Hi.
If you looked at our life from the outside, you might think it’s ordinary.
Two tired parents.
Two little children.
A house that’s never quite tidy for more than ten minutes at a time.
But inside it — inside the days — love looks different to how I once imagined it would.
James works a lot.
The kind of lot that means early mornings and long days, the kind that stretches the hours between hellos and goodnights. Some days the kids ask where he is before they’ve even finished breakfast. Some nights they fall asleep to his face on a phone screen instead of his arms around them.
And I feel it too.
The missing.
The quiet weight of doing the long days mostly on my own.
The moments I wish I could hand him the chaos just so I could breathe for a second.
Our mornings start in a rush — but also in love.
The kids light up when they hear him moving around the house.
They follow him from room to room while he brushes his teeth, pulls on his boots, grabs his keys.
They tell him their plans for the day like he’s going to be there for all of it.
Isla talks while he ties his laces.
Arthur clings while he lifts him up for one last cuddle.
And then there’s that moment at the door —
kisses on little foreheads,
“see you later,”
and a goodbye that feels heavier than it looks.
By the time the door closes behind him, I’m already deep in mum-mode — nappies, snacks, toys, questions, the constant pull of being needed by someone all day long.
Some days I feel strong in it.
Some days I feel stretched so thin I wonder how I’m still standing.
And when evening comes, love shows up differently.
Not in footsteps at the door —
but in video calls before bed.
In his tired smile on a small screen.
In the way the kids hold the phone like they’re holding him.
Goodnight kisses through glass.
Stories told from miles away.
“I love you”s that travel further than we ever imagined they would.
The kids miss him — I see it in the way they cling a little tighter in the mornings.
But they also know this:
even when he isn’t here, he’s still showing up.
Weekends are our sacred ground.
No rushing.
No clock-watching.
Just park walks, messy breakfasts, piles of laundry done slowly between games on the floor.
James on the carpet with the kids, building towers that fall just so they can laugh and start again.
And in those moments, I watch him — not just as my husband, but as their dad — and I realise something I never knew growing up:
Love doesn’t have to be perfect to be safe.
It just has to be consistent.
Some nights, after the kids are asleep and the house goes quiet, we sit together in the mess of the day — toys still out, cups still on the side — and talk about nothing and everything.
About work.
About worry.
About how tired we both are.
About how we’re still learning how to do this life side by side.
And in those small, ordinary moments, I feel it:
This is the love I once only dreamed of.
Not fireworks.
Not grand gestures.
Just two people choosing each other — even when they’re tired, even when life feels heavy.
Our days aren’t always easy.
Sometimes they’re loud.
Sometimes they’re messy.
Sometimes they stretch us further than we think we can go.
But this life we’ve built —
this family we keep choosing every day —
it feels steady.
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