Today was a good day. Annalie and I hung out at home in our jammies most of the morning. We had peanut butter & jelly sandwiches for lunch. After lunch, Annalie spent almost an hour telling me an elaborate story about how she was born in Mexico but her parents couldn’t take care of her so she had to live at a children’s helping place and then we adopted her, but not before her abuela taught her how to cook a soup with carrots…only they aren’t really carrots, they’re yellow onions and they have to be cut up very small. That last part she told me while she was using a paring knife to chop up five or six baby carrots into 1/4-inch pieces, which she then put in a bowl and snacked on while she watched The Electric Company.

We ran some errands, including the pottery studio, where I was just going to pick up a couple of mugs to paint later. But while we were there, Annalie said she wanted to paint something. Usually I’m lucky if she’ll paint for ten minutes, and then I’ll try to distract her with snacks for another half-hour before giving up and coming back another day to finish my project. Today I was able to almost finish both mugs (and would have completely finished them except I didn’t have information I needed to write something on the bottom of the mugs). Annalie knew exactly what she wanted to do, and spent 45 minutes painting one thing, then almost as long painting a second item. I offered to wrap my mugs up and take her home when she was done, but she said, “No, that’s okay. I’ll color with markers till you’re done.” And that was on top of earlier today when she was going downstairs for some reason, and she turned back and said, “Can I get you a snack while I’m downstairs? Or a Diet Coke maybe?”

As some commenters noted on my last post, 5 1/2 is just one of those ages where there’s a lot of questioning and challenging going on with most kids. And Annalie certainly does miss her daddy. We talk about Troy all the time and pray for him every night. We take a photo for him every day, and she’s always drawing him pictures or typing him emails. Goodness knows that when I am having a bad day, I’m often thinking Waaah, I want Troy! so it makes perfect sense that she’d be thinking the same thing when she’s having a bad day.

I’m sure we’ll have plenty more time-outs and talks about anger and not letting your temper get the better of you, but for now things are back to normal. Maybe even a little better than normal.

*Troy asked me what the title of this post meant, since it seemed like the day I wrote about had been a pretty good day. It’s actually a line of the song “Bad Day” from Barenaked Ladies’ album SNACKTIME!, the one they wrote with kids in mind. You can find the lyrics and play the song here.

Woohoo! We’ve made it through 100 days without Troy, and Troy’s made it through 100 days of deployment. I know, we should have made a fuss over Day 90 because that’s allegedly the halfway point, but Troy’s homecoming date is up in the air, so who knows.

It seemed right to make a fuss about 100 days, though, because, c’mon, A HUNDRED DAYS! Look at all those photos. We’ve actually managed to take a picture every day, more or less. I only had to fudge once.

Here’s to 100 days down!

View the photoset 180 photos for Troy on Flickr, or view the mosaic large.

BY TROY

Nothing but water, as far as the eye can see.

Anyone care to guess how many planes are visible in this photo? Anyone?

Computers in my office…does the desktop wallpaper on the far right look familiar? It’s Day 4 of 180 photos for Troy (the photos Bethany and Annalie are taking for me every day while I’m gone).

[My husband Troy is in the U.S. Navy. He's on a six-month deployment right now, and thanks to the wonders of the internet it's easy to stay in touch. We email daily, and occasionally he'll send me photos. Just like when I first started blogging (as I explain on my About page) I'm posting photos here so our friends and family can keep tabs on what Troy's up to halfway around the world. Troy and his ship are both on Twitter, if you want to follow them. And you can add Troy as a Flickr friend, too. ---Bethany]