The Wait of the World

That day we were waiting for finally came. 

We had our last date. We had our last kiss. We whispered I Love Yous through tears. We waved goodbye as he slowly walked away.

Then he turned around. Maybe he changed his mind after all!

Oh, he just forgot his jacket. Okay then, another last hug and kiss. 

Deep breath. He's gone. 

Another day three months from now takes its place in the "waiting for" slot. 

(There is always something there.)

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One of my requirements requests for John before he left was to write a guest post. Be sure to tune in tomorrow for that! 

(<-------You can subscribe via email on the left over there or "follow" or add me to your reader.  I don't always post the links on Twitter and Facebook, so these are the ways to never miss a post.)

I don't want to blog. I want to sleep. I want to hug my husband. Heck, I'd take talking to him right now!

But, I opened the new post window, so I should write something.

I guess the thing is that I write sometimes to keep my family updated on my life. And now I'm sitting down to meals with them and playing with the kids and it's all just here and now, not something I have to think about too much.

But I don't want the days to pass in a lazy haze and writing helps tie me down, helps me remember.

Do you ever wrestle with in-the-moment living and capturing the moments so you can re-live them?

Ayla's not worried about it. Just loving having new mouths to put her fingers in!

Embracing Grandma, Pho, ice-cream and a really cute nephew!

Well, I was going to link up with someone for Embrace the Camera, since it's Thursday and I got some cute photos, but nobody seems to be hosting it.

Oh well, here are the photos anyway!

{Clockwise from the top left: Ayla with her Grandma C; Grandma C and Jaden experiencing Pho and Pad Thai for the first time (check out that Texas sized bowl! I actually saw someone eating it by themselves!); Ayla staring down my yummy ice cream (center); Ayla and her cousin Jaden; me and my bug; and finally, me and the two cutest bugs in Texas}

I think we have entered the phase of not being able to take a picture of Ayla without her fingers in her mouth. She's still pretty cute, though!

Every Day Ayla - Month Five

I want two versions of my baby. One would be that tiny, snuggly, brand new Ayla, and one would be whatever age she is currently. I love every stage so far and she just keeps getting better, but sometimes I wish I could just hold the little her just a little bit longer. (sigh)

In her fifth month of life, Ayla perfected rolling from belly to back. I've actually got it on video a few times, too! This whole rolling thing affected her sleep, as she would roll from belly to back, wake up and start playing. So, I started swaddling her again, just until she can get back to her belly. She's working very hard at it, but is happy enough to get her feet in her mouth.

And there is always something in her mouth. Her hands, her feet, her burp cloth, my hair. Whatever, really, she's not picky.

There's also usually something coming out of her mouth. I call her Ayla Drool. (Instead of Ayla Jewel, get it?)

She's losing her hair, but I find most of it in the rolls of her neck. It'll be interesting to see what it will look like when it grows back in. Maybe she'll get a little bit of my curl after all.

She's shown much more interest in what I'm eating and drinking, but I'm going to wait until she can sit up before starting her on solids. For now, she is still a great eater, although she has started to chomp when she's done. I hope I can break her of that habit before she gets teeth!

It took her a while, but she finally has mastered her neck control and her new favorite trick is to stand up and put her arms straight out. I just love it!

She does have feet. For that matter, she also has a neck!

She just loves people. When we enter a room, the first person she makes eye contact with usually gets the best smile, but she'll give out more to others after she studies them a bit first. She especially loves big kids. I need to do a whole separate post of her with the 3-5-year-old set of girls who she loves.

I'm excited about our trip to see our family next week. She has doubled in weight since the last time most of them saw her when she was 5 weeks old! And also doubled in chins and cuteness!

See for yourself:

In the first picture here, she's wearing the bonnet I wore as a baby!

(For review, here are the other Every Day posts: 1 and 2,  3 and 4)

Plange of Chans

I've started putting air quotes around the word "plan" when I think it or say it and real quotes when I write it. It's just that kind of word.


Remember the "plan" I laid out in that blog back in December about Mocha's Big Move? (If not, go ahead and click over there to read it. We'll wait.) Like today's title indicates, almost everything about our reality six months later is different.

Mocha has been happily assimilated into a new life with John's sister's family in Texas. She did have a big move, just not the one we expected.

My nephew Jaden reading Mocha a dinosaur book (her favorite kind).

John finally left this week. But he also didn't go where and when we expected. 

We've been waiting on paperwork for his trip since early March. We are still waiting, but in the meantime, he got the opportunity to go to a neighboring country and help out there for a little while. It looks like he'll be there about a month, but by now we know better than to count too much on any "plan!"


We have been so grateful for this extra time for Ayla to bond with her daddy. He was always smitten with her, but now he's gotten to know his little girl a little more and see her grow into the cheerful, chubby baby she is.

She thinks she picked a good daddy!

We do still expect for him to do his one year assignment at some point, we just don't know when.  I hesitate to say too much in advance now, because as you have seen, it doesn't hold much weight.

Speaking of weight, Ayla and I are packing our bags for a trip of our own next week. We're going to spend about three weeks with our families in Texas and Oklahoma, which is really going to make this time without John fly by. 

My "plan" is to keep blogging while I'm gone, but if it gets a little quiet(er) around here, please don't worry. We're doing well, probably just getting spoiled by grandmas and grandpas and aunts and uncles, or busy playing with cousins or friends. Or just relaxing, watching whatever my mom has on her DVR. 

Do you have any fun plans this summer?

One of those days!

Nope. Not one of those days. One of those days!

Today has been so great, I knew it was a blog post waiting to happen.

Let's begin with Ayla sleeping in. She usually wakes up between 4 and 5 for a dream feed, but today it was closer to 6. Then, usually she wakes up for the day at 8 or 8:30, but today she slept until 10! More sleep=happy mama!

Then, I had to take our car to the dealership to see what was making this weird noise. Even John noticed it and he approved of me taking it in. Normally, we hate the dealership. It doesn't matter if we have an appointment or not, the service will take forever and they always find several hundred dollars worth of additional problems.

Today, I went in without an appointment. When I explained the problem, the nice, young gentleman behind the counter suggested we go for a ride so he could hear it. Of course, just like when you go to the doctor for that mysterious pain that then vanishes when he or she checks, there was no noise as we drove it around.

In what has to be a chances-of-winning-the-lottery type of event, he said there was nothing wrong with the car and no service was needed. Let me be clear. I took my car to the dealership, got immediate help, and not only spent no money, but was also told I didn't need to spend any money for anything!

Riding that high, I took Ayla on a little shopping trip over to Old Navy to spend the Groupon I bought last week ($10 for $20). I found a few cute dresses for her and a baby shower gift on clearance, and found that I fit into a Medium (Happy dance! It has been a long time since M graced my tags! And I don't even care if Old Navy's mediums are really XL and that the item was a pair of stretchy leggings.)

It got better when I got to the register. Did you know that Old Navy gives a 10% military discount on Mondays? I do now! In order to get that discount on my non-Groupon-discounted items, she had to do an additional transaction, so I apologized to the lady behind me. She was totally nice about it and said she'd do the same thing for a bigger discount.

Can I just say that I love having a cute, smiley baby? She opens doors for conversations about things I love. The cashier and I had a great chat about breastfeeding and names and being mommies.

Then, (I know, it just keeps going!) we had to go through Old Town to get home, during which we have a 50/50 chance of stopping at every red light (every block!), but today it was green the whole way.

By now it was time to feed Ayla, so she was letting me know she was hungry. Her communication was getting more and more intense, and by the time we got to Jiffy Lube for an oil change, she had added tears to the mix. The tech who came out to the car talked and played with her while I got the stroller out and another tech came over and started playing, too. They said they were both dads and they knew how it was. They took very good care of us.

While they were working on the car, we walked over to Panera for a yummy lunch. Friendly cashier, complimented Ayla, blah blah blah. I sat down to nurse her while I ate and realized I had left the diaper bag with the nursing cover in the car. I went for it anyway, since I really didn't have a choice! Thankfully, I was able to get a booth and Ayla helped me be discreet instead of her usual "let's play and be noisy while we eat so everyone will know what we are doing!"

And then when I went back to the cashier to buy some bread to take home, I realized I had earned a free pastry with my Panera points, so I got a "free" dessert on top of everything else!

Now, my day is not over yet, but it just keeps being awesome. Even while I was typing this, my friend who lives far away in Montana called and I got to hear about her beautiful baby boy (who just happens to have the same names as my oldest brother, so I have a special affinity for him). Then, I went to get the mail and met a nice new neighbor who is a grandma far away from her grandbabies, and you know what that means!

Let me close by saying this. I'm sorry if you had a bad day or a case of "the Mondays." It's probably because all the good stuff was happening to me. I hope it will be your turn tomorrow!

How was your day?

{Embracing} Another AJ's AJ

Today is Thursday (I think), so I'm linking up with Emily over at The Anderson Crew for 

"Embrace the Camera."

So, here's the picture:

and here's the story:

This is not my daughter, though she is also an AJ and her mom is an AJ. (And she is very edibly cute!) 

We met her mom and dad about a year and a half ago at the church we used to attend. The very day we met them, we invited them to go camping with us. That night. Crazy people that they were, they showed up. And brought Alaskan salmon. That they caught.

Needless to say, we bonded real quickly! 

Though we changed churches a few months later, we kept our friendship going. We had something very close to our hearts in common. We AJs were both older than our husbands by a few years. (that's not it, though!) 

We were on the same seemingly endless journey of desiring for a baby. 

Well, you know the end of the story already, but the middle is where the prayers and tears and frustration and heartbreak-filled e-mails were. So, it was and is with much rejoicing that we celebrate this little beauty.

I want for our Ayla Jewel to always know her story, how precious and wanted she is. And part of her story is that we waited. And waited. And it wasn't easy, because waiting for good things rarely is. But we were not alone, as she will never be. So we cry with others in their seasons of "not" and we rejoice when their lights turn green.

And that is why, today, I'm embracing another AJ's AJ.

How about you? Want to join the Embracing party?

Here are the rules:

1.  take a picture with you and your kids/spouse/family member/friend/whatever.

2.  blog about that picture and include a link to our blog, or grab our button.

3.  link your blog post up on mr. linky below.

4.  visit the other embracers...give each other lots of compliments about how good we look with our greasy hair andsweatpants velour jogging suits on.  cause yah, we need a little boost when it's been days since our last shower.

5.  have fun!