So tell me, what exactly is love? Is it the fluttery feelings I used to get when I crushed on someone, or is it the small stillness I have come to expect whenever I think of my Boy and how proud he gets of me. You know that stillness. It's the soft glow of the candle flame burning where my soul lives, deep inside. It's the place that says to me "yes, this is hard. Nobody said it was ever going to be easy to partner a man, especially a man who's worthy of you." These days we can open that up a bit and include all types of partners- gay or straight. But I'll just speak to what I know...

I'm keeping his house while he's away, and trying to include him in all the little minute things of the day. I have to remember that he's the head of the house, even if I'm the Queen Regant for the month. Or year. Or whenever he comes back to take his place again at my board and in my bed. It takes a certain amount of inner strength, and a good deal of that comes directly from the way one perceives themselves. So I'm carefully choosing how I will perceive myself during this deployment. Today I'm one of those crusader queens. I've sent my man off into the world to do good works, to find our fortunes and to secure a place for us in the afterlife. I don't know just when he'll be back, or if he'll ever be back. I have to live as though he were still a part of our lives. Raise our children so that they love their father and remember him.

This is so much easier in the age of internet and digital photography. I may be nuts, but this is how we learn to get through times like this.

teeny-tiny diapers.

Oodles of years ago when I was a girl, the toy companies started coming out with these realistic looking and feeling dollies. They felt like a newborn, had the right weight and skin texture/resistance, etc. Some home ec classes even used them for the 'practice' babies.

My baby, when I birthed her last year, didn't look anything like those realistic babies. She was a squiggly little limp Holly Hobby doll... She looked like a wrinkled spider monkey and it was several months before she wasn't considered 'floppy'. Most newborns are floppy and that's why one needs to be so careful with their necks and heads. Preemies take that floppiness to a whole new level.

When she's sick she's still my little preemie, all floppy and listless. No more wires, thank Diety, but I still creep in and check her breathing as though she were. When she falls into that deep sleep that only the very exhausted and the very young can achieve, and I have to carry her off to bed, she's floppy again. It's just that this time she's got some weight to her. Like a sack of potatoes instead of a piece of overcooked spaghetti.

One of these days I still want another baby doll to hold in my arms and rock. It's likely that will mean another roller coaster through the NICU, and teeny tiny diapers, and lots and lots of sleepless nights and hormonal depression. But it's so worth it. I wouldn't give up my Kitty for anything in the world.

I'm entering a whole new world now, and it's something that I dread almost as much as I look forward to embracing it. How to keep the balance going forward in a calm fashion. What do I want? What is going to be the best decisions for my family?
Goals for the next week: Finish downloading and burning some movies for my Boy. Send the past two months worth of baby pictures out to the families. I took an ambien two hours ago and the soft folding of wool around my brain has begun. I can still function, but I have to make an extra effort to shut out the extra 'noise' around me. As promised, when Kitty needs me, I have no problem focusing solely on her and her needs. When I sit here watching tv and writing my vision blurs and the old familiar fuzziness wraps me up like a blanket. This is what I asked for. I must not let it get out of hand as previously.

While walking through the grocery store earlier, I was mildly irritated by the people who frequent it on a Saturday afternoon. I don't know why I was so amazed. It's not like there was anything unusual about it, other than that I was able to park the car within 500 ft of the store's entrance. Of course there were only 5 checkout lanes open, and they all were crowded, and I felt the urge to hold Kitty out at arms-length. "Watch out everybody! I've got a baby, and she could go off at any moment!"

Her congestion is easing up a bit tonight. Which is good, cause she's still exhausted from being sick all week. I'm praying that the next week goes well, and that I can send my mother home to Pennsylvania before the Kitty and I are supposed to fly east on our Grand Tour.

It's 8 PM. I've taken my pills, my mother and daughter are both sound asleep in bed. They're tired, and I'm tired too. I just can't seem to settle down to sleep just yet, so I'm sitting up and surfing the Net. I'll watch some tv and let my nerves settle a bit.

Good Night, Moon...

While walking through the grocery store earlier, I was mildly irritated by the people who frequent it on a Saturday afternoon. I don't know why I was so amazed. It's not like there was anything unusual about it, other than that I was able to park the car within 500 ft of the store's entrance. Of course there were only 5 checkout lanes open, and they all were crowded, and I felt the urge to hold Kitty out at arms-length. "Watch out everybody! I've got a baby, and she could go off at any moment!"

Her congestion is easing up a bit tonight. Which is good, cause she's still exhausted from being sick all week. I'm praying that the next week goes well, and that I can send my mother home to Pennsylvania before the Kitty and I are supposed to fly east on our Grand Tour.

It's 8 PM. I've taken my pills, my mother and daughter are both sound asleep in bed. They're tired, and I'm tired too. I just can't seem to settle down to sleep just yet, so I'm sitting up and surfing the Net. I'll watch some tv and let my nerves settle a bit.

Good Night, Moon...

Another day and I seem to be as messed up as I used to be. My medication is being adjusted, but not as dramatically as I feared. This is good. I even have a little something to help me sleep. Kitty is all raspy, when she coughs she wheezes for breath. Now we know that this is from the collapsible trachea. I'm not going to fret about that. Right now both my mothers are here, and I got sent to bed for a full night's sleep. Same thing is supposed to happen today.

What am I going to do with a day off? Feeling a bit better, all on my own. I could play online. I could spend it doing the fancy handwork that I miss (Seriously complicated needlework). I could be a world-famous supermodel magician. Mommy is taking a sick day. Whoo-effing-hoo.

Alright. I've dropped the Boy pierside, I came home, and calmed the crying Kitty. Then I went and threw up. A piece of rice came out my nose, and I feel better now.

The bronchoscopy today turned out very well. Her trachea has a soft spot on one side, and that's what's causing the problems. When she asks more of her breathing, it collapses in, and makes it harder for her to breathe. This should end by the time she gets to preschool. Her stomach upsets continue, though, with puking, icky watery/mucusy stools, and other miscellaneous sick stuff that comes out of babies.

I got as flaky as I normally get when he leaves for long periods of time. But it took me less to cope this time. I feel a bit silly that I showed all of this to my mother-in-law, but she's not judging me because of it. She and I agreed that we wished we could behave like the Kitty- she weeps and wails and threw a fit tonight because she was too tired and cranky and sick. We're too old to do that, even if it would make us feel better about waving the Boy off.

This won't be for too long, in the grand scheme of things. We know that the boat has a shelf-life, it can't be extended indefinately, and that he will come home again before we know it. Even still... I'm a navy widow again for a half-year. A merry widow? Or one of those women that walk along the shores looking out to sea waiting for the waves to carry news of her love back to her?

Well, I think the worst of the sickness has passed. I spent Friday/Saturday/Sunday sick, the KittyCat was equally sick Saturday/Sunday, and my mother-in-law arrived via an emergency plane ticket last night. When she got here she sent me and the Boy to bed, and we slept hard for the rest of the night. His last night with me. He held me, and we slept, and early this morning I dropped him off pierside.

At least I've got two more chances to say goodbye before it's for the rest of this half-year.

We're still not completely over this bug, but we're much better.

Rolling with the punches is one of the hardest lessons to learn in the military. When your spouse sends you an email saying, "what do you think of this new opportunity", it's important to roll with it.

I don't take sudden news well. Never have. Since I married my husband I've learned to swallow that initial ACK and look for the bright side. This is often annoying, but vital to my sanity. No one ever said that it would be easy. The exact opposite, actually. Every military spouse I've talked to agrees: it sucks. The life is full of more uncertainty and separations than most jobs. No reliable hours. Frequent separations to the farthest corners of the earth. Although it's not heavily emphasized in the recruitment ads there's a better than average chance of getting killed.

For all that, it's still a rewarding life. There is a roof over our heads and medically speaking we're fully covered. When I've truly needed my husband here, I've had him. Without having to worry that he'd lose his job because of my difficult pregnancy, emergency birth, and serious post partum depression...

In a few short days he will leave. It will not be the end of me, although my heart will break and there will be times that I weep for the loneliness. I will continue to love him and keep his house. Tend to our child. When he returns, he will find us waiting for him.

I might be overextending again.

Had several long meltdowns over the weekend and the early part of this week. Today I'm grounding myself, but just for the morning. Munchkin is doing fine today. Her breathing is the same. We rescheduled the upper GI study, and next week she's going into the PICU -pediatric intensive care unit- for a bronchoscopy under sedation. This will look at her lungs and find out why she's having so much trouble breathing with activity. The specialist suspects that she has a soft spot in her airways- this is actually quite normal for preemies who were on ventilation. It will not lead to major problems; I just want to know why my child struggles for breath when she plays.

Her fevers are coming down and slowing. She's eating again.

I'm not having nightmares anymore.

When did this world go so wrong? At what point did we all hate each other, and when did community disappear? I'm feeling a bit disillusioned today watching the morning news.
Mama goes home today. My mama, that is. I get to stay here in paradise with my KittyCat and my Boy, who is home with me and All Mine for two more days.
I woke up this morning with a bold new idea. I'm going to try to track down die-cut purple fabric hearts, and make some of the preemie double weight receiving blankets with the Preemie Purple Heart on them. It'll be great. With luck it won't cost so much, either. This service project keeps bringing new life and purpose to my days. The time passes more quickly and I'm not feeling so aimless as I make my way through the long days of Stay-At-Home-Mothering. The news from Monday, from the Pulmonologist, has given me nightmares all week. For all that we've been incredibly lucky so far, I feel as though the other shoe has finally dropped and that re-hospitalization is inevitable before her first birthday. I don't know whether or not that's what I'm even dreading right now. It's been a long trip, and mostly smooth despite the ups and downs.