I thought about including Dave in my Top 10 post, but then, I decided he deserved a post all his own.

I am extremely blessed in the husband department.

I love my marriage because we are a team. It is not him and me working through life: it is us.

We live on the same page and we are constantly mindful that it is during the trying times in life when marriages become vulnerable. And so we work that much harder to be a team.

I love the way we communicate. It is how we manage to always stay on the same page of life together. We talk about everything. No topic is off limits.

We have “meetings” were we discuss things that we each can do to make life a little bit easier for the other.

This has been invaluable to me as we are transitioning from a family of three to a family of four and as we are learning to manage Sweet Pea’s tummy pains.

In those first weeks when I was taking care of both girls by myself, Dave would come home from work, cook dinner (that is the usual scenario!) and then, he would clean up, too! Clean up is my responsibility, but he knew I couldn’t do it and needed to be in the rocking chair instead bringing comfort to our newborn baby girl.

I’ve since taken back my clean up responsibilities.

Dave works all day long “writing code” (as Little Bug says). My work is our home. I take pride in taking care of our children and taking care of the household duties. I have things planned and organized in a way so that chores are taken care of before Dave gets home so that we can have family time and not have to “work” in the evenings.

Well, obviously, all that is out the window with a newborn in the house.

I woke up one morning to find all our laundry had been washed and was sitting clean in the laundry baskets! He knew I just couldn’t keep up so he took care of it.

(Later he told me he just needed a clean pair of underwear for the next morning. Just kidding.)

Every single night since we have been home with Sweet Pea, Dave does Sweet Pea’s 11pm feeding so that I can go on to bed. He knows how to settle her when her tummy is hurting.

When he knows Sweet Pea is settled he picks up her bed and moves her into our closet and crashes for the night.

We have two bottle washers in this house: the dishwasher and Dave. Without complaining he willingly cleans all those millions of pieces every night and then fixes the bottles and puts them in the fridge.

He is one of a kind and I know it. I am tremendously blessed.

I am tremendously blessed that my husband values our marriage over everything else – even our children.

Little Bug and Sweet Pea are blessed to call Dave their Daddy. Adoption gave these girls a Daddy -- something neither one would have had the blessing of had it not been for their adoption into our family.

I could go on and on, but I will stop here and say that I want to never lose sight of how blessed I am in my marriage to Dave.

- Elaine