Five years ago today…

…I met the lovely Rob. My Rock God.

Now, this is going to be a totally boak-worthy swoonfest about the awesomeness that is Rob. So click away now if you’re the miserable type. This is a post all about trooooo lurve. Hehe.

I had been on my own, raising my babies, for a year. Life was good. I was working in a job I loved, I had a beautiful flat near the park, I was at college in the evenings. The Chums were three and four, at a lovely Montessori nursery, settled and happy. I had no interest in starting a relationship with anybody because our little family unit worked so well. It really was a golden time. But it was about to get a whole lot better.

The Chums, aged three and four.

I met the Lovely Rock God on a night out with my sister. We chatted for hours, he had me in stitches with his anecdotes and one-liners, we shared an interest in music and a fondness for alcohol. We discovered that I lived in the flat above his identical twin brother, who I’d never met. He asked for my number, and I refused to give it to him, telling him that if it was meant to be, it would be, and if he was that interested he could come and find me.

So he did. He visited his brother every day for the next week in the hope of bumping into me, which he did the next Saturday. I was on my way out with The Chums, and he pretty much jumped out of his brother’s moving car to catch me.

I gave him my number.

He took it down wrong, he was one digit out.

So the next day (and I am so thankful that he is the persistent type, because honestly if it was me I would have assumed I’d been brushed off by this point) he came into the shop where I worked and took me out for lunch. And that was that. We’ve barely been apart since.

This is us in July 2007, we’d been together two months at this point.

Let me tell you about him. He is the nicest man I’ve ever met. Does that sound trite? It isn’t meant to. He is a genuinely nice man who makes the world better just by being in it. He is kind to everyone, incredibly moral and responsible, does the right thing because it’s the right thing. I would trust him with my life. He tells me I’m beautiful every single day.

He is funny, wickedly so. He has an encyclopaedic collection in his brain of witticisms and lines from films and tv that crease me up daily. He talks utter nonsense like a pro, we can have completely surreal conversations about IronMan in Lederhosen for hours that make sense to no one but us.

He is a fantastic father. He is endlessly patient, firm without being shouty and awful like me. He’ll play games with the Chums for hours, he takes them to all their evening activities, it’s him who puts them to bed at night (they don’t want me). He’ll get up at 5am with the Littlest Chum and take him downstairs so I can stay in bed, and he does all the nappies when he’s here.

We don’t argue. We just don’t. I can’t tell you how much I love this. And not because either of us are pushovers, we do disagree (obviously) but we don’t fall out over it. I come from a family of shouty arguers, and can scream and rage with the best of them. But it doesn’t happen with my husband.

He is insanely talented, our house is filled with music from morning until night. I am thankful for our lovely neighbours who never complain about his playing (or my singing, for that matter). We are a very noisy house. We wouldn’t have it any other way.

It all just works. We are a team, we share everything, finances, childcare, housework, dreams, passions and fears. Our friends and family say that we are the most laid back people they know, in fact many of them despair at our ‘it’ll be fiiiiiine’ attitude to life. But we are happy, sometimes blissfully so, and I love him with every fibre of my being.

He is the nicest thing that ever happened to me.

Thank you, my Lovely Rock God Husband, for making the last five years such an amazing adventure.

xxxx