13 days to go: history repeats

Once upon a time, Jesse went on a long and faraway trip. Knowing that he'd have internet access intermittently but would be lucky to get a call home—since it was the communications dark ages of, you know, 2007—I opened a blogger account. For three weeks, I posted brief, daily countdown photos and stories of Josiah. The "Daddy Countdown" blog was born. [Here's a link to sample post!] After that trip, I changed the name to the Daddy Connection and maintained it as a silly, lopsided communication from me to Jesse whenever he traveled...which was relatively often when Josiah was a wee munchkin.

Over time, things have changed. Thankfully, Jesse's role requires far less travel these days, and family and friends ask for blog posts now, not Daddy. But today Jesse left for two weeks away from us. He'll be in the Dominican Republic for the remainder of this week, then in Lancaster for most of next week, then on to Boston for the weekend, then back to us finally.

So once again we're counting down to Daddy's return! The boys decorated number slips this evening, and we've stuck them to the wall so we can keep track of the passing days. We'll take one down each morning. To answer the two questions that surely are springing to mind:

1) Yes, of course the countdown is primarily for me, certainly more so than for the children. They won't suffer with Daddy's absence.
2) Yes, I know there are two zeros on the wall. Both boys wanted to color that slip so I made a second one; it certainly wasn't worth a fight, or even a conversation or negotiation. And besides, when we wake up on day "0" and know that Jesse will be with us by suppertime, I might just be excited enough to add my own 0 to the wall, too!

We love you, Jesse, and already can't wait to see these numbers gone! Safe travels! xx