your big, fat lying wife

in light of the ginormous fight i had with my husband on the phone a few hours ago, i have a confession to make. i am a big, fat liar. i lie to my husband regularly.

i tell him that kaia misses him while he's gone. the truth is that she never even mentions him. the truth is that i'm the one who brings up daddy's name everyday in the hopes that she remembers him. in the hopes that she is building SOME type of relationship with her daddy. in the hopes that she is not developing the same abandonment issues that her mother has just because her daddy comes and goes like the sun rises and sets. in the hopes that one day she will tell me that she misses daddy. or cry when he leaves. or CARE AT ALL. the indifference scares me more than if she was depressed or cried or did ANYTHING to show that she was missing her father...or even realized he was gone.

i suffer the consequences. the horrible behavior. the backsliding in potty training. the inability of a two year old to express what she's feeling. the confusion she must feel at seeing daddy come and go like the wind. the lack of the constant presence of a daddy. at least i had that. my dad was always there. i saw him just as much as a saw my mom.

today layla is 3 months old. and in the past three months, kevin has missed her first smile (on mother's day), her first giggle (last week) and her first earnest efforts to roll over and finally success in that endeavor (last week). he will probably miss her first crawling because he's due to be gone for 6 weeks around the time she turns 6 months old. and he'll most likely miss her first steps while he's on deployment. he'll also miss her first birthday.

july 20: i wrote this last week and saved it as a draft. i didn't want to post it because i felt it would make kevin sad if he were to read it. i wrote it out of anger. not at him, but at his job. going back and reading it, it's all true. so, i'm posting it.

edited to add: kevin read this post. he wasn't mad :)