The following entry was written by DaniGirl from Postcards from the Mothership

I think it was a movie that I was watching once, or maybe a book. The medium escapes me, but the message lives on. The Naïve Young Girl was asking the Wise Old Woman for advice on love and marriage, and the Wise Old Woman confided, "It's all about making sure you never fall out of love at the same time."

Those words resonated with me, and stay with me to this day. Because being a parent is hard on a marriage. Parenting babies, toddlers and preschoolers can be really, really hard on a marriage. And when it comes right down to it, making sure you never fall out of love at the same time - or, perhaps more accurately, never forget to be in love - is sage advice.

It would be easy to take the love of your partner for granted, to assume that even in neglect, it continues to bind you together without conscious effort. It is far too easy to assume love will prosper unaided, unattended, and of its own accord.

Loving my boys is easy. They take up so much of my every thought that sometimes they crowd out any other contenders. The dog, the friends, the husband - formerly the centres of my universe, they all get short shrift now because all my attention is sucked up by my love-needy boys.

I'm writing this in lieu of a little string tied to my finger, to remind me to take the time to love my husband. I need to love him with the same heart-rending intensity with which I love our boys. And I need to know that he loves me the same way.

In the hectic life we're living, we have to find ways to be more than just housemates, friends, parents and co-pilots. We have to remember to love each other deeply, passionately, and infinitely.

When the kids have grown and moved away, it will be just us again. Just the two of us, as we started out six years ago. And I hope we'll be more in love than ever.