Deployed

I don't even know where to begin. The little man and I took Daddy C to the airport today. As I'm typing this, he's already had a layover in Atlanta and is on his way to Columbus, if he's not already there. I'm expecting to hear from him soon that he's arrived at Ft. Benning. He will spend the week there before flying to Kuwait, where he'll receive further orders of his assignment and move on to Iraq.

The three of us spent the last 10 days smooshing ourselves as close together as we could, spending a lot of really nice, quality time at home together. I am so thankful to have had the vacation time to take off to be with them, and am especially thankful for the next two days to decompress before we have to go back to work and school.

Jack has been a little trooper all day. I realize he has no idea what's happening, and couldn't possibly understand the amount of time that will pass before he sees his dad again, but regardless, I'm proud of how great he has been. His life has been odd, to say the least these past couple of weeks, and he didn't even shed a tear when his daddy boarded that plane today. He smiled and waved bye-bye like a big boy as his parents tried to hold it together for his sake. (I will say, that I did a great job, and it wasn't until C got misty-eyed that I let a tear drop.) I let them flow freely as we watched him step out of the jetway and onto the plane, and as we watched it take off, then wiped my eyes and carried my boy out of the airport.

I knew I couldn't come straight home, so I thought we'd do a bit of shopping, you know, retail therapy always works. Since we were up at 5 am, the little man was passed out before we were out of the airport. I had a drive-thru breakfast and made phone calls about swim lessons while he slept and we waited for the mall to open. A quick cruise through Wal-Mart helped to kill some time after he woke, and a couple of new things and some sweet tea at the mall helped us maintain our composure.

If I could have avoided coming home, I would have. I knew that getting home would be the hardest part for me. Walking in that front door and not having any idea when I might see C withing the walls of our home again is just too much to think about. I know that we will be fine, and that life will become "normal" for us, but that doesn't do anything to make it any less sad.

This is probably the last time I will talk about this subject here on the blog. I like reserving our blog for the happy, funny memories of our family, and will not focus on the separation of our family at all here. Those memories will be journaled elsewhere. For now, we are still We Three Stewarts, we're just in different time zones.