Hitting the trail again

Life continues to roll along. Hubs and I are getting a bit of cabin fever living with his folks.  Truly it continues to go amazingly well, but we miss having our own home.  We live a very boring life.  We spend only on essentials and pretty much do nothing that cost money. Eat out 1-2 times a month cheaply. TV is our main form of entertainment. We take lots of walks and I am hoping we take a bike ride soon! There really is nothing to complain about besides we are bored, but bored together with a roof over our head!

The fishy is creeping! At 10 months I was beginning to get a bit worried. I knew that if he was not crawling/creeping by 12 months it was time to be concerned but still........ Part of it may have been that there are four adults around constantly picking him up and entertaining him. Which is awesome but I think lessened his time to explore on his belly. He was so excited once he started sitting independently (7 months) that he never wanted to be on his belly. And we indulged that.  The hubs and I had a family meeting and told the folks, no more picking up when he fusses  on his belly.  We tried some tricks of putting his favorite toys out of his reach and such. And ya know what? It worked!  It took a few weeks and now he is creeping all over the place.

Which brings us to.........babyproofing. Ug. Not ug I hate babyproofing, but babyproofing at your in-laws, HUGE UG.  Try telling you mother-in-law how to arrange her home, I feel so bad. In reality my mother-in-law has been awesome about it, albeit a wee bit irked. My father-in-law cantankerous. He finally admitted that he hates anything that inconveniences him. Referring to the gate on the baby gate. I apologized and then ribbed him that he must be annoyed a lot then. But he admitted he understands that it is necessary. Though, if I hear one more time, "we never babyproofed when our kids were young", I will scream. I know parenting these days is very different than 30 years ago, and their house is very different ( now filled with antiques, porcelain trinkets and a second story which means a stair case), so yes things are different. It has been quite the negotiation. At times I have just gone back to our bedroom and felt sorry for myself, uber-mature.  However, this is the hill I am ready to die on, so the few things that were essential to me (locking up chemicals & baby gate near stairs) have been instituted.  Now to just get the dog to stop growling at the baby. 

We have been here over three months and I finally have an interview. Next week I will be traveling to Northern California for an interview for a school psychologist position.  It was quite nice spending 140 on airfare versus 500-800 when I flew from Georgia.  I am so not getting myself psyched up. But it is a nice sign to get an interview after all those applications since I got here. 

My in-laws were pretty funny in that they started saying that they didn't want us to move away.  However, I know they want us to get out on our own. In less than three months we are going to be faced with what to do with all our house hold goods that the Army has been storing.  That is a decision I do not want to make. People have asked us what the is best case scenario. I hate to say this but I feel like the best case has already passed. We didn't get jobs in southern California, so here we are living with our parents.  The next step is getting a job, wherever that may be.  Sure I would love to live in Southern California near our family and have the hubs continue going to school at his lovely private university. But we are at a point where we just can't keep hoping for what we want. We need to get what we need.  And that is a full-time job for one of us that will afford us to live independently. Bottom line. We shall see how it all plays out. 

I started back at the gym and I hope I can find my waist again. I am basically back at my pre-pregnancy weight, but my body is not. My mid-section has turned into a shar-pei lookalike.  The child care is not bad, a flat $10 a month fee, cheaper than the post gym!  The people watching is fantastic!!! 

Music Appreciation class. My mother in law held onto hub's flute from grade school. DUETS!!!

Greed

Happy New Year all and I hope your holidays were spectacular! Ours were very good.  Lots of family get togethers, a few road blow outs (referring to poop not tires), and the thrill of celebrating the holidays with a baby. 

Feeling tired and bored at a party and really want to leave?...."the baby is tired and about to meltdown, so we really need to leave. Sorry to leave so early."

Stuck talking to a creepy?..."Um I think I smell poop, I better go change the baby."  

How's the job search going?...."Look at my cute baby!"

But seriously it was a great deal of fun and schleping of gear, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. 

Tomorrow the hubs starts school. We went shopping for back to school supplies. It was pretty darn cute. Even cuter? That he is taking Music Appreciation and had to buy a song flute, that I can only surmise he will be playing in class. I am having flashbacks to third grade. I mean, how hilarious is it that three months ago he was teaching lieutenants to shoot guns and now a professor (probably shaggy with a pony tail) is going to be teaching him to blow notes on a flute.

I. AM. DYING.

Otherwise you know life is really just fine.  Seriously. Living with the in-laws is going just fine.  No major probs. Sure, we very rarely get on each other's nerves, but like I get on my own nerves. I mean these are some of the best roommates I have ever had.  We (truthfully mostly me) angsted so much about how we were going to ETS (for you non-milfolk, end of term of service, aka, leave the military) and land on our feet.  We had so many ideas and plans, so many discussions, so many pros and cons weighed, so many trips out to interview, and the worst happened. I didn't get a job, we moved in with the in-laws and the hubs is going back to school while we figure it out. 

And you know what, everything is perfectly pleasant.  After the first few weeks of freaking out, I am like whatev. I applied for about 13 mid-school year replacement jobs and didn't make it past paper screenings for any of them.  Nothing that different than previous applications, so I didn't get that wacked out. Most likely in the next month or so I will start applying for job for the 2012-2013 school year. I hope I have more success. 

The hubs has applied for a job in law enforcement. Maybe that will work out.  He has some very good connections  and they are hiring. We have been told it is a long process. So what. We got time. We are not going anywhere. The only clock ticking is my biological one. I do hope that we figure this out while my fertility holds out (turn 40 in three months). But you know what? I have an amazing baby, and I think I'm okay with not having everything. Because I have so much. 

Every day I am surrounded by people that love us, love being around us (the in-laws want us to stay forever, seriously, that is how good it is working out. Seriously we do not want to stay forever. Sometimes I do.) I just spent two straight months with my husband. Every single day (except for one), we ate dinner together, slept next to each other, spent the majority of our day together, together. We have never had this. First it was that he was deployed to Iraq, then it was that he lived on the other side of the country, then it was that the Army had him working all the time and away days at a time. So we have just been us, hanging out, in his parents' house, taking care of our baby, making dinner for ourselves every night, keeping score whose turn it is to change the poopy diaper.  Truly that describes that past 10 weeks. And it feels like such a gift. 

Yeah we wanted to be independent, we miss our independence, autonomy, privacy, and self-respect, but this is like totally fine. For now. 

There were many years (age 29-36) where I wondered, cried in the fetal position and often in the shower, and thought I might always be alone. That I might never get married. That I might never get to be a parent.  I am never alone anymore, I have gotten to parent my child every day for nine plus months. I got to be a stay at home wife (horrors, but actually quite cool) for the past 18 months.  I do believe we will sort this out eventually.  But I got to be this, to these people. Honestly, I will get back to work eventually.  But for now, call it greed, because at times it does feel greedy. I feel indulged to live this life.  Yes, greed can be good.