Caroline Nicole

So as you might have guessed by now we have a new grandchild as of June 10, 2010!!!!! Everything anyone has ever told me about how wonderful grand kids are didn’t even come close to house I feel about this lil girl!!!!!! Much to my sorrow due my health issues and recent blood clots I wasn’t able to fly to HI. That was a rough time for me, I so wanted to be there for our son and daughter in law, I’m so glad they were both so understanding as to why we couldn’t go. I wanted hubby to go, but he said he wasn’t going without me, he’d see her for the first time with me!!!! Now do I have a wonderful hubby or what??? I spoke to the kids by phone daily sometimes more than that but I still felt as if something was missing. People sent us congrats cards and best wishes and all of that good stuff, but I just couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that I truly was a grand mom or in my case a “Me-Me”!!!!! Sure I sent lots of stuff to them had a baby shower while in NJ via Skype, but still it didn’t seem real. I had to get my hands on that baby and once his orders were ready and he knew he was going to Norfolk, VA only a 5.5 hour drive from here I was about to burst!!!!! It about killed me waiting for firm dates as to when they’d be arriving in Norfolk, you now the military they are on their own time plan!!!!!!!!! We finally get word they are coming in on November 6, wonderful, what a fabo 27 wedding present!!!!!!
We were up bright and early on Saturday November 6 and headed to the airport, where it seemed as if I had been waiting an externality for them to get off the plane!!!! Couldn’t they let them off first???? They should have known a crazy first time me-I was waiting to see her baby girl!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I spotted the kids first, dragging looking tired as can be and then a sweet lil girl in Kayla’s arms!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! She handed me that lil girl and my heart melted and tears came and came and came some more!!!!! I did finally hug the kids too, but I had what I had been waiting forever for!!!! She is a sweet lil baby, our daughter in law Kayla is a wonderful mom!!!!!!!!!!!! She just impresses me big time, she’s a first time mom and I swear if I didn’t know it I’d not believe it. She has the most patience of anyone I’ve ever seen; she is just a fabo mom!!!! We are so proud of her!!!! Our son is truly a first time daddy!!!! He changes nasty diapers and all but gags doing so, oh well such is life!!! He gets so excited any time she does something new, he worries over every little thing, his eyes just light up when he walks in the room and she smiles at him, just melts my heart!!!! I’m so proud of those kids it’s not even funny!! I mean they got married, he deployed for nine months, he comes and she is pregnant with what everyone in the military calls a “post deployment baby”. They are way over in HI with no family, a few friends and a new baby, but they have done well, good, bad and ugly days, you know just life in general with a new baby in the house!
I knew I had fallen in love with that baby from photos but something was still missing until I got my hands on her, after that my friends as they say is history!!!! I so enjoyed her being here while they were on leave, I cried my eyes out when they left for her parents house each Monday. Knowing full well they would be back in just a week!! Didn’t matter to me I was going to miss my sweet lil Caroline!!! The day the left “for good” to move into their apartment in Norfolk I cried like a baby for a couple of days, this knowing all along I’d be seeing her again in just about 3 weeks. None of that mattered I missed that sweet lil baby looking up at me while I feed her a bottle or just rock her nite-nite!!!!
So the count down from December 5th until December 22nd was still hard but I used my time wisely!!! I Christmas shopped!! A few days before we left the crazy weather people were talking about a huge snow storm coming up from GA to the north/east, a nor’easter!!!!!!!! Great, well at least it wasn’t to begin until Christmas evening around 7PM. Let’s just say for once they knew what they were talking about big time!!!!!!!!!! It began snowing lightly around 6:30 or so and didn’t stop until well into the following night. At our house in SC we only got a dusting but in Norfolk we got 14 inches if not more, we had winds greater than 35 miles an hour and just plain ole cold, cold and colder!!!!! Kayla was truly like a little kid at Christmas, you see she grew up not very far from where we currently live so she has never seen that much snow in her life. Too funny to see someone else so excited about the snow, I love it, and I miss it big time, hubby and son not so much!!!!! We thought we’d be snowed in, oh what a shame couldn’t be snowed in at a better place. Much to my sorrow hubby got my car out no problem on Monday afternoon, the roads weren’t to very bad, but icy enough until we hit the interstate. Of course the drive home brought lots of tears from me. Of course I knew I was again going to see her in just a few short weeks but that didn’t matter, I missed that sweet baby!!!! To be exact we’ll be going back on February 2, 2011, our son is re-enlisting in the Navy and we are going up for the ceremony. Being a me-me is the most fabo job I’ve ever had, I don’t ever want to be fired!!!! Ha ha, I tell Kayla every time we see them if I’m taking too much time away from you and Caroline, jump in and tell me to give you back your child!!!! She laughed and said she doesn’t mind getting up with and doing anything that Caroline needs (well except for a bath, that’s daddy’s job!!!) but it’s nice to have a break!!!! There is nothing better than rocking a sweet lil baby just out of a bath, seeing her look up at me with those sweet lil blue eyes melts my heart and the nothing is more important at that very moment!!!
It was wonderful spending Christmas with the kids, my oldest sister drove down from NJ and had plans to stay until the following day but since the snow was coming she left shortly after dinner. That was sad but the very fact that she got to come was just fabo, just fabo!!!!! She figured it had been at least 20 years since her and I had spent a Christmas together, maybe even more than that. My last Christmas in NJ was in 1987, my mother had just had a stroke in July of that year and we had had our daughter in May of that year also. I really “needed” to spend Christmas with family this year it just felt so good. I’ve sort of had a hard time with Christmas since Christmas of 2007. My mother passed away on December 4, 2007. We had moved her to SC with us and we were still in our old home in Greenville, SC, I had such huge plans for Christmas in our new home with my mom. That was not to be she took a turn for the worse shortly after Thanksgiving and passed away just three days after we closed on our new home. That year was also the first year our son wouldn’t be home for Christmas, he was newly stationed in Pearl Harbor, HI. It was truly the hardest holiday I have ever spent, I should have been happy, we had our dream house, we wanted for nothing material. Thanks to my fabo kids, hubby and sisters we all made it through the holidays that year. I promised myself I would “do better” next year; I’d have a tree, put up all of these brand new decorations I had purchased just for the new home!! Christmas season 2008 begins and our son is deployed in Iraq!! How in the freaking hell am I to be all happy and joyous as can be when mean people are shooting at our son???????? Pretty hard year again!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Again thanks to fabo family and friends I made it through the holiday season. Looking forward to “next” Christmas which would be Christmas of 2009, our son was safely home from Iraq, happy, healthy and all in one piece!!!!! Why oh why did I not get around to the tree and of all that good stuff that year?????? I had just happened to come home from the hospital two days before the kids came from HI to visit. I had been in about five weeks or so, I was in no way, shape or form up to doing the whole “deal”!!! I was so happy the kids were here, my sister even came for a few days when I first came home, so it was all great, except that I was so weak I couldn’t sit up for more than an hour without feeling as if I’d pass out. Everyone offered to do the “deed” of decorating, and that would have been such a nice thing for them to do for me, maybe even help me “feel” better. My only thoughts were, “if they put all of the crap up, I’ll have to take it all down at some point”. At that very minute I just couldn’t see how in the world I’d be able to do that so I passed on the offer. My sister did bring me small tree which she left in case I wanted just something “little”. I never did put it up, Christmas day is quickly approaching and we have so not even thought about the meal for that day, our daughter is a paramedic and was working that day, Kayla’s family lives a good 2.5 hours from us and I just didn’t see us having a huge meal to begin with not to mention I didn’t want the kids to have to try to split the day between families. We solved that issue by ordering pizza for dinner Christmas Eve and they left early Christmas morning for her parents. I don’t even know what hubby and I did for dinner that day. Fast forward to this year, well if you read my last post, I just didn’t have the energy nor desire to decorate, such a baby me-me!!!! Then I began rationalizing my reason for not doing any decorating was the fact that we weren’t going to be home for Christmas, so why bother????? So we’ll see what happens next year, I truly hope I’m in a better frame of mind and get that decorating bug and just “do it up right”!!!!!!!!!!! So that’s my story, excuse, reason whatever for not decorating, next year I just may have to I sure don’t want Caroline growing up thinking her me-me is lazy and doesn’t have a Christmas tree and all do I????? Heck no way, so we’ll see!!!! You know what they say about best laid plans and all!!!!!!!!! Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season and thanks for hanging around to read this crap I ramble out after being such a slack blogger for so very long!!! New Year new plans!!!!!!! Have a great rest of your day!!
Marie