We managed to get back to the Picture Company a week or so after Lisa’s disappointed post entitled “Thwarted.” This time Ginny was a little more receptive, and the photographer, Abu, managed to get some nice ones. Here’s a montage we got from them.
If you click on the photo, you’ll get a monstrous-big version so you can look at the individual photos that made up the montage. Lisa’s hands making the heart and Ginny holding my thumb were Abu’s creative contributions to the thing, and he was very patient and easygoing with her; I was pleased with both the experience and the results, which were far better than I expected on both counts.
Time is flying by as it has become accustomed to doing; Lisa goes back to work a week from today and we’ll adjust to yet another new reality. I won’t be flying solo, of course; the “Ya-ya” or Household Helper/Nanny we’ve hired is starting to take more of a role with Ginny these days, and she’ll help out. Til recently, she’d been taking care of cooking and housework leaving us free to worry about Nothing But The Baby, but now she may do a “put down for nap” or pick up from a nap, so I can take a nap or two myself. I’m going to try to take the bulk of the overnight responsibility so Lisa can get enough sleep to function at work.
Ginny is getting about 2/3 of her diet from breastfeeding, the rest supplemented with formula in a bottle; to keep that going Lisa will extract and store milk a couple of times a day at work, and at first at least, Ginny and I will make a run up to the Embassy at lunchtime for a little boobysnack for the baby. That way we’ll be able to keep the breastmilk percentage up as high as possible, and I’ll get to have lunch with Lisa, which we’ve really come to enjoy doing with her being home these last 7 weeks.
Ginny is healthy and happy and gaining weight at a healthily-fast rate, according to her doctor; we’re at 9 lbs. 12 oz. as of this morning, or two pounds over initial birth weight. Hard to believe some babies are born this big and even bigger – Ouch!!
We’re starting to think about making a little trip the weekend after Christmas, over the New Year holiday; we think it might be nice to do a touristy thing with Ginny, so we’re going to visit Bangkok for a few days, and tick another country on my “Cool Places I’ve visited that a lot of people haven’t” list. I might never catch cousin Tony, but I’m going to give it a run.
Also, we’ll be home for a long stay in January of 2010, and should get to see most everybody. We’re going to land in ATL, visit Mississippi, and finish up in MD/DC/VA on a three-week trip in mid-January. We’re in the process of what the State Department calls The Bidding Cycle, where they give us a list of available jobs for Lisa to move to for her second tour, we give them around 20 “bids” rated High, Medium, and Low, which indicates our level of desire to work there. The cynic in me says we then get a letter from the government assigning us to another city altogether, not among our bids, but in reality they try to assign us to a High post, as long as we’re realistic about our High bids. They’re in the process of revising the list of places we can choose from now; the original list was full of awesome and fascinating places, many of which have already been removed from it, so we’ll have to see what the final chapter is. We’ll know something very soon, though – it’s very exciting!
That’s enough for now – more pics, and more on the Onward Assignment, in a future post.
