One Month Down, Three to Go

John's been gone a month now! In some ways it has gone fast, but mostly it seems like he's been gone for many more months that just one! Being in Texas is certainly helping the time pass. I look forward to Mom and Dad coming home from work. Its like a party every night! Dad cooks up awesome dinners and pours us wine and everyone oohs and aahs over the darling Rebecca. They will babysit while I run out to do little errands.

Doing those quick errands such as going to the post office, running into the grocery store for a few things and getting photos developed are such a pain with a baby! Lugging that damn infant carrier around with a 12 pound baby in it is a killer on the back.

Its weird though, because I don't like leaving Becca for more than an hour. Even that seems really wrong to me. I feel a physical pulling sensation in my chest when I leave the house without her. I think its an evolutionary biproduct that keeps mothers from abandoning their young or something! When I'm gone more than two hours I'm almost panicking. And it is totally irrational and illogical! She's left with people who love her and who have a large supply of frozen breast milk with which to feed her. I have a cell phone. They would call if something was wrong. I KNOW she's fine. But I still feel all antsy when I'm not with her. God help us. I hope I'm not turning into some kind of freak mom who lives every second through her kids and makes sure they are permanently attached to her!

Back to the original point: John's been gone a month. He's doing fine over there. He is wishing he was able to fly every day instead of sitting around doing other types of jobs a few days a week. He has received a few video clips of Becca (Thanks to Jo Anne) that show her smiling and cooing much more than she was doing when he left. He emails me every day, which totally saves my sanity. He calls about once a week or so.

But the calls can be so irritating. First of all, I can never seem to get to my damn cell phone in time. When I do, we have such a lag in the service that we end up talking over each other all the time. Then both going silent thinking the other one is about to talk, then both talking at the same time again. Also, he only gets about 15 minutes to talk, so it makes it feel so strained because I don't want to waste the 15 minutes talking about stupid stuff. And I always forget what I have been meaning to tell/ask him. Its really annoying!

I've been videotaping Becca a lot and I'm going to have the tape made into a DVD that I'll send over to him. I would email it, but my parents' computer doesn't have a high speed USB port, so its all jacked up when I feed the video in. I spent about 8 valuable hours (when I should have been napping) figuring out that problem!

What really gets me with this deployment business is thinking of my friends who deploy for a YEAR. A YEAR, people! And then they come home for a year and then go again. FOR A YEAR. I absolutely do not see how we can keep this up. Our military has to be stretched too thin. It isn't good for people to have to deploy for so long and so often. It breaks my heart to think of all those fathers (and mothers) who are missing so much of their childrens' lives. Its awful. But that's another story. I'll leave you with another cute baby pic (by Mike Dickinson) to take our minds off it! Where's that wine?