Seven Years Ago

Just thinking.  Seven years ago right about this time, Matt left for his deployment.  I've already forgotten so much, but a few memories are etched in my mind.  I want to write it down so we don't forget it all.

I remember the months leading up to him leaving.  We had our first Christmas without extended family.  I was very pregnant with Gray and we were a very long day of travel away from anyone and we were just wanting to be together while we could.  We ended up spending part of Christmas Day with a fellow soldier and his wife and little son.

Time marched on and I'm sure there were moments of sadness.  I recorded memories--videos of Matt reading to Joshua so we could play them when he was gone; a book of pictures of the two of them so I could remind Joshua of their closeness.  We prepared for a move and a baby coming.  Lots of stuff to do kept our minds off the goodbye...sometimes.

Matt was gone a lot those last months.  Lots of training in the field.  I remember bonding with the other wives who all had toddlers like mine.  It made things less dramatic and sad.  Everyone was going through the same thing so how could I wallow in my own self-pity?

But overall, I knew Gray would come before Matt would go, so I focused there and we were excited for his arrival.  He was getting to be a few days late and Matt's date to leave was quickly approaching.  I got an induction date just in case, so Matt wouldn't miss the birth.  I remember the last couple of days before I went into labor.  We were running around doing last-minute things like getting a cell phone (can't remember why) and filling out paperwork.  We passed the time playing with Joshua and dressing him up.  We celebrated Matt's birthday. I remember eating a big meal at a Mexican restaurant with Matt and little Joshua.

Then one night while we were watching a movie, I began to feel contractions.  I remember something about the timing and intensity was not like they say in the books so I was calling the nurse to see what to do.  We finally figured this was "it" so once Matt finished his movie (yes, really) and woke Joshua to take him to a friend, we loaded up and went to the hospital.

I got a very thorough (compared to Joshua's birth) epidural and happily pushed out big whopper Gray in just a couple of minutes.  It was a very happy birth experience.  But very short-lived happiness.

In what seems like no time, the reality of Matt's deployment hit me.  Gray was here, so that meant there was no big event between now and him leaving.  I just kept thinking, "He's leaving" and could not stop the tears.  I was such a wreck in the hospital.  I remember not sleeping but just trying so hard not to cry.  I remember Matt's platoon parading in one by one to see Gray and give me a gift.  Sweet, though I was try to help Gray learn to eat, which is always stressful, and Matt was home with Joshua.  I remember an Asian lady helping me get ready to leave the hospital and I was just sobbing and she was hugging me.

We had about 2 weeks (I think he left on the 12th) before Matt had to go.  We spent that time taking lots of pictures of our new family of 4.  Pictures of Matt and baby Gray, who he wouldn't see for more than 4 months, though at the time we thought it would be much longer.

  We moved more of our stuff out and saw friends.

 We walked to our favorite lookout point of the sound outside our neighborhood.

And then just like that, it was our last night together.  I remember tons of tears and trying to get a little sleep out in the living room where I had to feed Gray often.  I remember him leaving in the early morning hours and it still makes me cry.  Oh I hate goodbyes.

The next afternoon, I remember my sweet Mama coming and though I'd still often burst into tears, I felt so much better with her there.  The big goodbye was behind us and I felt like it would be okay...if I could just get some sleep!!  

I remember Daddy coming and all of us going on walks to little parks in Dupont and showing him my baby boys and how cute and fun they were.  We even went to the zoo and a drive-through animal park.

 

I remember Jeannie coming to stay that last week with me and us daring to take a trip to Seattle to explore a museum.

 I remember Stacy and Barnette and Cindy coming to bring us (and the car) home.  I remember Cindy meeting Gray for the first time and standing by the window in our apartment just rocking him.

I remember Barnette changing Joshua's dirty diaper in the airport for me:) and I remember getting home to Fort Mill--my old, but new home-- and Joshua crying because it was new and me crying because I was so tired and overwhelmed and Mama being there and understanding.

Hard to believe it's been 7 years.  Looking back it doesn't seem like it was so hard--there are so many families that have been through tons of deployments, many ending tragically--yet it still brings up a lot of emotions.  I'm thankful to all of our family that supported us so well, as you always do.  I'm thankful to God for holding me up and protecting Matt and bringing our family back together.

 I always remember and like to share that when we learned Matt's deployment would be 15 months I said how awful that was because I couldn't tell Joshua, "He'll be back for your birthday" or any other holiday because he would miss every one for a whole year and more.  I would never have asked for Matt to be injured, but he made it home right before our anniversary and between his recovery and his R & R time, he was also there for all 4 of our birthdays.

I love to see how God works things out better than we could have asked or imagined.  He has been so faithful to us and I hope and pray we will remember and trust him no matter what tough times we may face.

You May Overhear...

At our house these days, if you stop by, you might hear (or see) any of the following:

~ Julia singing Frozen songs with lots of vibrato and/or acting out scenes from the movie in her best high-pitched princess voice.  She saw the movie for the 2nd time yesterday and spent an entire hour pretending to be Elsa. ("Anna, I'm just trying to protect you!!", "Bad guy, I am frozening you!", "Oh, the coronation!")  Drama queen!

~ Me cooking dinner and kids making encouraging comments like, "Somebody stinks!" (tonight as I cooked chicken curry) or "I wanted cereal!" or "I hate that!"

~ Boys being boys. (Gray:  I just farted 5 times in a row.  Joshua:  I just farted twice--no thrice.)

~ Matt STUDYING!!!  Like crazy.  Working very hard down in his "cave"--the basement.

~ Parental discussions of Gray's school shenanigans.  ("Meant to tell you Gray tried to flush his dirty underwear down the toilet at school."  "By the way, Gray wore his pull up all day at school by accident."  "Gray wore peed on pants for picture day." "Gray's teacher said he was humping a chair today, but other than that he had a great day." etc. etc. etc.)

**Side note, any family that would like to see Gray's short class play may come on Tuesday the 8th at 2:30.  He is the gray wolf in "The 3 Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig."

~ Lots of apologies!  We are desperately working on improving the way we talk to each other.  (Well, truthfully I'm probably the only desperate one, but at least the others are halfway on board!)

~ Julia asking someone to play with her.  She is awesome as a shopping partner, fellow gardener/cook/cleaner, but when there is any down time, she'll throw in about 50 "Mommy, you need to play baby with me!"s.

~ Reading, reading, and more reading.  I am reading Forgotten God by Francis Chan and am feeling a book itch coming on.  Just placed 3 or 4 books about adoption on hold at the library, as I'm looking for good resources to tell folks about at our next ACT meeting.  The boys are always sticking their nose in a book...especially when they don't want to do any other homework or go to bed.  Joshua's into two polar opposites-- Lego Hero Factory and Little Lord Fauntleroy (or however you say that), plus Calvin and Hobbes comic books.  Gray is into whatever I get from the library.  Julia is also just barely learning to sound out words.  When her little friends couldn't come for preschool the last 2 weeks, I have read just with her and she's doing great.  But she mostly loves to read us very elaborate stories from her own imagination.  And of course Matt's reading his school books.

~ Gray asking us which car we want to be in the big race.  He does this multiple times a day.  Joshua has always liked cars too, but Gray takes it to a whole other level.

~ Julia practicing her pliés.  Sooo cute.

~ Sports!  Football, basketball, kickball, baseball, soccer, volleyball, hockey...we are one sporty family (with one un-sporty Mama...I'm sure you'd get a kick out of watching Gray legitimately beat me in multiple sports.  I know Matt probably does, though he keeps his comments to himself...most of the time.)

And that describes us pretty well lately!

Happy Birthday to Gray!

I think Gray enjoyed his birthday weekend.  It was nice to have his birthday on a Saturday so there was no school to navigate around.  He started his day going to Bojangles with Matt and GrandGene.  He had opened gifts from the visiting grands the night before and enjoyed watching Frozen for the first time and playing with his new cars and game.  He also got some gifts from us--another game, a book, and sports equipment.  He and Joshua tried hockey in the basement but the first round ended in shouting and tears.  It was kind of a volatile day for the boys.  Something about dealing with all those presents doesn't bring out the best in them. One wanting to be the receiver instead of the observer and one wanting to hoard and not share.  Stuff can be so divisive!

The party was fun.  Gray's two classmates were running late--so much so that I worried they weren't coming-- but made it just in time for cake.  Gray liked the obstacle course okay, loved opening presents, said dodge ball was his favorite, and enjoyed some quieter moments playing cars in the corner while everyone else raced.  He definitely likes having alone time mixed in with the excitement of crowds.

We played outside and had dinner with all the grands after the party and everyone went to bed full and tired and mostly happy.  I was definitely glad that we kept things low key, despite Gray's pressure on me to do a Chuck E Cheese party or something like that.  I read an article today about how much we entertain our kids and cultivate this cycle of them wanting to be entertained more and more, not satisfied to make their own fun.  I think my kids do play and imagine a lot on their own, but there is absolutely this side of them that comes out sometimes (like on birthdays!) where you can just hear them (sometimes literally) saying, "This isn't good enough/fun enough!  I need more more more/better better better."  Yuck.

But I did love that I was able to pull off his party with little planning, little fuss, little time, little money this year.  It was his first friend party and we just went to the gym that morning and set up an obstacle course with stuff there and blew up a few big balloons.  The night before I threw together a simple car cake and the day of I bought some ice cream and lemonade.  And really, that was about all there was to it.  I get very easily overwhelmed, but this year, I didn't really stress about it or even plan very much ahead and it was fine.  I did have to talk myself down a few times the day before and just say it's going to be fine, but I think I'm making progress!

So our big guy is 7 now and he's just as kooky as ever.  Think he's 0 for 2 on underwear this week but 2 for 2 on laughing a lot, playing hard, and doing his own unique thing.  Happy Birthday, Gray!

Pa the human target

 Cake time

 Took about 5 tries to get them out

 Boy was Joshua into mastering the obstacle course, as you can imagine.

 The dancing queen hung with the grandmothers most of the time.

 Off to the races!

 Waiting for relays a la Matt...everyone but the birthday boy.

Hockey outfit from Nanny and Pa, repeatedly requested and highly anticipated

Grayisms

Predictable post, I know, considering we're gearing up to celebrate another birthday in our house, but predictable child?  Not hardly.  Here are a few tidbits about our almost 7 year old.

1. Have to get this one out of the way right off--Gray is different and he likes being different!

2. I have learned so much about Gray this year and my number one new vocabulary word to describe him would be "divergent thinker".  (see Grayism #1)

3. Words Gray's teacher has used to describe him:  eccentric, cool kid, genius, challenging, happy-go-lucky, overly playful, and the one that gets him out of trouble with her:  charming:) School has been tough this year (because he's not particularly fond of working hard or doing things other peoples' way), but his teacher has been great and he's done a lot of maturing over the last month or so.

4. He loves asking people to guess things.  We usually get 3 guesses and even if we say something ridiculous on the first guess, he seriously says, "Nope.  Two more guesses."

5. Even if he is just a few feet away from the bathroom, but in the kitchen, he will go the long way through the kitchen, back hall, and living room to get there.

6. He is a focused child.  Now what he focuses on may not be the thing at hand or what you're wanting him to attend to, but he focuses nonetheless.

7. He sees lots of patterns and connections in things.  Though he could finish his homework in 10 minutes, he will often take an hour because he's counting up how many times a particular letter occurred or making each line of his homework be a team he made up or doing some other imaginative daydreaming.

8. He loves to read.  Some of his favorites are Dr Seuss, Chris van Allsburg, and books with the following themes:  dragons, knights, superheroes, monsters, or anything gross, scary, or stinky.

9. He hates to write.  BUT in the last 2 weeks he has suddenly learned how to write neatly and that gives him a little more confidence to not take 30 minutes to write one sentence:)  I think he just decided that it was valuable to try to have good handwriting and there was no getting neatness out of him until he came to that conclusion on his own.

10. That brings me to the next point...He is very determined to do things his way.  Very.

11. He has lots of interesting ideas.  For example?  This week he decided that he'd trying sleeping in his laundry basket, which he added blankets to and put on his bed.  He barely fit, but thought it would make a good night's sleep anyway.  Just the other day, we played a form a basketball in which after every made basket, he threw the ball up in the air as high as he could for a "jump ball."

12. This year he has improved sooo much in his basketball skills.  He totally surprised me with the time he put in to practicing and he went from slapping the ball a couple of times and then losing control of it to being able to run while dribbling fairly easily.  I think it is some kind of therapy for him to go out and shoot baskets on his own.

13. He will argue with a brick wall, usually accompanied by sassy head bobbing.

14. He still NEVER wears underwear unless I make him.  Never.

15. He has interesting forms of communication.  He often tries to tell me something by just pointing.  Once we were upstairs and strangely enough, I was not understanding his "sign language".  Rather than talk, he took me all the way downstairs so he could write out what he wanted me to do.  Gray's favorite way of having a conversation is to walk in circles while he gets out all his thoughts.

16.  He is a free bird.  He is happiest on days he can stay home and do whatever he wants without any requirements or demands on his time.

17.  He's not afraid to try new things.  He's our only child that will venture to do things like ride a pony or try a little kiddie ride.

18. He's learning a lot about friendship.  He often plays alone on the playground because he likes it that way, but also enjoys group games of football or soccer.  Recently we found out that the boy he used to say was his best friend wasn't treating him well and Gray was able to discern that this kid was not really his friend and made some new friends instead.  Great life lessons!

19. He still likes to dress up, but his favorite accessory is by far the weapon.  Any kind will do, though sharp things are always popular.

20. He cares for those that are hurting.  He is very quick to pray for the little Compassion child, Alex, that he picked out in December.

21. And finally, Gray loves to laugh, snuggle, and have a good time.  His teacher says he clearly prefers to view school days as one long recess:)  We sure do love this sweet boy!!

Happy Birthday, Gray!!