The Way I Think

I'm a very open minded kind of guy. Unless someone disagrees with me. Just kidding...maybe. For example. I work 10 hours a day and I am bringing in the only income in my family. For this reason, I feel that on my time off from work, I should be able to have some time to myself away from everything and just spend some time to myself. However, I work swing shift from 2 to midnight so I don't spend much time with my family except on my days off. If I were to take ALL of that time for myself, I wouldn't have any time with my family. A year ago, I would have been alot more selfish and wanted more time to myself to do whatever I wanted. Now that I have a baby daughter at home, I've come to realize that while I work 10 hours per day and I make the money in my family, Juanita works 24 hours per day every day of the week and never gets a day off unless of course I take over her duties take care of the kids so she can go and spend time doing something she would like to do. She also brings in food money and provides most of the food for the family. She also cook and cleans sometimes and does laundry and other things. She's a very busy person and really deserves time off more than I do. That having been said, I would myself go crazy if I didn't get any time to pursue my hobbies. I don't spend an enormous amount of time on them, but I do enjoy spending a few hours per week doing them either before work, after work, or on my days off. Fortunately, I can usually do them while I'm watching the kids.
I also understand that with the money I make, I cannot provide Juanita with everything she might like to have. I can pay all the bills and usually have a bit left over for going out and having a good time once in awhile. Maybe I can buy a new video game. Maybe she can buy a pair of shoes. Recently, I've spent noticeably more money no things I wanted than on things she wanted. It's a problem that I have that I tend to think more of what I want or need or think I need than what she wants or needs. This obviously needs to change. Both of use should have equal consideration. If I have 100 dollars to spend on something and I have something I would like to buy, I should take into consideration what she would like. She needs new clothes, new shoes. My next thing to spend money on is definitely something for her. I did buy a car for her back in May. She was and continues to be very grateful for that. I did get her Sirius radio that she really wanted. She enjoys it and often tells me how much she loves it. Those gifts were for Mother's day and our for the anniversary of our first date and coincidentaly the first time we did it. heheehehe...
I realize now that there things she needs and things that the baby needs or is going to need that I'm going to have to provide money for.
I love her and the baby very much. Even though I know that money is not the way to show her how much I love her, I realize that providing the things she needs is indeed one way of many to do it. I feel we have grown so much and that every time we get into a heated discussion about the way things are and the way things should be, we both learn from them and continue to let our relationship to grow. We have come so far and she is such a great person that I feel that to lose what we have gained would be a tragedy and would be far more of a loss than to have never known each other at all.
I have an internal dilema in that if I millions of dollars, I would give her everything she ever dreamed of in terms of material things. However, I've come to realize that even though I haven't got millions of dollars, I can still provide SOME things where as before I would tend to provide nothing at all. I thought "if I can't provide EVERYTHING then why even try". I know now that all that's really important is that I do the best I can.