Family of Two

Stacey, I hope you don't mind that I stole your blog title, it just fits so well and really spoke to me!

I just finished reading a post from a fellow blogger, (hi Stacey!) who always offers me a great perspective on infertility and the emotions, issues, and realities that surround it. In her most recent post she mentions her family of two. This really stuck with me, as I also have a family of two. For nearly ten years of marriage Scott and I have been two. Despite hoping, praying, and taking medically assisted steps, we're still two. Hoping for three.

This past year I've made a few small steps in acknowledging that my family is indeed just that. If you're on our Christmas card list you might have noticed that we had a cute little picture of the two of us on it. I decided it was time to stop waiting to do that. Waiting until I could put up cute little pics of our adorable wide eyed children. I have been waiting TEN years to put a photo on our Christmas card! Just last month I made plans to have our family photos taken while we're on vacation. I've hesitated on this for years, thinking people would think it odd, or that it wasn't something you really do when it's just two. The truth is, I wish I'd done it years ago. Our wedding photographer lost all of our negatives so I was never able to order more than the original album we got after our wedding. Ten years later I have hardly any nice photos of the two of us. What was I thinking? How many times have I thought about all those beautiful family photos everyone else has, dreamed about our own, cute little pics of us holding hands, or just our silhouettes with a sunset, just something pretty! We deserved to be documented. Just because we haven't added a little bundle doesn't mean we shouldn't have those photos. Families come in all shapes and sizes and they are all important. Why it took me this long to realize this is beyond me. Growing up the only child of a single parent, I knew then that just us two made a family.

It's hard to explain, and I'm not sure I even know where to begin, but even now having just typed out the words 'Family of Two' I still feel odd. I know it to be true, but to someone on the outside they may not see that. Will people think we're weird for having family photos taken? Do people think it's odd when I type out a yearly Christmas letter to tuck into our cards? Obviously those aren't the things that make a family a family and I don't need approval from the outside world, but knowing that, I still want people to understand. Does that make sense? I want people to know that we're a family.

So I'm adopting Stacey's term from here on out. We're not hoping to start a family, we're hoping to add to ours.