So long

It's been so long since I blogged. Seems I can only manage a post a month. Bah.
I feel bad about that. It's not what I'd pictured when I started this blog.

The long and short of it goes something like this:

Andrew is eight months old. Holy cow! I am more in love with him everyday. He crawls now -- well he army crawls. He is the fastest low crawler you've ever seen. He gets up on his hands and knees and rocks back and forth but when it's time to move, he drops down onto his belly and pulls with his chubby little arms and pushes with his little toes and scoots all over the place. He still doesn't have any teeth. I am assuming they are in there by the looks of his gums, but they are certainly taking their sweet time. He still loves to eat. We are still doing baby food but more and more he is eating table food. Or as Greg calls it "human" food, as if I've been feeding Andrew hamster or dog food for the past four months. He loves it all -- hummus, potatoes, peas, pasta, beans, fruit -- even cooked onions. He is so smart and everyday he amazes me. He loves anything with a string or tassle but his favorite thing is to pull my hair. He says "mama" "dada" and "papa" and makes sounds that are like "hey" and "no." He makes a sound like "eeehhh" when he fusses at Brody or at Wyatt (for some reason he loves to fuss at Wyatt).

We made the move from Louisiana home to North Carolina. My parents flew out to LA to make the trip back with me and Andrew in the van and Greg left a day later in his truck pulling the Uhaul trailer full of our stuff. We spent a night in Alabama and then another in Georgia with my cousin Amy and her family. It was a long trip, but Andrew did wonderful. He only got grumpy a couple of times and that was at the end of the day.

We got settled into our little temporary home here and it is nice. We went up to Massachusetts to visit Greg's family before he left. We tried to spend quality time together. He tried to do everything he could think of to make it easier for me.

The night before Greg left, I gave him Andrew's bedtime bottle and sent him off to put our little one to bed. After a long while, I could hear Andrew fussing so I went down the hall and found Greg hunched over Andrew's crib, patting Andrew's bottom and crying his eyes out -- his whole body shook and the tears just ran down his face. It broke my heart.

Greg has been gone almost a week. He's in training until mid-November. The good news this week is that he will get to come home during a long weekend in October -- the weekend before our ninth anniversary. I had thought we would be apart for both our ninth and tenth anniversaries. But, we will get to celebrate this one together and I'm grateful for that.

My parents and my entire family have been great. There is something to be said for having Granny and Papa so close. Andrew loves spending time with them and so do I, of course. My niece Kelli comes over to watch movies and drink wine with me and my sisters drop in for short visits almost everyday.

Our house in Louisiana still hasn't sold. We are hopeful that it will sell but we think we will eventually have to rent it out. I miss the house, but not nearly as much as I miss my husband. Home truly is where the heart is.

I leave you with one of the photographs Liz took the week before we moved. Andrew didn't want to smile for her -- which is odd since he's always smiling. But she got some beautiful shots despite that fact.