what if you woke up tomorrow with only the things you thanked God for today?

i always love that thought.  it often runs through my mind while i'm trying to wrangle snuggle the baby after his bottle during nigh-night prayers.  (and yes, i totally said nigh-night prayers, and do so on a regular basis.  i also say teefers, footies, and necky - but all not nearly as often as i say tooties, because let's face it, he's my son)  but i digress...  there is much to be thankful for. 
mr cameron is doing well.  he's still *so close* to crawling, but i'm absolutely in no hurry for him to figure it out.  he's been out of sorts lately.  i'm not sure if this is due to teething or the absence of daddy or what, but he is just "off" lately.  it's incredibly frustrating when you don't know what's going on; but he is still a good boy and even though he doesnt always eat his fruit or veggies when i think he should (or at all) sometimes, he is still healthy and never goes to sleep hungry.  newsflash: mom can't control everything.  we have been able to skype charles several times and only a couple of times when the baby is awake, one of which was over the weekend.  charles usually wears his beanie but this time he was not wearing it and when cameron saw him on the screen i think it was the first time he recognized him and he went NUTS!  his little arms and legs were moving up a storm and he did that little hyper-ventilating fast breathing thing he does when he gets excited.  it was great to see.  charles enjoyed it also.  i certainly have the easy end of this situation, i can't imagine how hard it is for him to be away.  but thankfully, the technology allows me to send him a TON of pictures and keep him up to date on all of our daily activities, from stuffy noses to reaching for dish towels.  it's not exciting but it's our life and i'm certainly going to share it with him one way or another - every bit.
charles is settled in to his room in the barracks.  it's a very nice room with a little kitchen and everything.  he doesn't have his shipped goods yet but hopefully soon.  he is still inprocessing so it will be a couple weeks before he begins work; so he's bored out of his mind.  but he is getting out and enjoying the area and trying new things and i am so happy for him that he gets to have these adventures!  it seems like i'm always the one traveling and doing fun things and he's always working, so this is an amazing opportunity for him and i am so proud of him for the way he is embracing it.  he's making the most of his time away.  we have pretty much decided that he will not come home on a mid-tour leave because of the traveling cost.  so the first month is almost over and the 2nd month will go quickly, hopefully the rest follow suit for both of us.
i'm trucking along pretty well still.  my good friend claudia is here for a visit and leaves tomorrow.  it has been wonderful for both of us to have a few days together.  i havent started my exercising stuff yet (shocker, i know) but hope to this week when my steady stream of visitors dies down.  but i am feeling well (mentally) and staying strong and not having the anger issues that i was afraid of having - so i'm very happy about that.  but i know that i will need to keep it all up with preventative exercise and continuing to practice my positive thinking/redirection.  but i'm managing to keep the house clean and meals cooked and celebrating those small victories.  this last week i washed my couch cushion covers for the first time.  eeew, i know. totally gross considering how long we've had the couches, but they are those microfiber things and i was nervous about ruining them.  so i had a wild hair and decided to just give it a shot, you know, right before a holiday weekend with company coming.  thankfully, it worked very well and other than one of the cushions losing a zipper thingy (which i stashed in the drawer for the next time), it was a success.  please, come smell how my couch doesnt smell like dog butt mouth! 
so yes, it's all as good as it can be in michelle world.  yay!

day 3 - still truckin

here i sit at work.  my 2 bosses are out for a conference for the rest of the week so i must pace myself even mroe slowly than usual as the incoming workload will be diminished.  so because i suspect that at least someone out there might be curious about my mental/emotional state this week i figured i'd blog. 
i'm actually doing suprisingly well!  i say 'suprisingly' because up until a day or so before he left i really had no idea how i'd deal.  but thankfully i had a sort of 'come to Jesus' talk with myself (riveting inner-monologue, let me tell ya..) and decided that no matter what, i CAN do this.  and so it was decided, and so i am doing.  the support and check ins i have received have been overwhelmingly awesome.  i have 2 other army wife friends in different locations whose husbands are deploying also within this week.  we're all connected and it's nice to give and receive support to/from them also.  but as my therapist wisely pointed out yesterday, all of that will die down and there will be a point when i will be on my own.  and i will be fine.  actually since i feel that i'm doing so well, i find myself wanting to focus the energy i had been "saving" for myself on my poor husband who definitely does NOT have the suport system that i do.  i tried to have a number of conversations with him before he left to determine how i can best help him.  it is generally accepted that my year will go much faster than his and he is very self-less; but it is also my job to help him.  but in trying to discuss our "goals" for each other this year, he didn't really have anything.  but i know there were a couple of things he wanted to do and as the parting came closer, he seemed to have all but talked himself out of them.  so i'm going to do some research and try to figure out how i can help him out.  he will be "in transit" of sorts for about a month before he gets settled in to his final destination, so i won't be able to send him anything just yet.  but i will when i can.  if anyone wants to send him anything, i'll try to remember to it on FB when i get it.
so yea, i'm doing ok.  i always miss him and the time together is never going to be enough, ever.  but it's not to that aching painful missing you point yet.  it will come.  so many things are different this time though, better and worse.  now we have voxer, which is pretty awesome.  it's like instant text/walkie talkie through an app.  he has it on his tab and i have it on my phone, so i was able to text him from the other side of the world a couple days ago.  it's just amazing!  i wish my grandma could see that!  he is 15 hrs ahead of us but i am at least somewhat able to know what he's doing because he's checked in with a few words each day.  so i know that, at least as of yesterday afternoon, he had only slept about 4 hrs.  i suspect his extremely grumpy, tired, and out of cigarettes.  so for that reason, i am glad i'm not there.  i sent him a picture of the baby and an update on what he was up to last night.  it did make me tear up to send it because i know that will be a necessary evil about this year: watching his son grow up through a digital device.  but i'm grateful for the option and i know he is too.  it's a beautiful nightmare.
speaking of little man, he's doing well.  thankfully, he's been a good boy this week.  his top 2 teeth are working their way down.  the bottom 2 came in at the same time and the top 2 are doing the same.  baby teeth are so friggen cute!  he was super fussy over the weekend but this week he's ok.  i need to make some more baby food.  that's going really well, he loves sweet potatoes and squash.  he eats a lot of those.  i tried green beans but wanted to do fresh - the ones at dillons were brown, and 99 cents (imagine that), but i wasn't going there.  yuck city.  so i got frozen: fail.  i think i'll have to bite the bullet and buy low-sodium canned just so taht they will get mushy in the food processer and maybe he'll eat them.  i also plan to try peas.  so far he eats rice cereal or oatmeal cereal, applesauce, pears, plums, sw potatoes, squash and carrots.  i welcome other suggestions.  he'll be 8 months old next week and i have read a ton of articles and books and asked the doctor and all seem to say something different about what he should be eating now so i'm a bit confused and lost.  so experienced moms - please sound off because i could use some solid advice. 
other than feeding, he's doing great.  he can pretty much sit up on his own and still has no interest in crawling.  my mom is coming up today and will stay through next week so he'll get some serious grandma time.  so yea, overall, it's good.
and since you read this far down in my random thought process - here's some pictures of the cutest boy in the world on halloween:


our babysitter, who is amazing, makes these shirts with her boys for every holiday.  she sets the bar pretty high but we're gonna do our best to keep with it for him too.  she also has an embroidery machine so she did the lettering herself.  we painted cameron's super tickly feet, much to his displeasure, hence the smudgy ghost.  on halloween we had planned to just dress him up in his skeleton pj's and take him to the neighbor's house.  he took a nap instead, so these are the extent of his "first halloween" pictures.  works for me.

yes, his hair has some red in it, also some blond.