Project in the works

Look forward to a lot of new content soon!

And this chick is going to be my sidekick.  Super stoked about that!

Trying to Mend

The newest member or our family is now just over two weeks old.  I've contemplated for the past week on whether or not to write this down, but in the end feel like maybe it will be good to come back to and read in the future.  The internal struggle if I should allow people to see and feel the emotional roller coaster that is my current life, or keep it to myself.  Maybe I have hopes on the therapeutic value of writing it down, that it can heal the crack in my heart I've been working on mending.

I am the mother of four amazing girls.  I am the wife of an amazing man.  Yes, he is in the military and is deployed.  And yes, I spent weeks 10 through 39 of my fourth pregnancy co-parenting our other three through a computer screen.  Yes, it was hard.  No, I do not need nor want anyone to imagine being in my shoes.  We are fortunate that he was given R&R.  We are fortunate that it sort of coincided with my due date.  We are fortunate that I was able to give birth with my best friend standing next to my bedside.

But, no one warned me how hard it would be when it was all over.  I spent an entire day googling military spouse blogs and searching to the end of the internet looking for some emotional respite, to find someone who had previously written down the things I was feeling in that moment of time.  Let's just say that anything related to recovery from R&R had a different connotation to it than I was looking for.  It just made me feel more alone.

So here it is.  The private piece of us that should probably just be for us, but I've decided to write down.  The night before he left....  The night before he left we spent at the beach with the kids, trying to allow them some familial normalcy.  Once we returned to our house, I pulled out my camera and I took probably a hundred bad, low light photos of my husband snuggling on the couch with the kids and the baby laying in her chair nearby.  As he tucked the older two in bed, I curled up on the couch and cried, knowing it would be the last time they would hug him for another five months.  I briefly contained myself for the Boom's sake, because she cries when I cry.  We are sort of emotionally synced.  Him and I discussed on whether or not to let her sleep in bed with us, and I decided it was best to keep her in her bed or I'd have a sleeping buddy for the rest of the year.  I delivered her to her bed and then began sobbing again, all the way back to my bedroom with the baby in arm.  I gently placed her in her crib, crawled into bed in my sweats and hoodie next to him, and bawled like a baby.  I knew when I woke up in the morning, that spot next to me would be empty.  He kissed my forehead and held my hand until I wore myself out crying to the point of exhaustion.  When I woke up the next morning with the baby, he was gone.  He snuck out of the house and had my dad take him to the airport.  He couldn't handle breaking my heart any further than it already was.  Luckily my parents were here, so that he could sneak out.  And also so I could stay in bed and be depressed until the afternoon.

The doctors and nurses warned me that postpartum depression usually had an onset 7-10 days after birth.  All I could think was, great, just in time for him to leave again and then the latter would be just in time for my parents to return home.  Just in time for me to be alone with all four girls.  I can honestly say I don't have a touch of the baby blues, at least not yet.  I'm not depressed.  I love my little girl(s).  I just miss my husband.

I get to talk to him daily.  I get to see his face through the computer thanks to technology.  This doesn't replace his presence in our home.  I find myself feeling very stretched in the past week.  Stretched every day.  I go to bed at night wondering what challenge lay ahead the next day.  How many times will I be caught nursing Everlee, while Addison runs past me screaming she needs to potty.  How many times I will have to put the task of wiping her rear end on one of my bigger girls because I simply am one person.  How many times I will feel guilty for not being able to do it all.  But I am just one person.  One person with a tiny crack in her heart, waiting for her best friend to come home.

Big Changes

The day I got the hospital confirmation that the test was positive, I also received an acceptance letter for college. I had applied for college to give me something to stay busy while my husband is deployed for the next twelve months, never mind the fact that I just simply need to finish school. When this year is over I'm going to be exhausted.

I'm having a love hate relationship with Facebook right now. I don't feel like announcing the baby on there. I've told those who I feel like should know and those who have questioned me out of curiosity and care.

Nothing huge and noteworthy to share. I'm five weeks today. I've had small bouts of nausea, I have to pee all the time, I'm starting to get fatigued and I'm super crampy. I'm not cranky psycho crazy like I was with the girls though, so I guess that's a plus.  The biggest challenge right now is to cut back on my coffee intake.  I'm still allowing myself a cup in the morning, but other than that I'm sticking to water and an occasional Diet Sprite.  I am backing off of lifting heavy weights and certain exercises they say to not do while you are pregnant.  I'm also trying to be cautious during cardio, but I am going to the gym and will continue to do so until it hurts too much.  I honestly think I'm in much better shape and health starting out this time than I was for the girls, even if I am a few pounds heavier.  I'm exercising and my eating is on track.  Just forget the fact that I'm craving pizza and hot wings....I just forced myself to eat half a bag of baby carrots.  Well, not to eat half a bag, but I'm in that place where I'm either not hungry at all or ravenous.

I know everyone is crossing their fingers for a boy, and that all the same people are 98% sure it's a girl.  I'm in the same frame of mind.  I have a feeling, strange for being so newly pregnant, but I do have a gut feeling.  I'm not telling though!

I'm only happy when it rains

It appears the outer bands of Isaac are finally hitting us...sort of. It's windy one minute, pouring one minute, and the next minute it's calm with sunshine. I'm not sure how bad things are going to get here, but at the moment I'm not even sure we are going to get rain that amounts to anything.

The girls and I drove around yesterday evening, and sixty six houses, just in our neighborhood, have either boarded up their windows or put their hurricane shutters out. Most everyone prepared for the worst all the way up to the end. Then there was another house that is redoing their roof that did not bother to move any of it. All of it still sitting on top of their house loosely.

The girls' school called and cancelled school for tomorrow, too. I need to start using my mommy imagination to keep them busy. I can't handle anymore Hannah Montana reruns on Netflix.

I guess I don't have much of an update. I just wanted to give one for those of you out of town worried about us. Richard is home from work, the kids are home from school, we still have power, and are bored to tears. A lot of businesses shut down today just in case. I did receive texts that all of Pensacola McDonald's are open and Hopjack's is open downtown if anyone wants to get out to eat or have a beer.

Predictions are unpredictable

We started out the evening last night with a phone call from the superindendent closing school for Monday and Tuesday. They will make a call after that to let us know further instruction depending on the storms path and how bad we are affected by it. They opened emergency shelters this morning at 9 AM, and they use a lot of our schools for those shelters. I was sort of thankful at that period of time, because I loathe Sunday nights. The racing to get dinner ready, baths and prepare for a week of school is exhausting.

A few hours later Escambia county called for an evacuation of zones A B and C. I looked up our address, and we of course are in zone C. Alright, sooooo what's that supposed to mean? Disco has to stay here to work, but we need to leave our house??? I've had a handful of people, some close friends and some acquaintances, offer up their houses to us in case of evacuation. I can't say how much I appreciate you all! Being new to all this, and living in a house full of media skeptics, we decided to sit put and see what the heck all this means. I of course once again went over my flood anxiety with Disco, and he reassured me that if it headed this way we would just stack all of our belongings Harry Potter's room of requirement style. We went to sleep knowing nothing, me being a little anxious, but also knowing that what we would hear in the morning would matter more than what they had to say at that time.

Gas stations were already announcing shortages, but that they had more tankers on the way. Disco spent the day at work yesterday securing property and anything that could be considered a projectile. Most everything outside the house with exception of the plants we already placed inside storage. We have food, water, a generator, and the kids are home for a few days. And I must add having all this "crap" nonperishable food that I normally wouldn't buy in the house is driving me bananas. I don't buy it because I want to eat it. All of it. All the time. Proof that food can be an addiction if you eat the wrong things.

Anywho, we wake up this morning to them saying that the storm is heading straight towards New Orleans. We are all but out of the red zone right now at this moment. There are a LOT of pissed off people in this area right now. Those people I said were in mission mode and panicking yesterday, are now bitching that they spent their money meant for bills on supplies and gas because the media freaked them out. Others are saying that with past history, they still have no clue where this storm is going and how strong it will be when it hits landfall. Ivan turned when they didn't expect it to. Some storms have bounced back and forth off the coast before they actually make landfall. Again, this is all hearsay I've read on this here internets. The county has now stated that the evacuations still stand, but they are not mandatory, just a suggestion at this point. I have no personal experience with hurricanes, but I'm beginning to chalk it up to just like everything else, things get blown way out of proportion. In the end this is mother nature. Tornado's can't be predicted, and their paths can't be pinpointed. Tsunami's have been predicted, only to amount to nothing. And do I even need to talk about the predictability of earthquakes? So why are people so upset that there is speculation of where the storm is going to go, only to have it not come to fruition?

Disco said that this amounts to The Weather Channel's Superbowl. They are selling ad space like no other during this storm. And it's a little true. This morning they cut Jim Cantore off as soon as he came on screen for a Hotels.com commercial. You know, just in case you need to evacuate, that's the place you need to make your hotel reservations through. The moment we found out the possibility of the storm making landfall here, they were airing natural disaster clean up company commercials. Here, write this number down just in case you need it in a week.

On a random side note, I've been thinking that I would like to get a print of the satellite image of Isaac to frame and hang in the house. Is that weird?