This guy!
Of course, this is not his arrival picture. I am not that mean to post a picture of someone after suffering a 24 hour flight. But this IS, like, the only picture we have of the 2 of us in the past 4 months (and I almost deleted it for vanity's sake due to my neck rolls but decided to hold on to it anyway). We have been enduring the necessary evil of 7 weeks separation during this transition to the USA. It wasn't the way that I envisioned our homecoming, which was with a large good-bye party and perhaps an extended stopover at some exotic locale. This, rather, as been drawn out and without much fanfare. But, as I said, necessary and, importantly, now over!
I am obviously happy to have my hubby back. I missed him like crazy. Life just isn't the same without your best friend and partner in crime. Plus, anyone who knows Regis understands that he certainly makes things more interesting for sure. After six and a half years of marriage, life seems a bit more dull without him around. I have gained a new-found empathy for single-moms and military wives (even though, technically, I have not been alone doing this since my parents are a HUGE help!). This, however, was an expected consequence of being apart. There were others which I did not expect.
For example, with Regis in Singapore, I found that there was a lot of extra space in the bed. This in itself is not necessarily a bad thing; in fact, spreading out to have the whole bed was something I was secretly excited about. Rather, I found that, because of the extra space, I became very lazy about putting Nate back into his crib during those nighttime feeds. My logic--there is room here, he might as well stay here and then I don't have to get out of bed if he wakes up again (and there is a really good chance he will wake up again!). This always seems like a good idea in the midst of my grogginess during the wee hours of the night. However Nate, bless that sweet little baby, has no co-sleeping manners. He sleeps loudly, he takes up way more than his share of the bed, he eats in bed (worse still, sometimes that food comes back out either end during the night!), and he feels the need to wake me up every time he wakes up. On top of it all, he is really too small to warm my cold feet on in the cool mornings--so useless, really. Nearly every morning over the past 7 weeks, I chide myself for not taking to extra minute to walk him back to his crib after his feeding. Now with my husband back, there will not be the space for Nate to spread out and I can assign Regis the task of returning Nate to his crib. Win-win!
Adrienne also suffered while apart from her dad, which in turn made me feel horrible. I'm sure Adrienne didn't understand what was going on. All she knew was that Daddy was not here but was in Singapore for a bit. Like Dora the Explorer episodes, she decided what we needed to do was rescue Daddy. So every time she was an airplane or helicopter in the sky, she thought they were there to rescue Dad from "Singypore". She also went around telling everyone who would listen in her saddest voice: "I lost my Dada!" and "I miss my Dada awot!". You should see the disapproving looks that this generated in my direction after that! This always made me feel the need to explain what was going on to total strangers, of whom I am sure either stopped listening or didn't buy a word of my long-winded explanation. "Husband....Singapore....moving back....selling all our stuff...will be back soon...yadda, yadda, yadda.". Last week Adrienne told me that she felt sad because she missed her Dada. My heart broke just a little, I was feeling so terrible about this. Then she told me that she thought a little ice-cream would make her feel happy again. I take this as firm proof that it is ingrained in our female genes to believe that we can fill man-made holes in our hearts with ice-cream. Luckily, we had a little vanilla with chocolate sauce to do the trick and both Adrienne and I felt happy again.
So now Regis is back and we look forward to the future and adventures ahead. In the meantime, we have some time to reunite and be a family. I am so looking forward to the next few weeks of togetherness! Welcome home, Regis.
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