It was April of 2015. Our first child, a son named Archer, had just turned two (that’s 25 months in parentese) and our daughter, Clea, was just three months old. My husband Andy and I have been texting ridiculous things to each other since we met in 2004, but it went to a whole other level once we had kids.
People like to say that when they become parents, they’re not going to turn into one of those assholes who’s showing the bartender pictures of their toddler manhandling a pancake when they happen to get out of the house. But those people are wrong. When you birth another human, there is something physiological that happens where you assume – nay, expect! – everyone to care as much about that snotty ball of chubby cuteness as you do. I usually forget that they don’t until someone starts talking to me about their pets or their pet and my eyes glaze over and I can’t think of anything besides how much I. Do. Not. Care.
Thankfully, society didn’t have to deal with me much for the first few years of parenthood as I was chained to our two-bedroom apartment in Chicago’s Rogers Park. The most adult conversation I had was with the homeless guy who may or may not have sold crack on Pratt Boulevard when I’d take Archer to the park in the mornings. We found out I was pregnant with Clea and moved to the burbs, as people do, where I was even more isolated. My friends, who previously considered the far Noth Side to be a trek worthy of the assistance of a travel agent, disappeared almost entirely when we became residents of the faraway land known as Schaumburg, IL.
As I found my footing as a stay-at-home mom who was often alone with her brood for multiple days at a time, I turned to social media for advice, reassurance, entertainment and as a way to express the humor of my sometimes mind-numbing existence. My friends and family weren’t always nearby in proximity, but I could share the mundane in a way that felt like they were all experiencing it with me.
Reaching out to Andy via text message throughout my day was another way to keep him in the loop about what he might have felt he was missing at home. While I envied his time away from home, the adult conversations he was having, the exercise his brain was getting, he was jealous of all the time I got to spend with the kiddos. I could text him pieces of our day, and he could text me pieces of his and that has always been a way we could stay connected and not lose our minds at the hands of our respective routines.
I don’t remember what I was going to tell him about “beep beep” and “pee pee”, but I’m sure it was hilarious. Well, I’m sure it was hilarious to me.
#marriedwithtexts 
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