GRAB THE REEF WHEN ALL DUCK DIVING FAILS.

on saturday, we woke up business as usual and headed to the second swim lesson of holden's life.  in a place not that far away (but could have been a different planet) my girl friends were dripping in green, taking shots, and drinking green beer...and in a different lifetime i was right there with them.  we left the house without an ounce of green between the three of us and headed to holden's swim lesson.  it wasn't until we were one minute away from the pool and were passing families with children that were outfitted head to toe in green that we realized it was saint patrick's day.  we contemplated turning around to change (it was holden's first saint patrick's day after all), but we didn't, forgoing st. patty's day observance all together.  this st. patty's day merriment was definitely quite different from years before.  

when i spend time with my girlfriends (who have been my best friends since college) that are sans hubbies and sans babies, it's sometimes unfathomable that i used to be by their side celebrating the festivities by bar hopping from early am to early am.  as my friends chat about their escapades from the night before, i feel trapped in an eerie twilight zone, feelings of deja vu waving over me with each sentence that escapes from their mouths.  didn't we have that same conversation a year and a half ago?  didn't we have that exact same night?  it's as if i could seamlessly insert myself back into the life I stepped out of a year and a half ago when we found out i was expecting and i always leave their conversations realizing the dramatic difference that having a child makes on your life.  it's not that as though i assumed their lives would change over the course of a year as much as it just seems odd that their lives haven't when mine has changed so much.

looking back at years past, those days hold a certain nostalgia, memories of the start of dustin and my life together.  we enjoyed being wild and carefree, gallivanting around the city high on love, crazy with boldness and brazenness, but then we were both ready to settle down and start a family. and we did.  and we couldn't be happier.  so this st. patrick's day we didn't get wild and crazy, we didn't head to the bars when they opened maintaining a steady buzz for the entirety of the day only to get kicked out at last call and we didn't binge drink like our former UCSB selves drowning ourselves in green beer, guinness, and whiskey...but once the little man was down for the night, we did sneak out of the house to enjoy a glass of green corona (i was craving mexican), get a little tipsy, soak up time with just the two of us, and remember our days before holden arrived, ever so grateful that he is in our lives and that we are in the place we are now.  it couldn't have been a better st. patrick's day.