Better

A little update: 

Abigail came over and watched Baby Dave while I went swimming -- my first time back to the gym since Dave was born. I swam a mile. It was my first time in the pool in at least 7 months and I am feeling it. 

But it felt so good to rejoin the human race and get my mind off, well, you know. I am good and tired now  ... ready to feed Dave and call it a night.

Sorrow

Unadulterated angst below. Beware. 

I spent the morning doing everything I could NOT to burst into tears every half minute. This was a fairly successful endeavor until we got onto post and Luke was getting his hair cut, at which time I had to go to the car because I just couldn't handle it anymore.

Our last morning was uneventful -- or eventful with the kind of things that fill all of our mornings, or at least have until now. Things like trying to make the baby sleep one.minute.more, cooking and eating breakfast together, checking various sports scores for no apparent reason, making the bed. Rather droll, really. 

Unfortunately it is those mundane things that make up life with a person. It isn't during anomalies in your day that absence is noticed; it is the person's usual presence during the ordinary that creates the gapping hole I now feel.

Last night while laying in bed for the last time for who knows how long with my husband I brain blogged a truly depressing epistle enumerating my sorrows. Those words have escaped me now. Rather than dragging this on and on ad nauseum, then, I am just going to cut it short with this one truth:

My heart hurts.

And the days go by

I had typed up a nice post last week ... sadly the internets (yes, all of them) ate it instead of posting it to the blog. Lovely. 

Luke is leaving tomorrow. The Army, as we know, likes to change its mind and so this last week has been a seesaw of indecision as to the date exact date of his departure. This shouldn't really be a surprise since the last month has been a similar guessing game of exactly how long he will be gone. First it was 6 months, then it was 8 and now it is a solid 12 to 15 ... first he was leaving last Thursday, then it was next Wednesday, then Monday and now, finally, it is tomorrow.

It's heartbreaking, really. I'm trying oh so hard to put on a brave face and redirect my attention to busy things in hope that they will distract me. Yesterday I joined the Y. As soon as Luke is out of the country I'm heading to the Verizon store to get a new cell phone plan and blackberry (!!!!!!! we'll talk about this joy in a minute). A week from Wednesday Shelly is coming and we will watch Friends and go to the mountain and find a REALLY hot dress for me to wear to Callie's wedding and do all sorts of other fun things (in between me working on the next Research Paper of Death ... this time: Paul and his view on the Law. This stuff is dry as... [I was searching for an analogy and Luke suggested "dry and dandruff"] ... lint ... or something. Whatever. I hate it). 

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Baby Dave has been one grumpy kid over the last few days. I don't know what I did to piss him off, but he is NOT HAPPY. 

HOWEVER ...he DID smile at me this morning! For like 1/2 a second. And it wasn't just gas, it was in response to me talking to him. I do, however, think it was an accident because as soon as he realized he was no longer looking pissed off and angsty, he stopped and refused to repeat. Whatever. It so counts. 

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I am VERY excited about my new blackberry. Remember when I was so awesome before and gave it up in the name of saving money? Well, that is so over. I'm going to get it back and this time it's going to be 4,000 times as cool as before. Why? Because my current one is two years old and does not have any of the new awesome things on it. My new one, the curve, will be able to stream pandora from the internet. That means that instead of some lame radio station I don't even like, I can listen to an endless list of commercial free music that I'm fond of. It's revolutionary! It also has the all important camera so we can resurrect mobile photo posting. That's right, you're in for a stream of baby Dave pics like you've never experienced before. You lucky duck.

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I am also VERY excited about my plane tickets to D.C. which I purchased yesterday. I arrive there September 5 and leave September 21. That's more than 2 weeks in my favorite place on the planet. I don't really know what Im going to DO for the whole two weeks (several days over the first week will be spent with the Brooks, several days babysitting Veeka, which leave at least five week days with no plans while responsible people are at work) but I'm sure it will be lovely. 

Activity plans do include:

Going for a run on the mall

Visiting the newsroom with Dave

Visiting friends far and wide, possibly including the Whites, Becca Rowe, Amy R., Shep, etc.

General viewing of beautiful monuments

Eating really delicious food in a LOT of places

Visiting the Aunts, cousins, cousin dogs, etc.

Visiting friends in general. 

IM SO EXCITED!!

I Wanna Get Away ...

With Luke leaving in a week and a half for a YEAR (or more ...), we decided to get away from everything for a day. It's so hard being intentional about spending quality time together here at home ... there's always so many distractions (like the pile of laundry on the couch, or this computer, or Luke's school work, or Luke's job ...). I thought maybe if we escaped for a night we'd be able to just focus on being us. 

It was wonderful. We headed up to Lake Quinault lodge, where we spent a day or two on our honeymoon, then hit the beach on our way home. It was simply lovely. Dave is an easy guy to haul around still, minus the need to feed him every three hours (that gets annoying), so we were able to go on long walks, enjoy dinner together, that sort of thing. 

It was lovely. 

Evidence:

 I'm trying so hard to make this next week and a half not seem like torture for all involved, including myself.  I would be lying if I said that this was anything near easy .. it's not, and I pretty much cry every single time I think about my best friend leaving for a really long time and how Baby Dave probably won't even know who he is when he sees him and all that fun stuff. But I figure there's plenty of time to be upset about it later, right? So I should just put it off as long as possible. 

(It's more fun to be upset about it while Luke is still here). 

My sister is coming to visit me a week after Luke leaves, and the day she leaves I'm flying to Ohio for Callie's wedding. I'll be there a week as well. My entire family may come visit me in July, then in August I'm visiting California including Sardine Lake (!!!!!) and the home town. September I plan to fly to D.C., October Im going to a conference in Colorado and probably visiting Boise .. and so the time will pass. 

(Maybe).

Time/No Time

Yesterday I actually had the thought "I have time to blog today!" .. but alas, I did not. Because as soon as I said that the baby who is a mind reader started crying, just to prove that he is in control of my time. He also has an uncanny ability to sense when I am just about to fall asleep as well as consistently pooping through his suite when I dont have time to change him. 

Apparently this is what they call "motherhood."

Regardless, I am enjoying the ride, and promise a more complete update sometime that I shouldn't be getting ready to go to small group. Meanwhile, here is a picture or two of my baby boy, who is SO cute, and one month old today:

It's been a while, and now I have a kid

I've been waiting to post until I felt like it or had time, and since the former hasn't really happened, I'm going to post now .. since I kind of have time. 

As you may have guessed if you didn't already know, I've been MIA because I had baby Dave -- but not on Baby Day. He actually came the day after, leaving me in non active and active labor for about 24 hours. I'll spare you the fun details, but let's just say at about midnight (that's right, after hanging out having contractions all the live long day) they broke my water and gave me drugs. Then I took a four hour nap (best nap ever!) and then I had a baby. And that was pretty much it.

Evidence: 

From there it was pretty much recovery with a really smelly roommate, learning to walk with extreme muscle fatigue so that I could leave the hospital without falling over, more smelly roommate, lots of visitors that were not expected and that were male and that were wearing boots and so on and so forth. 

And then I got to come home and sit around my house for days and days on end, loosing track of time, sleeping, trying to get Baby Dave to wake up enough to eat (never really successful at that), finally resorting to pumping and bottle feeding because I just couldn't handle it anymore, heading to the lactation lady for salvation from the pump, finally getting him to eat the right way, and so on. 

Meanwhile my mommy flew in to help me, because, let's be honest, mommies make everything better. Luke has been in Ohio since Friday visiting his family -- he gets home tonight. People have been awesome and brought us lots of delicious food for dinner, including dessert. And that's pretty much all there is to it.

The next challenge -- now that I've figured out how to feed the child and can do so in public sorta without loosing it -- is going back to normal life. We went to church Sunday, but that was the first normal thing we've done since he was born almost two weeks ago. Normal life will begin Wednesday evening, I think, as we head to small group and since Luke will be back to work Thursday. My mom leaves Wednesday, so I'll be really on my own. 

I'm sure I can handle it, but it HAS been nice having my mom here to do dishes and fold laundry and the like. (This is especially true as Baby Dave and I have thrush and everything that gets milk on it must be washed every day to keep us from reinfecting each other ... and our washing machine is hardly stellar on the timeliness front). It will simply take time to adjust my schedule to get everything done and be in the places I'm supposed to be on time while feeding, dressing, bathing, etc. him. I guess this is what motherhood is.

Luke leaves on June 1 for at least 8 months. This not excellent news was given to us the day before Baby Day, and was a bit of a surprise. We knew it was possible, but not likely ... he was supposed to live at the end of July instead. Early June is WAY different than late July.

Still I know I'm a lucky duck -- my husband is only going to be gone 8 months instead of 12 like most others. And we didn't have to move to Kansas. Really, I have no room to complain. Still, when I think about all the cute baby moments he's going to miss, the fact that Dave will be 9 months old when he gets home, that Dave likely wont have any idea who Luke is ... yeah, it's hard. I cry. 

So, in an effort to not drag us all down at the end of this blog post, I shall give you some baby pictures. More available on Facebook.