The Babes Have a Birthday

Well, here it is again, my babies' birthday. Ok, so they're not babies, they are 14 today, 14!! 14 years ago I was enormously pregnant, feeling pretty miserable and wondering how I was going to handle two babies, a very busy 2 year old and two kids in school. I told Kelly that he should just take me straight from the hospital to the mental hospital and leave me there! Forward to now, those babies who weighed 7 lb 3 oz and 7 lb are beautiful, tall, 8th grade girls who spend their time reading Twilight, lots of time on the computer watching videos with the music blaring, facebooking with their friends and hours in the bathroom straightening their hair and putting on makeup. They have always been best buddies. As babies they would hold hands through the bars of their cribs and they pushed their toddler beds together to be close to each other. Chloey, who is older by three minutes and has always been a little more independent than Shelby and has tried to move out of the room they share twice. So far she has returned twice. They can be mean and fight, but they always make up quickly. It's strange for someone who is a singleton to imagine life as an identical twin. We just assume that when someone sees us that they know who we are but for them normal is having people ask which one they are. How odd to look at a face that looks like your own. Having two babies was not something I would have wished for the 4th time around, but I thank God for allowing me the privilege of being their mother! Happy Birthday Chloey and Shelby, I'm proud of the young women you are becoming!!

Counting the Days

My husband is leaving me! Don't worry, we're not getting divorced or anything, he is being deployed, AGAIN! I knew in my mind that it was coming but now it is down to weeks, days, until he leaves. I sort of shut off that part of my brain that realizes how close it is but occasionally it surfaces. I feel desperate to spend as much time as possible with him and enjoy every minute. I know that when he leaves I will get into a new routine and most days I will function normally. But, every once in while, at random times, it hits me. Usually when I am sitting alone at church or driving somewhere (he always drives when we are together), but the worst is when I am somewhere and see a couple doing something ordinary like shopping, I want to scream, "Do you know how lucky you are to have him here!". I know that people don't really think about it, and I probably don't think about it enough when he's here and things are "normal". When he was deployed the first time I had a magnet on the back of my Suburban that said "Half my Heart is in Afghanistan". I am going to get one that says "Iraq" this time. I don't display it so that people will feel sorry for me or my kids, but so that maybe people will see it and think about all of us out there who are separated and going through our days waiting for them to come home, praying that nothing happens to them, anticipating the day when life will go back to "normal".

Wow, what a total downer that was!