In the darker days of newborns and survival, I wanted Mr Boots home, not spending time after work trying to find a Valentine’s Day card or rooting around for the best bouquet of flowers. While struggling with postpartum depression and anxiety after the birth of both boys, my sanity couldn’t take it.

Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Come straight home and relieve me from being a solo parent. I needed his help more than his gifts. This is what I told him when G was a baby and he came home empty-handed on our anniversary because he was too exhausted to make a stop at the store after work.

He committed to that. There were some occasions he’d manage to leave work early and have time to shop for a card. But on some occasions, the most we’d do was flop into bed at the end of the day and wish each other a Happy Whatever.

But in the last year, I have sensed a shift. For the first time in years, I was beginning to feel like I had a husband again, not a roommate. We can leave the house without diaper bags. Our kids are potty trained and we can have conversations about our day. We are tired, but not exhausted like those early years, which has meant a little more Married People Time 😉

On Valentine’s Day, Mr Boots left work and stopped somewhere on the way home to choose cards from himself and the boys. And these:

I can’t remember the last time he bought me roses. He’s taken the boys out when special occasions have fallen on the weekend and helped them pick out flowers. But roses? The one flower I told him was my favorite the eve of our one month anniversary? The one he used to buy me for anniversaries and Valentine’s Day?

I really can’t remember.

He might not have thought much about what he did last week. He’s working a lot closer to home right now, so he was still able to stop at the store and be home before dinner.

But I have thought about it. And I could be reading too much into it, but to me, these roses say a lot about where we are at the moment.

While Mr Boots signed Valentine’s Day cards with the boys in our room upstairs, I sat in the kitchen staring at my bouquet and cried a little.

For me, those roses marked a milestone — one that meant he could pass go and collect that $200 without coming home to me and the kids yelling and crying during Witching Hour — and that’s a big deal to me.

Those roses told me that we are no longer in survival mode. And maybe we are in an okay place marriage-wise.

But they were bittersweet, reminding me that, come April, it might be a while before he’ll surprise me like that again. Roses won’t be as important as having him home while we adjust to a new baby and figure out how to be a family of five.