Decisions, Decisions

After he was finished with the great lunch I made him (roast beef & swiss on bagels with avocado slices and a frappuccino--a concoction made from instant cappuccino powder, ice cream, ice and milk) I asked JT to change the baby's diaper and clothes.

"But I don't know what to put on her."
"It doesn't matter," I say. "Just give her a onesie or something."
"Why do I have to make all the decisions?"
"What are you talking about?"
"It's too many decisions! You try making decisions sometime!"

I'm genuinely confused at this point. So I shut up and continue folding cloth diapers fresh from the dryer.

Finally he chooses the green "Daddy's Princess" onesie.

A minute later, she's still in nothing but a diaper.

JT: "I can't get it over her head. Her head is too big now."
"Yeah. Her head has grown. But it's not too big."
"I've forgotten how to do it," he says.
"Here: I'll show you--you just roll it up this way and make the opening wider..."
"I can't do it."
"Well, honey, how are you doing it when I'm not here?"
"I don't know. It just happens."
"It does, huh?"
"I think you should do it."
"Honey, what's wrong with you?"
"You do it, okay?" (Walking away) "The definition of a crime is an act, committed or omitted in violation of a law forbidding or commanding it..."

The Talk

Yesterday JT had to go to his old department to turn in a tape recorder he never used. Just one of those things they gave him eight years ago when he started, and it's been collecting dust in his parents' garage. We took JY (our baby) and made an evening of showing her off to his former coworkers. A lot of them had given us gifts when she was born, and I felt a little guilty about not having brought her over sooner. They loved her of course, and our little empress even deigned to let a few of them hold her!

While they were tickling her toes and arguing over who she resembles more, I got a couple different versions of The Talk. I'm sure every spouse of a police officer has heard it before--the "Hang in there because it's gonna get rough" Talk.

They say he's going to change. That the mild-mannered, "cuddly" person I married will disappear once he starts learning how to survive and establish control. It was JT's former chief of police who said to me: "Police work takes a toll on any marriage, but it's the couples who are already married before academy that have the roughest time with it." (Thanks for the sunny outlook, Chief.)

I'm not going to pretend this doesn't scare me. Marriage is hard enough when you vow to spend your life with someone you think will stay relatively the same for the next fifty years (no matter how annoying they become in the process!). Women are told not to marry a bad boy and expect him to "change" because that will never happen. Well, I was careful to avoid that scenario--only to find myself in one where my perfectly lovable husband may go and change on me after all!

So how do I plan to deal with it if one day he comes home and, in El Jefe's words, becomes a "completely different person"? I have no idea. But this blog will at least give me a place to reflect on everything as it happens. It will be my lifeline to dignity, sanity, and self-respect.