Yesterday afternoon I came home from the gym where I'm working on getting a Hot Single Mom bod. Skylar had the day off so he was home with Mr. Baby teaching him swearwords, or worse, how to play Dungeons and Dragons.

Living with Skylar and his, what I'll generously call, "spirited hobbying," means I never know what sort of scene I'm about to enter whenever I step foot into the house. Will he have superglued all our plates together for reasons he now can't explain? Will the kitchen we never planned to remodel be fully under construction? Will the dining room have been converted into a maze for mice he's attempting to train?

I stopped trying to guess what he's been up to about six years ago when I pulled up to the house to find smoke billowing out of a window and Skylar screaming "DEAR GOD PLEASE NO" and then I and everything I owned got to smell like salmon for the next four months.

The house projects have become more projecty since we became parents. I'd blame the sleep depravation but we've somehow managed to have the Number One Best Baby who started consistently sleeping through the night around four weeks old. I'm forty and I still don't do that.

No, I think he's just been home a lot more so he has a lot more time to think about how he needs to disassemble the entire bathroom so he can remove a water pressure regulator in the showerhead he just installed. (This happened not twelve hours ago. My kitchen floor is still covered in water. I don't know why.)

So yesterday when I and my perky gym boobs rolled into our casa, I braced myself for chaos, only to be surprised to find Skylar asleep in the nursery, Mr. Baby and Duncan on top of him, Louie down at the base of the rocker.

This is my favorite kind of scene—one I have the pleasure of witnessing daily. The sweet gentile ongoing orientation of fatherhood where the student happens to be the one person I love most. (That designation is now occupied in a two-way tie, of course.)

These are the images I'll most remember from 2024. Skylar showing a toy to an infant who is mesmerized by the existence of anything he can see. The little gremlin sounds that come from a napping baby who is most content when he's sleeping on one of us. The diaper changes and our shock whenever we have to move up a size because we swear he's always been this big.

I remember so vividly walking into my house after I bought it exactly ten years ago. It was completely empty. My personality can best be described as the rare combination of cheesy smartass, so I decided to go to the center of the home, lie on the floor, and envision what my life would be like in this new place while playing My Heart Will Go On on a constant loop.

It was a December evening—dark out. Flat on my back, I stared up at the ceiling of what is now my home office, imagining the parties I might host and where I'd probably store my blue snuggie.

I'm not sure if I suspected I'd still be in this house a decade later. I had moved so frequently for twelve straight years that it was hard to think of myself as being any particular place for very long. I certainly never contemplated that I'd fill the home with dogs, a spouse, and at least one baby. But here I am at the end of 2024 and it appears I've done just that. I've replaced my loneliness with life. And, damn, how lovely is this.

Even if it does mean living with someone who sometimes puts his jeans in the freezer. (Don't ask. I did once and I've regretted it ever since.)

In 2024 I went to a theme park in the Netherlands and laughed a lot. I became more addicted to my phone and promised myself to finally do something about it. Someday. I turned forty, which is impossible because wasn't I just in high school last month? I posed for an odd photoshoot because Skylar was so charming The Washington Post decided to write a whole ass article about him. I danced with strangers on the streets of Ghent as my husband watched from a castle tower in his bathrobe because "it's too late for me to be out but you should go have some fun." I did a half Ironman and discovered I was not, in fact, just in high school last month. Most importantly, in 2024 I became a father, and realized the thing I've been missing for so long was exactly this. (I was already a dad thanks to Duncan and Louie.)

I know I use this stupid website to gush about Skylar and the life I can't believe I somehow get to have now. I hope it never feels like a brag—it's certainly not intended to be. I love to write, and I can't shake the feeling that not writing specifically about this would be ungrateful somehow.

In the age of social media we often talk about how a sugar-coated presentation of life can hurt the viewer who wonders why their kitchen and clothes don't look as tidy and trendy, or whatever. It's my hope that I never contribute to that sort of thing—that I haven't used my platform to falsely imply that we don't have hard days. We've had some very hard days. Also, it's 1:18 PM on a Tuesday and I still haven't gotten dressed. Also, I ate handfuls of shredded cheese for breakfast, half of which is now in my keyboard. I'm fully failing in my quest to become a successful fashion blogger.

But despite the hard things and the fact that there has been a hole in my bathroom wall for eight years that I regularly swear I'm going to fix "next month for sure," something about New Year's Eve airbrushes my memories and makes everything feel a little perfect in hindsight.

As I sit here now, I'm not thinking about the sleep depravation of new parenthood or the fact that I've lost loved ones in the last year. Instead, it's just flashes of Skylar lying on the floor reading a book about Dolly Parton to our son that occupy my mind. Or moonlit hand-in-hand evening strolls with our dogs where we argue with vigor about things that don't matter, just for the sport of it. I'm just here, feeling lucky I found someone who made me see color. And I'm profoundly grateful for that.

I appreciate you all being here and sharing in this community with me, some of you for many years and some of you for much less time than that. I love you all the same, but I like you at very different levels. (I have all of you ranked on a long list somewhere. I try not to let your looks factor into your ranking but I'm only human, guys. Fortunately, every one if you is exceptionally hot. You have to be to access this website. I have the camera on your computer do a quick verification before letting you proceed to read this drivel. I'm always shocked at how many of you are constantly topless.)

I wish you peace, challenges that will remind you you're human in the best possible way, and for 2025 to Just Get Stranger for you all.

~It Just Gets Stranger