Alien Abduction

Many people have been asking about how I feel.  Am I ready?  Am I nervous?  Are we excited?  Truthfully, I'm stuck in a fog.  Somewhere between vacuum sealing clothes, counting passports, wrapping customary gifts, and taking inventory of Penn's belongings (as he tosses every last unmatched sock into his suitcase for grandma's house,) I lost emotion and turned into a robot.  There's a difference between knowing in your mind what is about to come and actually living it out.

I've been in this zone several times before.  It happens each military move.  And every time, my feelings trail behind my physical steps until the story of our journey plays out.   My emotional journey is always experienced in retrospect.

I do know this: I smile ear to ear when I think of seeing her in the flesh. 

I am very happy but also very practical.  Our family will forever be changed... for the BETTER in the long run but the intermediate may be dicey.  Our easy routine will be rocked.  The simplicity of two boys grows into a more complicated dynamic of two boys with a little sister who can't speak to them, may be afraid of them, and will demand Mom's attention.  However difficult the transition may be for our boys, I take comfort in knowing it will strengthen them.  It will strengthen *us.*  

And though the transition for our family will be just that, a transition, think about this process from her side.  We wait with open arms, but she might not even know we are coming.  Even if the nannies explained it to her, what is a two-year-old going to understand?  How can she wrap her brain around the concept of a Mom and Dad if she's never seen those roles before?  Trust?  What's that? They come when I cry?  They're the same people when I wake as the day before?  Is this man's arm hair for real?  (It's possible she's never seen a man.)

Plus, we don't look like her.  We don't sound like her.  We don't smell like her.  She doesn't know us.  Then we whisk her away to a big, fancy hotel where she can eat all she wants whenever she wants, swim in a pool, soak in a bathtub, be excessively held and played with, ride in a van, walk around a city, and fly in an airplane... all of which she's never done before, many she's never seen before.  It's like an alien abduction.  Seriously.  She'll be in her own fog.

Years from now, she will fully understand the love that already surrounds her.  And years from now, I will look back at who I was before this trip and be thankful for who I have become after.  SHE is blessing US.  I can only pray we green martians be a blessing to her.