An appreciation (another list)

Things Cook has done this weekend:

1) Cleaned the bathroom

2) Scrubbed the kitchen floor

3) Closed himself and Dutch in our bedrooms for four hours while I had an endless group meeting for school in the living room

4) Played "horsie" and "black-stripe pirates" and "the English girl from South Arabia" and other weird games for many hours

5) Made three tasty and healthy 

dinners

6) Made bread with Dutch

7) Reassured me, with patient kindness,  that I'm not going to fail one of my classes

8) Grocery shopped

9) Washed lots of dishes

10) Bathed Dutch

11) Made me laugh a bunch of times

12) A billion other helpful, joyful, thoughtful things

He has lots of faults (which, in other moods, I'd surely be happy to list*), and he knows all my faults, but in the end, I find myself awfully happy to be married to a man who says to me from the kitchen, where he's making yet another meal,  "No, wait, I'll take the laundry down. Why don't you sit down on the couch for a little while?" 

It's been a long few weeks. Or wait, maybe a long month. But I'm feeling lucky today.

*For example, he cannot learn to put his glasses in one place consistently, and we're always having to scramble around to find them at the last second. Yesterday I heard Dutch telling him firmly "Daddy, you shouldn't leave your glasses on the floor; somebody might step on them!"