ONEderful you

Oh, Andrew. There you are driving your little tow truck on the window, your first birthday balloons still floating above your head. I am there behind you, desperately trying to capture the sweet little moments of your life in photographs. You are so darned curious. Every time you see the camera, you want to touch it, inspect it, push the buttons and smudge your little fingerprints on the lens. Every once in a while, I manage to sneak up on you and get a picture that forever freezes a moment in time -- like here, when the light from the window fell on your pudgy dimpled hand as you motored that little blue truck along the back of your chair and up and down the window screen.
Your wheels are always turning. You are so incredibly smart. I am sure I'm quite biased. All mothers probably feel this way. Still, you always surprise me with your ability to reason, to imitate, to communicate. You are changing so fast and I am constantly trying to come to terms with the new you. Technically, you aren't a baby anymore, though it is hard for me to think of you as anything else.
At one, you are inquisitive to a point of hilarity. When Aunt Carol isn't wearing earrings, you peek into her ears to see where they are hiding. You  have stuck your fingers up my nose, in my mouth and in my ears as you explore.
You are talkative, you jabber of course, but you also talk -- you say sentences like "I love you, Da," when video chatting with your Dad and "I get that hello" when you reach for my cell phone. You answer questions with a resounding "Yes" or "No." Like this morning when your grandma asked you if you talked with your dad last night and you shook your head and said "No." You call me by name when you are angry or inpatient. Not "mommy" or "mama" as I have always taught you, but "Krista." I honestly don't know whether to laugh or cry when you do this. You say words like "tractor" and "cookie" one day and go back to your old standards "Papa, Mama, hello and ball" the next.
You are friendly. When we go shopping, you say "hey" to everyone we pass. Sometimes, the strangers smile and speak. Sometimes they ignore you. You do not like it when they do that.
You giggle when things bring you pleasure. Like when Papa gives you a taste of oatmeal creme pie, or I come home from a long shopping trip, or when Brody licks your fingers or when you see your dad's face on the computer screen.
You are a clown. You delight in making us laugh. If you discover that sticking out your tongue makes everyone giggle you do it repeatedly.
You are a monkey. You climb on EVERYTHING! You love to sit on the coffee table or climb into the toy box. You love to climb onto the window seat at Granny's and fling open the shutters to look outside and call for Dixie.
You are fearless. You will put your face in your bath water, reach out and grab tree branches while riding in your wagon or attempt to fling yourself out of my arms if you don't like being held or I'm impeding you from doing what you want to do.
You are bossy. You want so badly to be independent especially when it comes to feeding yourself. You love to eat. Just this week, you tried my homemade guacamole and you loved it! I adore you for that.
You can't walk yet. Well, I think you could walk but you just haven't got it all figured out yet. Of course, the fact that you don't walk doesn't stop you. You are everywhere at once and you crawl so fast you can disappear in seconds. This morning after snuggling with you in my bed as you drank your morning bottle (the only bottle left), I put you on the floor and I stretched before getting out of bed. A few seconds later, when I sat up and put my feet on the floor you were gone. I called your name and looked down the hall. Nothing. All of a sudden, your little head popped up over the other side of the bed. I called you baby Houdini.
I took you to see the pediatrician for your one-year check up. She confirmed what I have always known. You are "perfect." You weigh 27.7 pounds and are 32 inches long! You are a big healthy boy and are bigger than 99 percent of babies your age. In fact, after you got your shots, we went back to the waiting room to find your Grandma chatting with a mother who had a small baby on her lap. "How old is he?" I asked, expecting her to say he was nine months. But he was the same age as you, just a few days between your birthdays. It looked like you ate that kid for breakfast.
You are one and you are different than you were a few weeks ago. You've started showing signs that the "terrible twos" are just around the next corner. You make a horrible high pitched squealing sound when you don't get your way. You will arch your back and throw your arms back and that makes it almost impossible for me to hold on to you.
You are everything I hoped you would be but you are so much more than I could have ever imagined. Your laugh is the sweetest sound I've ever heard. Your cheek is the softest thing I've ever kissed. Your scent is the sweetest I've ever smelled. You are the sun and moon and stars. You are puffy clouds and sunshine and cool water and warm socks and all the good things in the world all wrapped up in one little human.
Sometimes, I look at you and the very fact that you exist in this real world nearly knocks me down. Here you are -- a dream that became a reality. You grew in me. I gave birth to you. And, I have fed and bathed and clothed you each day. I have held you and rocked you and caressed you and kissed you. And it has been the greatest honor of my life.

The Big ONE!

We celebrated Andrew's first birthday on Friday. When we made our way over to my parents' house that morning, we were greeted by my parents and my sister Carol wearing party hats, blowing party blowers and singing happy birthday. Grandma had put a iced sugar cookie on Andrew's high chair tray and Carol had hung happy birthday banners all over the kitchen. This is one spoiled rotten one-year old!

Later that day, we picked my mother-in-law Barbara up from the airport. It was wonderful to see her and to see her with Andrew. He was a little unsure of her at first, but by the time we drove to the nearest chic-fil-a, he had warmed up to Grammy and was as happy as could be.
This was the first time Barbara has visited us in North Carolina and met all my family. It was a great visit for all of us, especially Andrew. He loves his Grammy!

I was sure I had ruined Andrew's birthday cake on Friday night by using a new frosting recipe that left his "1" shaped cake looking like it was covered in melted marshmallow.
Saturday was the big day for the party and thank God my mother-in-law was here to take care of Andrew. I really don't know what we would have done without her here. My mom and I spent the morning trying to salvage the world's ugliest birthday cake and it actually came out pretty good.

The party was great. Lots of family and friends came to help us celebrate. The theme of the party was "The Big One" and the main motif for the party was that silly "foam finger" that you see at sporting events. The colors were blue, orange and white. I made most of the decorations and they turned out great.

I also made a slide show with music, but it is indulgent and super long. Only those closest to us would be willing to invest 25 minutes to watch photos of my sweet boy go by so I won't post it here. Needless to say, it left a lot of folks with tears in their eyes.
Greg was able to sort of attend the party by waking up at 2:30 a.m. and Skype in. The connection was bad and the lighting in the room made it hard for Greg to see but it was something at least.

Our Andrew is so quick and though I can anticipate many of his moves, I failed to foresee his immediate and intense attraction to the flame on his lone candle. He grabbed it with his little fingers faster than I could react. Poor guy. I don't really thing he was burned because I couldn't even see a red spot on his hand or fingers, but everyone gasped and some people screamed when those tiny fingers touched that flame and it scared the bejeezus out of him.

After a few minutes outside, he calmed down and returned to delve into his cake, which he enjoyed very much.

I served cake, ice cream, finger sandwiches of PB&J and homemade pimento cheese, blue and orange pretzel M&Ms, an assortment of fruit, Sun Chips and lemonade. Andrew loved hitting the pinata. He laughed every time his little bat made contact. And he loved playing with his friends and cousins.
He was showered with a ton of gifts. We gave him a little chair from PB kids that has his name embroidered on it and he absolutely loves it. My dad made him a toy box, which is so special.

 Everyone was so generous and we felt very loved. All in all, his first birthday was almost perfect. The only thing missing was Daddy.

Blessings

We just said goodbye to 2011, the year that I will forever remember as the year that my sweet Andrew was born, I became a mother, Greg became a father and we became a family. There were a lot of changes, a lot of challenges. Even now, we continue to struggle with the separation of this deployment.
Christmas Eve was hard for me. Even though Greg oversaw the assembly of Andrew's Radio Flyer wagon via Skype, it just made me so sad to think of all he was missing. I am hopeful that next year, we will all be together and Greg will be wielding the screwdriver, not me. I can't wait to share that quiet, magical anticipation of being Santa with my husband.

Christmas Day was joyful despite the distance. Andrew saw all the toys Santa left for him and seemed pretty excited about the gifts until he realized his Daddy was on the computer via Skype. He went straight to the desk and started talking to Greg. We have it all captured on video and in photographs. It was one of the sweetest things I've ever seen. We were surrounded by our big, boisterous, loving family that day.
Greg had a pretty uneventful holiday. We tried to send him little pieces of home -- photos, baked goods, candy, gifts. In the end it was Andrew's excitement over seeing him on the computer screen that made his Christmas special.
So here we are in 2012. Only time will tell what challenges, changes and blessings this year will hold. I know that as long as Andrew is healthy and happy, I will be joyful each day. I'm already looking forward to May when Greg will probably come home for R&R.
Andrew turns one this Friday. It feels strange to type that. I've planned his party and I hope it will express the pride and joy that I feel for my sweet son. Greg's mom is actually flying in for the big day and for that I'm so grateful. It will be wonderful for Andrew to have both sides of his family represented at the party. And, I can't wait for my mother-in-law, Barbara, to see Andrew, to experience his personality and all those little things that make him uniquely Andrew.

Changes abound

Eleven months. Our Andrew is 11 months old. All of a sudden, I am busy planning a first birthday party and weaning him from bottle to cup and gently starting to potty train.
You've come a long way, baby! But, I think your Mommy has come even further. It's easy to see the changes in Andrew. Here's a little run down of his latest feats, big and small:
Words, words, words! Andrew is talking up a storm and surprising us everyday with new words and keeping us laughing with what seems to be pitch perfect comedic timing. Mama, Dada and Papa are still his most commonly said words, but he also says stop, go, bye, Dixie (my parent's dog), Dee Dee (for Brody), Nea Nea (for cousin Nathan and Aunt Renee), cracker, ball and small sentences like "I love you," "I love grits," "I got it," "I drop it," and his latest and cutest phrase "ho ho ho" for Santa Claus and snowmen. His communication skills both verbal and non verbal continue to amaze me.
He is not walking yet, but is cruising around and will stand alone while playing with a toy or reaching for something. It seems he has stretch arms and will work and figure out ways to get things that are out of his reach. For example, he has an Elmo place mat at my mom's and he pushes it underneath the napkin holder, salt shaker or sugar dish and then carefully slides the mat back to him, bringing with it the object of his desire.
He is a happy baby, content to play on his own but equally happy to have me or one of his cousins down on the floor with him playing invented games. One of his newest skills is pushing toy cars, trucks, tractors and trucks along while he's crawling and about a week ago, he started making motor sounds for all his automobiles as they roll along.
Though I have certainly allowed him to play with all types of toys, his favorite things are balls and things with wheels. Some things just come naturally to little boys, I suppose. He also loves books and can "point" with his thumb at certain pictures in some of his books when asked to do so. He can respond to certain commands like, "look at me" or "give me that" but when told "NO!" he usually gives me a mischievous grin and goes on with what he's doing. He looks so much like his father and acts so much like him that he would make a good case study in the nature vs. nurture argument. His dad isn't even around and I see him doing things like Greg does or making facial expressions just like Greg makes. He loves to wrestle with Brody and I'm thankful that Brody is a tolerant and gentle playmate. He still does a great job sleeping at night and he is completely fed from the table now. He loves most every food he's tried but bread appears to be his favorite food. Like father, like son. He is an expert imitator. He tries to talk on the phone, use the remote, brush his hair and his teeth just like he sees mommy do. He doesn't want me to feed him anymore but has yet to get food on the spoon and get it to his mouth with food still on it. For about two weeks now, he has used the potty every morning. He is a pretty regular guy and after reading about potty training in one of my mom's old Dr. Spock books about his toilet training methods, I decided that I didn't need to wait any longer to get Andrew accustomed to the potty. So, every morning after he's had his bottle, I put him on the potty and every morning with only one exception he has had a bowel movement in the potty. I know that he isn't trained and probably won't be for another year or so, but he is comfortable on the potty and seems to understand exactly what to do when he sits down and he doesn't try to get up. So, I take that to be progress. Andrew wears 12 and 18 month clothes. He weighed 24 pounds on Halloween so I'm sure he's up to 25 by now. Oh and he has four teeth -- two bottom and two slowly coming down on top.
So, that's the long and short of all things Andrew. He is a sweet natured baby who loves to cuddle, kiss and hug. And I am more than happy to indulge him!
I guess it's not so easy to see the changes in me. Well, unless you count the extra weight I'm still lugging around (I don't want to talk about it). I'm a different person than I was a year ago. I'm not sure I could ever explain how being Andrew's mother has morphed me into this other person who is a better, truer, fiercer version of my former self. Every day I wonder how there was ever any joy in my life before Andrew because he simply fills every moment of the day with a happiness that is pretty amazing. I tell Greg all the time that I don't know how I would make it through this year without Andrew. The days pass quickly. There is laughter, singing, cuddling, learning, playing and wonder in every day. There are long, luxuriously tender afternoon naps together. There's a sense that I am not alone even though Greg is not here. I have our son here with me and the light he shines into my days fills up the dark spaces created by this deployment.
I suppose I could have predicted this joy. I suppose I could have predicted the love. I could have predicted the pride I would feel in my son. I guess what would have eluded me a year ago would be the enormity of it -- the magnitude -- the way my relationship with my son would leave me completely humbled and grateful and awed.

A dirty shirt

There's a moment that I would guess every military spouse knows all too well. You half heartedly decide to finally attack that growing mountain of laundry and while sorting the whites, the darks and all that fall somewhere in between you find the last piece of clothing worn by your husband before he left for parts unknown.
I don't know about other spouses, but I usually bury my face in said item and inhale that lingering scent before throwing it into the wash. For me, that moment came last week, when all the other laundry from Greg's visit home had been washed, dried, folded and placed in a suitcase that will live at my parents' house until Greg comes home because we simply don't have room for it out here in our trailer.
Finally, last week, I got around to unpacking the small bag I took up to Baltimore and added those dirty clothes to the laundry mountains in the hall way. There, with my favorite jacket and my "date night" dress were Greg's clothes from our night out. I brought them home with me because there's no need for "civvies" over there.
The dress shirt, one of my favorite things to see my husband wear, still smelled like him. Greg doesn't usually wear cologne and our night out was no different. The smell that lingered there on the collar was simply the smell of my husband. It's familiar, safe, clean ... intoxicating.
I buried my face in the shirt and cried my eyeballs out.
I still haven't washed that shirt. I folded it and put it up on the bookcase-style headboard of my borrowed bed.
When I was a little girl, my grandmother died. My mom gave me one of her house dresses and I slept with it for months. I loved inhaling that scent -- it was a mix of soap and fried chicken and some indescribable something. But, after a few weeks, that smell faded and I had to try really hard to find even the faintest whiff of my grandmother on that house dress.
I haven't slept with Greg's shirt. I have picked it up and inhaled that sweet smell from time to time. I know that like Grandma Bessies's house dress, Greg's shirt will soon be just another dirty shirt atop a mountain of laundry.
I miss my husband.

Goodbye

I said goodbye to my husband Wednesday. Really, we had six days of goodbye. Greg flew home to NC on Friday and on Monday morning, we dropped him off at the airport to fly back to Louisiana, so he could take a bus to Houston to fly up to Baltimore. The infinite wisdom of the U.S. military is astounding sometimes. (This is a picture of my handsome fellas I took over the weekend.)

On Tuesday, I took the 50 minute flight from RDU up to Baltimore Washington International and waited in the USO for Greg’s flight to arrive a couple of hours later. It’s the same USO where we nervously waited for our flight to Italy when we moved there in 2005, the same USO that welcomed me home countless times over those four years when I’d take what is known in military circles as a “hop,” essentially serving as a seat filler on a military chartered flight that left once a week every week from our base in Italy to Baltimore.  BWI is more familiar to me than any other airport because I’ve spent so much time there over the years and the USO has always been a little haven where I could sit down, have a cup of coffee, watch TV, make phone calls or use the computers. As I sat there waiting for Greg’s flight to arrive, I couldn’t help but think of how many of the biggest transitions of my life have started right there in that room: moving to Italy, flying to the states for IVF treatments, moving back to the states after four years in Italy and now, oddly enough, seeing my husband off for a year-long deployment to Afghanistan. I thought about how every time we have experienced one of these life changing events, we couldn't see what was down the road but we found blessings at every turn. In Italy, we were surrounded by the love of a close circle of friends and we traveled and ate and drank and spent a good part of our four years there in absolute awe. Our failed IVFs tested us, strenghtened us and make us ever so grateful for this sweet sweet life. Louisiana was horrible, but it brought us to Dr. V and now we have our miracle boy. I wondered what blessings this deployment might hold in store for us. In a few years, will we look back and feel grateful for this experience?
 A year flies by. I know this because our precious son will soon be a year old. And, yet, when I think of an entire year without my husband, it feels like an eternity lies before me. Andrew will have his first Thanksgiving, first Christmas, and first birthday. A New Year will begin. Winter. Spring. Summer. Fall. Our world will change. Our son will change. And all this will happen without Greg here to see it, to feel it, to live it.

My husband was unusually quiet while he was home. Greg is nothing if not boisterous. My mama says he has the happiest face she’s ever seen. But he was not himself. Parts of him were already gone. I’ve seen this from him time and again over the years. When our second IVF failed and we returned to Italy, we had less than a week before he left on a five-month deployment. I grieved mightily while it seemed Greg had flipped a switch somewhere in his brain, turning off his emotions and turning his focus to the job in Kuwait that awaited him.

This time was a bit different. I didn’t need him to grieve with me. We have had a year to come to terms with the reality of this deployment. We have our sweet boy now so the pain of infertility is gone, replaced by this great big love. At this point, tears won’t do us any good. Talking about it, well, we’ve done that. We’ve talked about it until there really was nothing left to say.

On Sunday night, Andrew fell asleep in my arms while drinking his bedtime bottle. I asked Greg if he wanted to hold his son for a while before I put him in his crib. Andrew is so active these days and so curious and so busy that to get him to sit still in your lap for a good cuddle is quite a feat. Those tender moments are usually reserved for those first and last waking minutes of the day. I placed Andrew in his father’s arms and went about the business of washing bottles and getting ready for our pre-dawn drive to the airport. It took a few minutes for me to realize that Greg was crying as he held our snoring son. Just like the night before he left for training and I found him hunched over Andrew’s crib crying, this scene broke my heart.

And so, the uniformed man I met at the Baltimore airport had already said his goodbyes to his son and his thoughts were focused on the days ahead – the travelling, the job, and the danger. He tried hard to be there with me and there were moments when I felt the weight lifted from his shoulders but they were fleeting.

On Tuesday, I awoke early (even though it was the very first morning since Andrew was born when I could have slept as long as I wanted). I watched Greg sleeping, the cool gray light of a rainy morning lit his face. His breath was steady, his face was peaceful. I laid my head on his chest, my hand covering his heart. And I begged God to place a shield around him. I silently pleaded with God to deliver him back to us in a year – whole in body, in mind and in spirit. I tried to push away thoughts that this could be the last time I would ever wake up next to my husband.

We spent the next hours in relative silence. I went over the rules again: no helicopters, no volunteering for dangerous shit, no being the hero and lastly, no worrying about us.

At the airport, we sat in the observation area, which gave us a certain amount of privacy. We held hands and watched the planes take off and land. A steady rain fell outside and the raindrops on the glass reminded me of teardrops – like a Holocaust memorial we once visited in Boston where steam continuously forms condensation on the glass panels so they appear to be crying.

My own tears came later, during our last moments together. I was wrapped tightly in the safest place I’ve ever known – my husband’s arms -- and I felt myself giving way under the weight of the moment. There are moments in a marriage that are so intimate and tender that to try to describe them would be foolish. There simply are no words.

Oh my poor neglected blog.

Nearly everyday I have an amazing idea for a post -- you know, a real post that has real writing and isn't just a laundry list of Andrew's newest milestones or what's going on in my life -- but it seems I always choose to curl up in the big blue castoff recliner that sits in my living room and just do nothing at the end of the day.

Our Andrew, well, he's amazing, of course. The baby who we couldn't take anywhere as a newborn because of his crying jags has turned into the happiest, sweetest baby in the world. I can take him anywhere and he's usually content to look around at the great big world, make friends with passersby and just be his cute, happy self.

He will be 10 months old on Sunday. That means I've already started looking at party themes, party supplies, and first birthday gifts. It's so crazy. He is crawling on hands and knees now, has been for about two weeks, pulls up on everything and forgets he can't walk from time to time and then quickly remembers when he falls.

He is a world class explorer and he gets into everything. Just yesterday his little fingers found a candy dish on a side table at my mom's house and then he took his treasure and hid under said table. We would have had a hard time finding him except he was giggling from underneath the tablecloth.

He is a big talker already. He says all kinds of things. The most amazing being "I love you." And, you might think I'm making that up, except I have video of it and can prove it. He also says "hey there" and "Got it" and "No no no no" (usually to the dog).

He loves to eat and has pretty much decided that he's done with baby food except for during breakfast time when I can still get some fruit into him. I still haven't found anything he won't eat.
Just this week he's been sick for the first time with a cold. Seeing him sick really gets to me. I can only imagine how bad it's going to be when he gets the flu or something like that. He still only has one tooth but I'm expecting the one beside it to pop up any day now.

 The biggest news I have is that after getting a contingency offer on our house in early October, we got a better offer just this week. It's a cash offer so we will be closing next week and that means I have already made our very last mortgage payment! The offer was more than we could have hoped for, being that we were fully financed with a VA loan and have only owned the house for a little over two years. This turn of events is an answered prayer.

My parents, Andrew and I spent a few days in the Blue Ridge Mountains last week and it was wonderful. The picture here is one I took of him in the yard of the house we rented. It was a beautiful place.