7 Weeks of O (and one day) and back to my roots

It's Friday. I was supposed to go back to work today, but decided against it for several reasons, so I'm home and able to blog about O and other things.

Yesterday O was seven weeks old. It does not seem like that much time has passed since the first week of school, i.e. the week of Oscar's birth, but, alas, it has. I took him up to the hospital yesterday to weigh him. A whopping 12 lbs, 13 oz!!! I don't have any stats on Elsie for 7 weeks, so I don't know how he compares, but can I say that he is now big enough to fit into size 2 diapers? Size 2?? But, that's because there's an overlap between 1 and 2, so we're in our last box of 1-2 diapers now.

On a different note, Eli was still pretty drugged up yesterday, so I drove us to Montgomery so that I could get my military ID card and he could buy some uniform pieces. First we went to the HQ for the Alabama National Guard where I got the card "cooked up." The sargeant pulled up my social security number and asked me to surrender my previous card. You know, I probably have it somewhere, but I haven't carried it in the decade since it expired. Plus, it has the wrong name and sponsor on it now (I'm officially an Army wife!!!) That turned out to not be a problem. The other weird thing that happened was that the sargeant was confirming our address, and he said some address in Mobile that I didn't recognize. Eli did. Haha. It was the address of their house in Mobile when he was a kid and his dad was in the Army Reserves. The phone number, too. I asked Eli if they had confirmed his address when he got his military ID a couple of weeks ago, but they had not. Beaurocracy. Ha.

And about ten minutes later I was able to use that ID (I don't think it had even cooled yet) to gain access to Maxwell AFB. Eli told me that I was way too giddy about this entire outing, but honestly, it was so familiar, so comfortable!

For instance, at the HQ, as we went on post, there was a sign that said "ThreatCon Alpha." That brougth back so many memories, and I started telling Eli about being in ThreatCon Charlie during the Gulf War, when every car was stopped and searched coming on base, with the big mirrors under the car to make sure there weren't any car bombs, I guess. That was a way of life for a few years.

The path onto post was also a maze of zigzagged poles, like an autocross course, that I'm sure were meant for cars with power steering (which we did not have). That made it interesting. :)

Then later, I got to show my ID to get on base, but I noticed that there weren't soldiers at the gate. Private security. Weird. Probably commonplace, now, but still weird to me, who has not been around a military culture in over a decade.

On our way to the BX, we passed by the Shopette. The SHOPETTE! All these memories flooded back to me. Memories from Sembach. Memories from Altus. Probably Eli just wished I would be quiet, but I kept running my mouth. Haha.

I did not have to show my ID to get into the BX. That was weird, too. We walked around and it was not particularly exciting, but just the ambiance was enough to put a smile on my face. Eli was tortured because there were two taco trucks parked outside and he desperately wanted some, but no. I looked in the kids shoe section to see if they still carried the Athletic Club brand of shoes ("Air Chickens" we called them growing up) but they didn't have them anymore. Oh, well. :)

In the end, the base was drab and not very nice, but it was tainted with the happy memories of my childhood that couldn't put a damper on my day.

When we got back to town, I took Oscar to get weighed, yes, but we also visited the last baby we're expecting to be born this year. Welcome, AJB!

Cheers.