For months, Matt has been telling me that he would absolutely not walk at the commencement ceremony at his graduation. And for months, I thought I was fine with his firm decision to ditch out on tradition and stick it to “The Man” (I figured I’d just make him dress up in the cap and gown and take pictures and fake like we were really there).
But then I had a baby and felt like I hadn’t left the apartment in literally two years and four months (or something like that), and I decided that I really “needed” Matt to walk just so I could remember what fresh air felt like and what it was like to be surrounded by people who weren’t my spouse and a newborn.
So I gave Matt puppy-dog eyes and bit my lip and tried not to cry as I asked real calmly begged him to “at least walk in the ceremony for his college.”
Lucky for me, I have a husband who’s willing to do pretty much whatever it takes to make his two girls happy.
And even though there were 1200 graduates in his college (which translated to quite a bit of waiting and polite clapping during the ceremony), there was family in town (my parents, in-laws, and sister-in-law) and a baby girl who slept like a sweetie the whole time and some probably-hormonally-driven choking-up by me as I watched my husband march in with all the other graduates.
The fact is, when your spouse graduates, it’s basically like YOU’VE graduated–you’ve both gone through the loads of homework and the late nights and the stress of finals at the same time (even though only one of you is technically doing the work), and so the triumph of graduation is shared by both partners.
And I sure am proud of my man for sticking it out to the end, especially when he really doesn’t like school.
(And yes, he did technically graduate in December if you remember from this post, but the university only does one commencement ceremony in the spring for the whole school year.)
And when Raven did finally wake up for pictures after the ceremony, we were lucky enough to have the perfect distractor for her until I could get her fed–I call this picture “Baby In Awe of Tassel.”
As for the second half of the title of this post, I’ll have you know that it took me over 20 minutes to find something to wear to this. I was so sick of my maternity clothes that I packed them away almost immediately upon getting home from the hospital, but then I quickly realized that that left me with basically nothing to wear, so I’ve been living in sweats ever since.
And now I’m thinking I should probably go pick up some good “transitional clothes” until I slim back down, but then I think that maybe I should save the money and just ride out the next several weeks in yoga pants and stretchy tees.
(Of course, all it would take is one more panic-driven morning of realizing I have nothing appropriate to wear out in the “real world” to make me drop $200 at some store, so maybe I should just bite the bullet early while I’m still a little bit sane.)
Anyway, yesterday was a glorious day, and even though we don’t have much idea about what our “Life Plan” is now that we’ve both graduated, I’d say we’re doing pretty good.
Congrats again, Matt! (And thanks for still being willing to oblige my whims, even after almost four years of marriage!)
