience. Today, your child needs your guiding hand. Yes, welcome him or her as a wonderful addition to the family, but never place your child at its center. Instead, build a team spirit. When parents plan for family unity, everyone wins. Only then will life as you know it never be the same. Really, it just got richer.

The Science of a Happy Marriage

I loved this article please visit this link for the full article as recommended by Dr. Oz http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/10/tracking-the-science-of-commitment/

"But it may not be feelings of love or loyalty that keep couples together. Instead, scientists speculate that your level of commitment may depend on how much a partner enhances your life and broadens your horizons — a concept that Arthur Aron, a psychologist and relationship researcher at Stony Brook University, calls “self-expansion.”




To measure this quality, couples are asked a series of questions:

How much does your partner provide a source of exciting experiences?

How much has knowing your partner made you a better person?

How much do you see your partner as a way to expand your own capabilities?"

"We enter relationships because the other person becomes part of ourselves, and that expands us,” Dr. Aron said. “That’s why people who fall in love stay up all night talking and it feels really exciting. We think couples can get some of that back by doing challenging and exciting things together.”