Masterpeices

G is super into doing stickers lately. He has easily gone through (and I'm not kidding) a thousand of them since Christmas. Luckily, he got nearly that many in a sticker book from his Auntie and Uncle, so we haven't had to dip into his college fund just yet.

This is how he "does stickers." There's probably 400 on here. He just stacks and stacks and stacks.

Let's look a little closer.

 

 

This truly does not even begin to show the thickness of this paper. It must weigh a pound or more.

 

In other news, when he really takes his time, he can stay in the lines! Erik and I are in ongoing discussions as to whether I should make him stay in the lines more or not.

 

We have a pretty serious art gallery going on the side of the fridge thanks to preschool. I have such a hard time parting with his creations. So I've already chopped some up and sent them off to relatives. Let them feel the guilt pangs of tossing them out! 

When Did My Child Start to Pee Standing Up?

Every year around my birthday I wonder how in the world I'm already 28 or 29 or however old I'm turning that year. Some Most days I still feel like I'm about 17 years old. A wiser, more worldly 17 than I actually was, but definitely not my actual age which I can only quantify as "pushing" 30. Except for if I've had too much to drink the night before. On those mornings, I definitely feel my age.

I remember when I was a kid, the years used to draaaaaaaaaag along. I remember specifically how the year I was in second grade seemed to last an excruciatingly long time. (Of course, I hated my teacher and she hated me, which definitely didn't help matters. Believe it or not, I was the naughty kid in class.) One time, I mentioned to my father-in-law how the years used to seem to last a long longer than they do now and he told me that's because every year is a lesser part of the greater whole of your life.

Does that make anyone else want to jump off a cliff?

Kinda seems unfair that we get those extra long years at the beginning instead of the end.

6 Months.

And still pretty hard to photograph.

 

Some Days

Some days I can't wait to get back to a real Army post, surrounded by people who "get" me, finding new members of our "Army Family" and getting back to the feeling of community that can only come from living around those in the same situation as you are.

And then some days, while listening to music, cooking supper in the kitchen and listening to Erik and the kids play or read in the living room I think "so this is what normal feels like... this could be okay, too."

Prior to living in Hawaii, I hadn't had any real "Army Wife" experiences. We married quickly after a deployment, lived at Ft. Drum for only a few months after that (and one of those months was block leave, so there was hardly any mandatory fun to be had) and then we were off to Ft. Sill for a course, so that wasn't exactly "real life" either. I find myself wondering, as our stint here in "purgatory" begins drawing to a close, if we're ever going to have the experiences we had in Hawaii again.

Am I going to draw near to women because our husbands are in harms way and we need each other to help raise the children and pass the time? Nothing builds friendship like that. Are we going to need friends around the holidays if we're closer than 1,000 miles from home? Nothing builds a community quite like that. Am I ever again going to have the feeling on Wednesdays like I did at Schofield Barracks? Wednesdays were the days they held memorial services for KIA's during the deployment. The feeling in the air those days was palpable. And uniquely military. I didn't enjoy the feeling, but I knew when I would cry as I saw the Honor Guard preparing outside, that all the others around me were also praying and crying for our fallen. There's community in that. Maybe what we had in Hawaii can't be replicated. Maybe, if it means more war, I don't want it to be.

I don't want to feel like an outsider to the Army anymore. I miss the camaraderie. I miss the community. But this weekend, I began feeling like a part of *this* community. Civilian life has always seemed so ordinary, so ... bland. Not like moving around the world and all the adventures that come along with that. But this weekend, talking with people who've lived in this town their whole lives, it didn't seem so bad.

I s'pose it's true that you always want what you don't have. It's just strange not to have either at this point.

Maybe it's me.

Maybe I'm reading too much in to this but I HATE it when I see people write "Your husband is a lucky/blessed man" on pictures women post of themselves on Facebook. And not because I hate "The Selfie" but because I just can't seem to figure why those who post these things think that how someone looks is the only thing that could possibly make her valuable to a partner.

Am I reasonably intelligent and easy to talk to? Yes.

Am I financially responsible? Yes.

Have I prayed and faithfully waited throughout 3 deployments and an innumerable number of separations? Yes.

Have I successfully pusged out two (NINE AND A HALF POUND) children? Yes. And might I add that had this been 100 years ago, I almost certainly would have died having Grant, so I would like to think this makes Erik doubly lucky.

Did I gracefully accept the fact that he had to leave me in the hospital 36 hours after having our first child to catch a flight to California for training that was absolutely ridiculous and unnecessary? Yep. I did that too.

Am I a good enough sport to pack up myself and my family 5x in about 6 years and move to places I've never been? TWICE without any help from my partner? Why yes, yes I am.

But am I skinny or exceptionally beautiful? No. So to my knowledge, no one is lining up to tell my husband how lucky he is that I don't piss away our money or leave him when he has to hang out in Afghanistan for 16 months at a time. Well, that's a lie. The getting left in the hospital garnered at least one "You're wife is HARD!" that I know of. But that's it.

I'm just sayin', there's more to a marriage and more to the level of blessing a wife can be to her husband than how she looks. And I hope all the "ordinary girls" out there realize that.

Ordinary Wife, with an apparently unlucky husband, signing off.