She loves me, she loves me not

Our formerly public-loving baby, who'd never met a stranger, has entered a shy phase. It coincided, of course, with her daddy's departure out of the country and has become a great source of angst for the Japanese women all over the island who take great delight in hugging her, exclaiming over and stroking her sandy blond curls, cooing a word I can't spell which apparently means something like 'cute' or 'sweet'. Rather than leaning toward them with arms outstretched like she used to do, she now covers her face with both hands and peeks through her fingers with a coy little smile. It's cute and fairly flirtatious on its own, but heartbreaking to the child-loving Asian women here who beg to pick her up.

Thing is, this shyness has also extended to talking with grandparents on the phone and looking at their pictures. She's excited about it, but has to cover her face for some reason. This is understandable, but...

She's now even doing it when we're talking to John on the phone. Uh-oh. I'm somewhat concerned that, after missing him for a month, she's going to be kind of shy with him when he arrives home tomorrow. I know that he'll be very understanding of this, knowing that it's temporary and developmentally normal, but he's gone through enough in one lifetime. At least it was only one month. What would happen if it had been longer?

Being a military family is kind of like living with a ticking bomb. You know a deployment is coming at some point, and the longer you go without it, the more the reality looms. John semi-volunteered for one while I was pregnant since it would have been shorter than ones are now and gotten one out of the way before our child arrived. His colonel wasn't willing to let him go and nixed the orders, so to some extent, I feel like we're on borrowed time. I look at my friends and their families in other branches--Army, who are gone for eons; Navy, who are a special breed to be out at sea; and Marines, who need no explanation--and am in awe of their strength and courage. Love and prayers to them all.

Things will right themselves in time. John is the sun of this baby's world, and she won't be able to resist her hero for long.