another week gone

Our days have been pretty much the same this last week. It was our first full week of appointments since his hospitalization because of Veterans Day and Thanksgiving. It's like going back to school after Thanksgiving only to have to study for finals, and then have a month off for Christmas. Speaking of which, we're hoping to get his convalescent leave for the middle of December through the middle of January. After that, the baby should be here, and he'll get ten days of paternity leave. His therapists will likely clear him to do PT and OT on his own, so we won't have to go to appointments while on leave. We will have to work a little harder to stay motivated to work out, though :)

I think, for the most part, we have everything we need for baby! Jason and I went to Babies R Us the other day, and got a lot of the remaining things from our registry. I could've been in there for hours. He faded quickly, though. I tried to only get the basic things, but we'll see how much of the stuff I have, I actually use. This baby already has a dresser full of clothes which I tried to organize by size. I can't wait to get back to Colorado so he'll have his own space. Right now we have the pack n play with little changing thing on top in our room, a cradle my mom found in the living room, and all his clothes and changing table pad in the second bedroom. He's kind of all spread out, but oh well. I know I'll be too anal to not have him in our room in the beginning, especially with breastfeeding. Jason has been fighting me on having multiple changing areas...he just doesn't understand the point. I tried to explain it, but he still doesn't see my logic. He thinks he can just change him in our bed every time. ha. Until he pees all over the sheets at 0200. I'm sure how we have it set up now will change once he comes. That's how it always works. I'm not going to lie, having the pack n play across the room even freaks me out a little. I won't be able to see him breathing from all the way in the bed! Yes, I'm that nervous. Now I just feel like a sitting duck, wondering when I will go in to labor. We're going to have to bring the car seat and hospital bag home with us on leave just to have. And I will probably have to come back up here once a week for a check up which is a bummer, but I will survive it. I'm hoping he'll hold out until after Christmas. Jason seems to think he's going to come sooner.

We set a goal date for returning to Colorado of 31 March. That's just the date we've set for ourselves, of course he'll have to clear this base and all the doctors first. We need to get a bunch more legs, he has to have a bone density scan to clear him for running, he has to go to the gait lab to be sure he's walking okay, he needs to go to the wheelchair clinic to get a custom wheelchair that will probably take 6-8 weeks before it comes. That took some convincing; he didn't want to get one at all. I'm just afraid we will need it down the road in case anything happens and he can't use the crutches. Basically, I am trying to drain this place of all it has to offer before we leave and it becomes that much more of a hassle.

I almost feel bad though, for being this far in his recovery that we are able to think about returning home and getting on with our lives. There are people who have been here for 2 years. I don't know how they do it. A lot of these guys are doing their med board process here, though, and that can take at least a year in itself. We are waiting until we get back to Colorado to start the med board. That way we can be in our own home, and hopefully I can get a part time job eventually. Otherwise, I'd have to go back to Colorado alone (and with the baby), while he stayed here in the single soldier barracks and did his med board. A lot of guys are med boarding out of the Army though, so it might be a little different for their families too. He wants to stay in, and stay at Fort Carson for a few more years, so that's why we're trying so hard to go back. I just hope that once we are back, we will be happy. In life, there are always those times when you say "I just want to do.....whatever it is....and then I will be happy." But then that thing comes and goes, and you think of something else that would make you so happy. Right now, Colorado is our 'thing'.

This weekend we're going to the White House again, for a tour to see the Christmas decorations, nothing official unfortunately. Next week we do get an official tour of the Pentagon though, so that will be fun. We have a Christmas party to go to tomorrow night, and then another labor/delivery/breastfeeding/baby class all day Sunday.

It feels like I'm running out of things to write about. Hopefully the holidays will prove to be a little more eventful. Although, I can say, sometimes I don't mind the fact that things aren't too eventful around here these days!