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.