7 Months – Time Served (BD’s Halloween Post)

Grab This Button

BD always closes out Down Syndrome Awareness Month around here. I look forward to reading what he has to say. And not just because he makes me sound way more awesome than I really am. He's a great father. Truly.

Enjoy. And thank you for sticking around and hopefully learning something new this October.

=====

Since March our lives have been crazy at best.  Somebody was pregnant and approaching the due date, which sent us through a very spread out range of emotions, experiences, dos and don’ts based on our experience with pregnancy and the birth of Playette. 

I was basically set to travel in and out of the area multiple times at random in support of  “the greater good”, and Playette was just trying to hang out with her sleepy momma and always on the road daddy.

Then things got interesting. In April,  Baby took his sweet time joining us and our time table was suddenly compressed.  We realized we wouldn’t be living in the area much longer and needed to start looking seriously at where we were going to live and put Playette in Kindergarten.  Here comes the stress in massive droves!

I was a ghost in the house for all of May, that’s right, a newborn, a demanding energy bunny almost 5 year old alone in the house with momma for pretty much the entire month.  We did have a few folks come help out here and there, but it was still a tough time.  At least I was reachable via phone/email 24/7.  In June I was gone for 2 weeks and I wasn’t available.  I was working some long days and the momma was at home working LONG days and LONG nights.

July was easy, I was home and had some time off, oh wait, we had to pack up the non-sleeping newborn and the now 5 year old (I missed her birthday while I was away) and head out of town to look for a place to live, go to a conference (great conference)  and finalize a place to live…awesome, as in ants in the hotel beds, long car rides and little success in finding choices in a place to live.  We finally settled on a place, queue the movers, couldn’t let that slide into August.

So we (they) moved in August and after a weekend of unpacking (we are almost done now) I made the first of many commutes back to the city of my job, because my old job doesn’t end until November (yet another awesome stressful hookup).  So I became a fulltime weekend dad, arriving home Friday evenings and departing early Monday mornings in order to support “the greater good” and be with the family as much as possible.

September seemed to fly by as we got into a routine, and then October smacked us in the face.  I had to be gone – gone til the end of the month.  That was rough.  We were all very tired, my job was wearing me thin, Playette was definitely showing out at home and in school, momma was drained, and the now 6 month old still refused to sleep through the night.

None of us were doing well be it on the home front or out on the high seas, but we pushed through it and last Friday, after some prodding and negotiating at work, I was able to walk through the door into the house I really haven't lived in yet and finally be home for good. 

It was the best feeling ever, to know I was home that we didn’t have any ridiculous moves or major life altering shifts coming in the next couple of years was like taking a giant weight off all our shoulders.  We have time to just be a family, which is something we haven’t been able to do in the last 7 months.  No negotiating living arrangements  no fighting with Malea’s school (fingers crossed), no disappearing daddy during the week or for a random month.  Now if we can get the little one to sleep during the decent hours of the night we will be cooking with gas!

It’s great to be back.  The things my family dealt with the past 7 months were very difficult, but have made us stronger and gives us an appreciation for the times we get to spend together, not stressing over the next steps.  And finally, as you all know, the fact my awesome wife held it down while I was all over the place given the situation is amazing and not something that many can do.  That’s what makes her special and is one of the many reasons I love her so much.

Happy Halloween!  See you next year.

BD