One for Me

There's a small box in the bottom left corner of my screen with my mom jabbering away as I write this. She's checking up on Dad and making sure I ate lunch today. I love her. But I can't say that I love that I showed her how to Skype. It's taking over our lives. Nevertheless, I certainly hope I can have this relationship with Cooper when he gets older. I had a realization today; I'm trying to keep my baby a baby forever. I picked him up from daycare, and a couple babies were sitting at the table eating lunch. A grown up lunch, with spoons and everything. I'm still making his baby food, and feeding him, and crying on the inside every time he sits up on his knees inspecting a toy. So, I need to stop the baby food making factory, and start introducing more finger foods. We've done Cheerios and bananas. Maybe pasta?

Either way, I'm struggling. Big time. Just a month ago, he wasn't crawling, sitting, climbing, or eating by himself. Now he's doing all of those, and learning new things every. single. day. It's seriously killing me. I love watching him learn new things and figure it all out. I hate seeing him grow up. All I picture is him driving away in my Jeep, which will be the old ugly hand-me-down by then, off to college or wherever he decides he needs to go to be a grown up all by himself. It all flashes before my eyes when he sits up on his little knees and picks each toy out of his box one by one. Today it's toys and cheerios, tomorrow it's college and girls.

Lately I've really been feeling the emotions that come with a fast growing son, and a husband who is still not 100%. It's draining. How do you motivate someone who is so far down on themselves, without being a nagging wife? How do you push someone to better themselves without pushing them away? How do you ask someone to help you without making them feel like they're worthless for not helping? (that's a little extreme, I don't really do that, but it's how I feel sometimes) I've been praying for compassion and patience while he figures this all out on his own. I'm not feeling the answers to those prayers anywhere right now. I'm trying to be encouraging and positive about his choices. I'm just tired. The hardest part of this 11 month old life changing event is only just beginning! When we were sitting in the hospital a year ago, and we never thought we'd see this day, I never imagined the emotional obstacles we'd have to overcome too. I'd much rather have it all done and dealt with than this long, drawn out process. I'm sure it happens this way for a reason. Humans probably cannot undertake all that stress at once, and so here we sit 11 months later, still trying to figure out our emotions about it all.

I've been calling to make a counseling appointment, if for nothing else, just to vent without offending my husband. But they're always busy, or never get back to me. It's just one of those things that just gets put on the back burner as we try to have a normal life at the same time.

Maybe I'm picking up a lot of his emotional stress for him. He just shuts down, as most men do. I choose to stress for him, about deciding on a new job in the Army, about which classes to take in school, about which school to go to, when to start, how to start, life after the Army, etc. If I don't, he won't either. And then we'll just be back at square one.

All this stressing will make me go gray way sooner than I anticipated. I have been going to the gym much more, and that helps. Just leave it to me to find stress in every situation; I will. A trait I hope to NOT pass on to Cooper.

Long, somber entry ends now.