Appreciation

My husband has been deployed now for over 7 months. It’s definitely different this time around, having kids. I’m kept busier, and the time seems to be flying by faster. But it does make me sad, because he is missing so much. I have heard other military families express this same feeling, but I never understood it until I lived it myself.

I was sitting on the sofa last night, and my 2 year old son clambered up next to me, and scooted his butt against the back of the couch and imitated how I was sitting on the sofa. And then turned up to look at my face, beaming. And it filled me with such joy and happiness. And then I realized how lucky I was to be spending time like this with my son, and how sad it was that my husband was missing a whole year of those special moments. A year of those beaming smiles. And it made me incredibly sad.

My husband and I have also discussed the fact that we both tend to have morbid thoughts a lot more…like when he was home for R&R and I was making video of him with the kids, I couldn’t silence the thought in the back of my head that this might be footage I show the kids later of them with their dad…their dad that they can’t quite remember, because he never came home. He says, he also worries about me and the kids, something happening to us.

Yes, it’s sad. But I think because we have these thoughts more often, I think we also have a better appreciation of our family. We realize how precious our moments together are. So it’s not all bad.

Upcoming deployment

I rarely blog anymore. Blogging was a great outlet while my then-boyfriend, now-husband was deployed. But my blogging really petered out since he returned...over 3 years ago.

And in a few months he will be deploying again. But this time it will be a whole different situation: then we had only known each other a few months before he deployed. This time we will have been married a couple of years, and have two kids.

It will be a very different deployment. We will face different challenges: this time he will be saying goodbye to two young children, and his beloved dog, Susie. When he leaves our daughter will just be learning how to sit up, and might have a tooth or two. When he comes back she will be walking and talking. And our son, who is just 17 months old now, will be almost 3 when he gets back. So my husband will be missing out on a lot of developmental stages.

And not to cry myself a river, because I certainly have it a lot easier than many other military spouses, but I won’t be a carefree university student this time around. No, this time around, I will be a working mother of two…I won’t be able to sleep-in much that year. But I think that is a good thing: I won’t have much time to mope, because I will be so busy. My husband has said as much himself: he will have a few more responsibilities this time around as well.

I was prompted to write this post, because I got a comment today on a post I wrote before he deployed last time, and it was fascinating to reread it, and see who I was then, and my fears and thoughts before his departure.

A lot of what is written in that post is still true. But I would say there was a lot of the fear of the unknown then: I didn’t know what to expect. This time around I will have better expectation management. The fear about his safety will still be ever-present, but I don’t think I will be living and breathing the deployment as much as I did back then. In some ways it will be more difficult, because of the added responsibilities of taking care of a family on my own. But in many it will be easier, because I feel a lot more secure in our relationship and I will be distracted from my pity party.

Time will tell, and perhaps in three years I will re-read this post with fascination as well.

Picture Post

I have been a lazy blogger of late, but I wanted to post a few pics of life.

Daddy is restraining the boy, so Mommy can take a funny picture.

Daddy is restraining Susie, so that Mommy can take a funny picture.

Big shoes to fill.

Filled!

And introducing the newest member of the family: Trixiebell*! (Aunty Sarah's nickname for her)

Just minutes old.

5 Days old (taken this morning).

Just after the birth. I just had to compare this picture with a similar shot from last year...and they are almost identical (same gown, same gleeful smile, different baby).

Clarksville Photography

Best Clarksville TN photographer.

Best Clarksville TN photography.

Props to Pelosi

I usually can't stand the woman, but, thank you Pelosi for this:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi shut the door Thursday to a resolution honoring Michael Jackson because debate on the symbolic measure could raise "contrary views" about the pop star's life.

But I object to this:
Lawmakers are free to use House speeches "to express their sympathy or their praise any time that they wish," said Pelosi, D-Calif. "I don't think it's necessary for us to have a resolution."

It just reminds me of when legislators in California wanted to ban the personal use of ultrasound machines after they found out that Tom Cruise had purchased one to use at home while Katie Holmes was pregnant. Or after the Octomom had her babies, how there is some representative who wants to limit the number of embryos that can be implanted.

It's like, seriously? You really think that these are the biggest issues facing our nation today? You are going to take away precious legislative time to talk about these (non)-issues just because that is what is getting the public's attention? You are looking to tabloids to see what to legislate on? You guys are supposed to be the smart ones (yeah, right...). Or let me rephrase that: tax payers are paying you to discuss those issues instead of, oh, I don't know, more pressing issues like the budget crisis?

*Sigh*

The US' Afghanistan Strategy

This is something I have been wanting to post about myself, but never got around to it. And now I don't think I need to, because Sarah hit the nail on the head with my thoughts about the whole situation (actually she did it way better than I would have been able to.)

I am really worried about how things are going to develop there, and I think that Afghanistan could easily develop into the quagmire that many feared Iraq would become.

Unbelievable

But then again…I don’t know why I am surprised at this:

So the government wants to make a memorial to Flight 93 on the land where it crashed. Many landowners are amenable to selling their property to the government, but a few aren’t…or perhaps they have set their prices so high as to make it basically prohibitive for the government to purchase. In my opinion: their prerogative.

So what’s the solution?:

"We always prefer to get that land from a willing seller. And sometimes you can just not come to an agreement on certain things," park service spokesman Phil Sheridan said.
"Basically, at this point, we have not been able to acquire all the land we need," he said.
[…]

The next step will be for the U.S. Justice Department to file a complaint in federal court. A court would have to decide the matter and would set a value on the land.

Two owners account for about 420 acres the park service plans to condemn, including Svonavec Inc. — which owns 275 acres, including the impact site where 40 passengers and crew died. About 150 acres are owned by a family that operates a scrap yard.

Most of rest of the land to be condemned are small parcels, two of which include cabins.

Tony Kordell said the park service visited him late Friday afternoon and made him an offer for his 150 acres. He declined to give the price, but said his attorney requested the appraisal used to determine the value on Monday.

He's not gotten that appraisal, he said Thursday. On Wednesday, he was told the park service would condemn the land.

[…]
Randall Musser owns about 62 acres that the park service wants to acquire.

"They apologized about the way it's come together, but what's sad is they had all these years to put this together and they haven't," he said.

Musser served on the committee that helped establish the park's boundaries and said landowners were promised in 2002 that eminent domain would not be used.

"It's absolutely a surprise. I'm shocked by it. I'm disappointed by it," said Tim Lambert, who owns nearly 164 acres that his grandfather bought in the 1930s. The park service plans to condemn two parcels totaling about five acres — land, he said, he had always intended to donate for the memorial.

"To the best of my knowledge and my lawyer, absolutely no negotiations have taken place with the park service where we've sat down and discussed this," Lambert said.

Obviously there are two sides to every story and this one seems to heavily quote the land owners, but I really don't like the idea of eminent domain being used in this situation.