Family TIme

Now that Andi's latest event is done and he's back at home, life finally feels back to normal. I know other people's husbands travel for work or are deployed overseas and I'm not the only in the world to experience solo parenting but dang, it sucks. I don't realize how much I'm on auto-pilot when my husband's gone for days on end. I survive; I put one foot in front of the other. I do all diaper changes, all meal times, all clean-ups, all happy and sad and fun moments and phew, it is exhausting. Whenever Andi returns from time away and helps by cleaning up the kitchen or warming up Tory's milk before bedtime, I stop in my tracks and stammer a "th-th-thank you. Wow. Thank you for helping." It never dawns on me how go-go-go my life is when he's gone until he's back and suddenly I'm not doing everything on my own.

My mom said it best last week: I don't like to be alone. I never have. I didn't like to play alone as a kid, I didn't like being by myself in college and I still don't like being alone now. Sometimes Andi's job takes him away from home for days or weeks at a time and I don't like it, but it is what it is. And when he comes back home, it makes me feel like I'm on top of the world. Absence makes the heart grows fonder and I'm reminded just how much I love that man.

Now that my world's set right again, I have so much to look forward to in the coming months. No big work commitments on the horizon for Andi means we get to spend the next few weekends at the cabin enjoying family time together. Our Mexico trip is coming up quickly and I'm so looking forward to a few quiet days alone with my husband.

Monday night, Andi came home from work early and suggested we take Tory to open swim at a nearby community center. At first I was all, "eh, I don't know. It will cut dangerously close to her bedtime and whack with our evening bath/bedtime routine..." but then I realized Andi was coming home to spend quality time with his girls. Why am I always the no-fun, rule-following parent? Who cares about the routine!

We ate dinner together, then grabbed our swim suits and drove to open swim. Tory happily babbled in the backseat the entire way there. She, too, was in such a good mood and so happy to have her Daddy home. She insisted he carry her into the community center and didn't want to let him out of her sight. We paid $3.50 for an evening pass of swimming - cheap entertainment! The community center had a great zero-entry wading pool, perfect for Tory's size, and we had the entire kiddie pool to ourselves.

Wading into the water, all by herself

Neither Andi or I could believe just how much Tory has grown. She walked in and out of the pool all by herself (with one of us right next to her, of course) and "humpty dumptied" off the ledge into Andi's arms a million times. She "kicked-kicked-kicked" her legs and blew bubbles in the water and had the best time. Tory loves the water and remembered all her skills from swim class this spring. We had a great night hanging out as a family of three.

Climbing out of the pool all by herself

I love this one - she looks like a little supermodel

Ruffle butt - is there anything cuter?