He Makes the Bed.

I married a gem of a man. Just wanted to state that upfront.

When we were going through pre-marital counseling, one of the things we were made to discuss was the division of labor around the house. Since we were both working full-time, we went through the typical household chores and divvied them up - right down the middle. Among the many things on B Daddy's list were cleaning the bathrooms and mowing the lawn.

Dishes?! No dishes. That's one thing I knew about this man going into marriage. That's why he got bathroom duty. Well fast-forward 5 years and I'm now a full-time mom, which means that most daily chores fall squarely in my lap:

Load the laundry, load the dishwasher, feed the child, put away toys, laundry goes in the dryer, dishes go in the cabinets, feed the child, fold the laundry, put away toys, feed the dog, put away the laundry. Toss in some weekly chores like vacuum, mop, dust and you can see how life quickly resembles the instructions on the back of the shampoo bottle: lather, rinse, repeat.

That's why this scene puts a smile on my face each morning:

He makes the bed.

I've never asked him to and I don't know if he knows how much more it means than a simple check on the chore list. Some mornings it saves my sanity. Some mornings it is validation that what I do each day somehow matters in the big bad world. This morning it was just a quiet, "I love you."