Growing Up on the Fourth of July

This past week has been a whirlwind. I normally write a weekly post about writing or inspiration, but this week's post is about life, and growing up in a flash.

Our first summer,Rachel and I met and courted. Second summer, we planned a wedding. This summer, we got married and started shopping for houses.

 

On June 30th, we visited a house both of us liked.  We'd visited a dozen houses already, and this was the first that felt right.  On Thursday July 3rd, we spent 3 hours at a meeting with our broker, and placed an offer on the house.  We started budgeting, and looking at retirement money. We didn't expect to hear back for some time, due to the holiday weekend.  We both looked forward to the Fourth, we'd made plans with a huge group of our friends, and were tired from the househunting.

At 9 pm, my brother called.  My sister-in-law was having contractions 3 weeks early, and my parents are out of the country.  He asked if we could be "on-call," especially to watch my nephew, who's 2.  Rachel and I looked at each other.  Neither of us had ever babysat.  I make a living out of working with children, but know nothing about toddlers.  We started youtubing videos to learn how to change a diaper.

At 3 am on the 4th of July, having not slept a wink, we picked up Owen, my 2-year-old nephew at the hospital.  We brought him to our house, and spent the next 12 hours trying to entertain him. We changed our first diaper (apparently backwards), dealt with a few tantrums, and had a good time overall.

After returning Owen, and hearing that my new nephew William had been born successfully (we met him the following day), Rachel and I cancelled our Fourth of July plans, collapsed on the couch and slept for 11 hours straight.  Wow, having a kid seems like exhausting work.  We also got a phone call- our offer on the house had been accepted!  

To sum up: In a single day, Rachel and I bought a house, waited to hear about contractions, learned to change a diaper, took care of a 2-year-old, and planned our retirement.  Talk about growing up in a day!