"Starting A Family"

Being in my mid-twenties with a decent majority of my close friends married prior to me, I've been hearing a lot of talk about this idea of "starting a family".  When my friends tell me they're thinking about, working towards or planning for this, I know a baby shower is most likely in my imminent future and my friend will soon have lots of fun pregnancy hormones flowing freely.   It normally means picking out the best stroller, decorating a nursery in the cutest way you could possibly imagine and finally having a great reason to acquire a rocking chair.

But I have a different idea.

We are starting a family.  Our family, for the next indeterminate time period, will be just us: husband and wife, figuring life out.  We're starting to decide what's important, what our traditions will be, who takes out the trash and what we love to eat for dinner.  Together, we are creating the beginnings of what I really hope will be a great family, and even though we're not going to be adding anyone to our family anytime soon, I still think that what we are doing counts as "starting a family".  Families don't need a certain number of kids or one kind of home to live it - families are created out of love, not babies.  I guess you could say that babies are created out of love, too, but that's a subject for another day.

Monday, neither of us had to be at work and we spent a ton of time doing nothing.  And you know what?  It was SO good, so freeing, so happy to just chill on the couch with my favorite person in the world.  In that moment, I knew I was completely content.  Life is not (and has not been) easy, and yes, we do want our family to grow someday, but I am absolutely enjoying this time that we have to ourselves.  I'm loving getting to know my husband a little better each day, becoming one even more than I thought we could.  And we're working on our differences, too.  We are starting our family and I love it.