Adjusting

I know it's been a while since my last update. My hubby was home for a few short weeks and then had to head back out again. One thing that's different about his squadron is how frequently they're in and out. I've heard lots of military wives talk about deployments and how one of the hardest times was actually after their husbands came home because they had to adjust to having them around again. I never really understood this until after the baby came. Before her, my days were pretty easy. Nothing was ever planned or scheduled so nothing really changed once he came back. And while we don't necessarily have the strict routines that some people do, things are a little more consistent, especially around bedtime. After coming back out here in August, it took she and I a while to get used to doing things ourselves without having my family around to help. But we gradually got the hang of our new life and got into our own sort of routine. When he came home in September, we were really excited to see him, but for the first time, I learned what people meant about having to adjust. That's not to say that things were bad by any means, but they really were just different. I loved having him around though, not only to help out a bit, but also just for the adult company. It's nice having someone to talk to at night after she's gone to sleep. But since his visit home was such an unexpected surprise, it also meant that he wasn't able to settle in like he normally would have. We kept waiting to hear when his ship would be ready to head out again, knowing that he could be leaving any time. He ended up being home for three weeks, just long enough for us to really get used to having him home, before he had to leave and we had to get used to being alone once more.

While it's nice that his deployments tend to be shorter than typical Navy ones, it is far more unpredictable. Rather than being attached to one ship, his squadron splits up into several different detachments. There's no telling when he's going to be switched over to a new detachment that's heading out next week or when their ship is going to decide to leave a month earlier than expected. That makes it hard to plan for something next week, much less a few months ahead. At times I think that even though longer deployments would definitely suck, it would be nice to have a bit more reliability. It would be nice to know that once he got home, he'd actually be there for a while, instead of constantly expecting that phone call that says, "Honey, I got some news".

"Hey mom, I pulled down these clothes for you so you can fold them again."

Well that was basically my long-winded way of saying we've been busy. And in that time, she has grown so much I can't believe it. At 7 months old, she's sitting up on her own, eating jars of baby food, playing with her favorite toys, and trying to get into absolutely everything! She's not quite crawling yet, but she's almost there. For a couple of weeks now, she's been able to get up onto her hands and knees and rock back and forth. She can actually sort of scoot backwards that way, but not forwards yet. Even without crawling, she's able to cover some pretty amazing distances on her own. That means I'm really having to watch her really closely now and do my best to keep her out of stuff she shouldn't be in.  

She loves backing herself up under there.

Just the other day I set up a sort of "pillow fort" in the living room for her to play in. I used all the pillows and couch cushions to section off an area for her so that she could roll around and I could run into the kitchen to make myself some lunch. She can't crawl over anything yet, so I made sure there was no way for her to get out of it and saw that she had plenty of toys to play with. I had only been gone a minute or two when I noticed that it had gotten really quiet. I went back into the living room to check on things and found her digging in Bosley's food bowl. His puppy bites were all over the floor and she had a handful of them. Bosley was frantically trying to eat them all before she could and she was just sitting there smiling and looking quite pleased with herself. I scooped her up and emptied her hands out. I checked her mouth but didn't find any. I smelled her breath as best I could but didn't smell anything weird, so I don't think she actually ate any. She just had a great time throwing them on the floor for Bosley to eat. I know it's only a matter of time before she does end up eating them, but I'm trying to keep her from it as long as I can.

This happens a hundred times a day!

And Bosley. Bosley has been more wonderful with her than I could have ever hoped for. We were pretty nervous before she got here because he's not exactly a fan of children. To be honest, they terrify him and I didn't know what he was going to think of her. But Bosley just loves her. And she absolutely adores him. He wants her to play with him so badly and doesn't understand that she can't quite do it just yet. He'll bring her a toy and do his little playful growl while wagging his tail which just means, "Come chase me!" Sometimes she'll actually grab for the toy which he takes to mean, "game on" so he snatches it away and takes off running. And she just sits there and smiles and laughs. The more he growls, the funnier she thinks it is. All day long, he runs up to her to grab a quick kiss before running off to play again. He sits beside us while I'm feeding her baby veggies and waits until we're done so he can lick the remainder of it off her face! (Hey, at least it's clean now!) He doesn't particularly like to share his toys, but he's never once been mean about it. If he notices she's playing with something of his, he'll gently go over and take it the second she lets go. She's gotten a lot more "grabby" lately and has started trying to reach out for him. A couple of times she's actually gotten a big handful of his hair and pulled before I could stop her. Both times, he's just yelped and then looked up at me like, "Mom, make her stop!" until I can pry her hands away from him. At night when I go check on her before I go to bed, he follows me into her room and has me pick him up so that he can see for himself that she's okay. I know that once she is old enough to sleep in a regular bed, he's going to ditch me and sleep with her at night. I'll definitely miss my little snuggle buddy, but it truly warms my heart to see the two of them together so I think I'll get used to it.