Highs and Lows

We’ve been back in Aberdeen for a week and a half now, and I finally feel like I’m getting back into the swing of things. This is the first time that I haven’t been entirely happy to be ‘home’, but now that the jet lag has worn off and I’ve gotten to spend some time with my girls, my pups, and the sun, I’m feeling more optimistic about our future in bonnie Scotland. Here is a rundown of the highs and lows of my first full week back to reality. 

Lows: 
1) Bad news regarding Samson’s heart. 

If you want more details, you can read yesterday’s post here.. 

2) Jonathan had his first stint ‘off-shore’ this week. He was only gone for a day, but I still get lonesome without him. Luckily, he was gone during my night to host book club, so I had a nice distraction from his absence. 

3) Feeling a bit frustrated over baby boy stuff. I’ll go into this in more detail later, but I figured out pretty early on that Scotland doesn’t perform circumcisions. It’s been a mess trying to figure out how to get this done in a timely fashion after our baby boy’s birth, and it seems like the best option is to take a road/train/plane trip down to England to get it done. Not ideal. 

(PS. If you don't have anything nice to say about my husband and I's very PERSONAL decision to circumcize our child, please keep it to yourself. If you leave a hateful comment, it will just be deleted immediately. I respect anyone's decision to NOT circumsize and I was just pointing out that Scotland doesn't offer parents the choice. Trust me, we've done the full scope of research on this matter and have decided that this is what is best medically, religiously, and culturally for OUR child. Your inflammatory and hateful comments aren't going to change our minds. If you respect and support our parental right to make choices regarding our sons health, even if you disagree, thank you, thank  you, thank you. If you think I'm a 'mutilating child abuser', I guess I'm just going to lose a few readers over it. It's a shame that we as parents can't be gracious towards each other and respect the decisions we make so thoughtfully and cautiously for the sake of our children.)

In other, more benign news (had no idea I'd start a firestorm with the above information) I keep having recurring nightmares that we are set to leave the hospital and our baby doesn’t have a name yet. We are really drawing a blank for the perfect name for our little guy and as the days pass by with little inspiration, I’m getting more and more anxious that my nightmares of a nameless baby will come true. I plan to write a more in depth post about this issue as well. 

Highs: 
1) Girl time. I had a fun week playing mahjong, watching The Bachelorette, and discussing The Age of Miracles with my girl friends this week. It definitely helped to ease me back into life abroad. If I can’t have my family close by, they are certainly the next best thing. 

2) Finding out my sis is having a boy! 

I can’t wait to get our little guys together for sweet cousin time. They are going to have so much fun growing up together. Nana and Pops will have their hands full when they get all *four* of their rowdy grandsons together. 

3) Sammy’s new haircut. 

Ohmygoodness, I love when this cutie pie gets his ‘puppy cut’. Can’t believe he is 8 years old. He looks and acts just like a wee pup. 

Sometimes I worry I might accidently squeeze him to death. The cuteness is too much. It’s too much. 

4) Jonathan had a coworker from Midland in town on business, so we took the day to show him some of the sights. I’ll write more later, but we spent a nice foggy morning visiting Dunnottar Castle and Fettercairn Whisky Distillery. 

 

It was a long morning/day which caused me to take a 3 hour coma nap when we got home. Which also caused this somewhat late posting of Friday’s highs and lows. I hope you have a great weekend filled with lots of highs!