*Gulp.*

This may be the first year I’ll literally cringe at saying my age aloud. Maybe it’s the wrinkles on my forehead or that I haven’t followed my meticulous life map I drew out for myself the day I met Nate, but something about that number just doesn’t feel right. Twenty-nine was supposed to be well on the way to being a grown up. We were supposed to have solid jobs with benefits, our cars paid off, one kid and another on the way. I’d stop wearing pajama pants every day and shop more at Ann Taylor Loft than the Disney Store. My vocabulary would be better (See? I would have replaced “better” with something well… better) and I was supposed to have trained for a half marathon in my free time. I was supposed to have free time and cook dinner every night and be the perfect housewife for my husband.

My life may not look anything like it was supposed to, but in most ways, it’s even better than I’d imagined. Sure, we may be on the road more days than we’re home, but this life is pretty amazing. I have to remind myself of that sometimes when I’m working 12 hour days and haven’t said more than a few work-related words to Nate. The pounds I put on while editing the years away are increasingly difficult to shed, especially when so much of our lives are on the road and “healthy eating” means getting the snack wrap at McDonald’s instead of the Big Mac. We moved to a new city two years ago and we haven’t actually had time to make friends- Something I didn’t think much about last year until I wanted to throw a holiday party at our new home and realized how small the guest list would be.

When I turned 28, the inevitable baby talk started getting tossed around by certain friends and family members. We wanted to be parents yesterday, but as I draft this post from Hawaii in the middle of a month-long trip away from home (and proof read it in Asheville, NC), well… The “baby” word doesn’t quite fit in our crazy puzzle of a life yet. I know our friends and family mean well, but I know in my heart it’s just not our time.

All I want for my birthday this year is for well-meaning friends and family to back off that “b” word for a few years. It’s something we think about and look forward to every day, but I need to just love twenty nine for what it is now. I can’t take one more person telling us that we could have a kid now and no one’s ever 100% ready to be a parent and that I’m not getting any younger- Trust me, I know. But I just need to be happy with the me now, because I can’t shed any more tears about not being in the place in life I’d imagined for us this year. Happy someday baby talk is always a good thing, but let’s ease off the pressure a bit. :/

So… Less overweight than twenty-seven, child-less, pajama pants all day, and crazy insanely happily married- This is Jensey at twenty-nine.

And because sometimes we all need a reminder: