Love - On a Plate

I am not always a very lovey dovey person. 

I say I love you, and I’ll hug a person, but the way I show my love for someone is buying doing things for them. And my favorite way to say I love you is with food. I love to cook a lot of food, both in quantity, as well as a lot of different food. Im funny like that. I like to plan a big dinner or something, and stress out, and work my butt off, and freak out. That’s my favorite way to say I love you. 

Anyways, Andre is shipping out to basic, and he can’t leave without me cooking for him. But cooking for him, my style. I planned this huge menu and invited a bunch of people over for a going away type dinner. And I may be in pain, and I may get stressed out, but it is all to let Andre know that I love him. To remind him of what he means to me. Of how special he is to me. 

This boy has caused me so many heartaches, and so many tears. But he has also caused me to laugh so much that I have almost peed myself. Every one of my children are special to me. But he was my first. He was my practice baby, lol. When he was a baby, I took him everywhere with me. I remember at the hospital, he was eating about an ounce or so of formula at each feeding, which is normal, and his first feeding at home he ate the 4 ounces and cried for more. I freaked out. I asked mom what was wrong with him. I said in the hospital he only was eating 1 ounce at a time, and he just finished 4 ounces and cried for more. His first feeding home he ended up eating 5 ounces. At 5 days old he was eating 8 ounces every 3 hours, and at 8 days he was eating 8 ounces with cereal every 3 ½ – 4 hours. If it didn’t have cereal he was eating 8 ounces every 2 hours. At his 2 week check up he was almost double his body weight. (He weighed 9lbs 2oz at birth, and at 2 weeks he was 16lbs) the boy loved to eat. 

Actually I should say loves to eat. That is something he never outgrew. In his 18 years he has challenged me, and changed me. I am proud of who he is, and who he has become. He has grown into the awesome man that I saw and imagined way back when. It breaks my heart to say good bye, to let him go. But it is time for him to spread his wings. And the ARMY is the perfect place for him to do that. When you leave the hospital, they don’t give you a handbook that tells you to be ready for the heartache and hurt that your heart goes through as your child grows. 

They don’t tell you how hard it is to watch them grow, and watch them make mistakes. You know that those mistakes are the ones that end up transforming them into the adults they were meant to be, but that knowledge doesn’t make it any easier. They don’t tell you how much it hurts to let them go, how strong the mothers bond is. They don’t tell you how your whole being fills with pride and love and happiness when you look at your child, and it’s the same pride and love that happiness that makes it so hard to let them go. They don’t prepare you for whats to come. They don’t tell you though that as they grow, the relationship between child and parent changes and becomes even more special. And that change in the relationship makes all the pain worthwhile.