Picking Up Speed

I keep a personal blog, too, so I only come over here to write when I'm thinking about Guard-wife related things.  The spring of 2012 was really good for us as a family.  We finally got into a groove--the one weekend a month thing wasn't kicking our butts anymore.  Then in May, my weekend warrior (MWW) had the opportunity to finish his promotion packet and had to split train his drill weekend in order to take a physical fitness test.  While he was there, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and was volunteered to work an extra week in May, which coincided with the last weeks of school for me, which created massive amounts of stress.

Which we survived.

And now, as we're heading to the end of July, MWW is spending another non-drill weekend working on Guard stuff (SRP processing), so we're here alone, and I'm thinking about the next five weeks and how crazy things are going to get as MWW prepares for July drill and three weeks of annual training.  All of this will occur as I'm gearing up for the new school year and really could use the extra support at home.

But, alas, we will survive.

It's just a little anxiety-inducing, now that the almost 2-year-old Baby Bear is biting, and the 3-year-old Goldilocks is being...a 3-year-old girl.  Yesterday, she cried and screamed because she wanted to sleep in her bedroom during naptime, but I had given her a chance and she kept waking Baby Bear up.  Finally, she passed out in my bedroom.  At bedtime, she was screaming because she didn't want to sleep in her bedroom (but she did).

I'm also coming to a point where I have to put on my own big girl panties in dealing with the kids.  They want they want they want.  Lots of things.  They scream and cry if they don't get them.  I completely understand why there are spoiled kids out there, because the tantrums stink, and life in the short-run would be so much easier with less screaming.

But, I'm starting to weigh the long-term effects.  What are we teaching our children?  That they can have anything/everything they want, any/every time that want it?  That's hardly a life lesson.

Here are some specific thoughts.
1.  TV -- It's summertime, it's hot, and we're watching more TV than we do during the school year.  I'm not proud of that fact, but it is what it is right now (though as I'm typing this, the kids have the couch cushions off and are building castles and trains and boats, taking trips to the beach and the circus, and whatever else their imaginations fancy--it's actually pretty refreshing and gives me hope that I'm not ruining their minds this summer...well, except that they're humming the tune to Elmo's World as they're dragging the cushions around into new formations).  I know people who use the "on demand" function of their cable provider to show kids shows when they're wanted.  I see some use for this function, but I know that it is overused to proactively eliminate tantrums.  Goldilocks frequently is screaming at me that she wants to watch Dora.  Well, Dora's not on.  Deal with it.  I've had opportunity to talk with her about a television schedule, about being patient, about not getting to watch what she wants to watch.  And yes, I've had to weather the tantrums.  BUT, they are becoming fewer and farther between.

2.  FOOD -- We visited my family in Texas a week or so ago, and one night we had my mom's taco salad for dinner.  The kids were at first resistant to eating, and my mother suggested that she had something else they could eat.  Yeah, that would have made feeding them easier.  But guess what?  We are not short order cooks.  So, we held the line and the kids did eventually eat what was put in front of them, even if they didn't eat a lot of it (more for me!).  For my particular brood, I'm not concerned about eating habits because they are generally bottomless pits that will eat most anything.  So, if they choose not to eat what is being served for dinner, there is not a menu change.  I'm not saying that it's never happened before and won't happen again (I'm human, though I may seem superhuman at times), BUT I am saying that I'm more mindful of not giving in to tantrums, riding it through--isn't it our responsibility to teach our children to respond in appropriate and productive ways to the experience of disappointment?

So, in this trying time with two children at a willful age, the challenge of parenting solo is one that will make my hair go gray, will make me scream and cry myself, but when we survive, it will make us better people--all of us.

Hello 2012

Time flies. December drill was broken up by the wedding of a fellow JAG on Saturday (so my weekend warrior drilled Friday and Sunday), and MWW was a part of the saber guard. I had never seen him in dress uniform, so that was a nice perk to driving two hours with two children who had been having vomiting and diarrhea earlier in the week.

The children were invited to the wedding (the bride loves our children) and there were many children there. Thankfully, my husband and his nerd JAG buddies wanted to sit in the second to last pew, because, yes, that was MY Goldilocks who was singing The Itsy-Bitsy Spider during the vows, who said "AMEN!" loudly after everyone else causing the congregation to chuckle, who found my hairbrush in my purse and was trying to brush the hair of the people sitting in front of us. Yup. That's my girl. The same girl was running around like a crazed chicken at the reception. The house party was very nervous every time she approached the buffet tables at full speed. She also is tall enough now that if she reaches up on a table, she gets something. None of the finger foods were safe.

Baby Bear, on the other hand, was calm, cool, and collected. He didn't even cry as I left him at the table with the other wives to dash off after his vivacious sister.

Anyway, MWW spent the majority of the holiday break (since the day after Christmas) overseas visiting his best friend. He came home on Thursday night and went immediately to sleep. He woke up Friday morning, went to work, came home, packed, and went to drill.

We miss him.

But, aside from that, it's a weekend we don't have any plans--nowhere to be and nothing we have to do. I'm going to enjoy it while I can because I already know that this spring is going to fill up quickly.

I do have this vision of a clutter-free life--environmental clutter, body clutter, and financial clutter--for 2012. One room at a time, one pound at a time, one expenditure at a time. We'll see how it goes.

Drill Weekend 11/11

Well, it's drill weekend again, and MWW just left in his carpool to go report for the next two days.

It must just be season of our life, but I feel like whenever the toddler asks, "Where's Daddy?" I'm always telling her, "He's at work." We were having a conversation the other day about how our house is our home, trying to introduce that word, and Goldilocks kept insisting that MWW's work was his house, and therefore his home (in toddler reasoning, anyway). Yikes.

So, we keep busy. Weekends that he's away, we have some sort of outing, and we make sure that we get up and get moving to church on Sunday. This weekend we are going to a kids-invited Pampered Chef party, and probably going for a ride in the wagon, since Goldi asked specifically about that. And tomorrow we'll spend time with our friends at church, that she asks about daily. And then he'll be home.

I'm sure liking this one weekend a month thing better than the 5.5 consecutive months of absence...

AT

MWW leaves tonight for Annual Training (AT). This is the the "two weeks a year" part of the weekend warrior description [one weekend a month, two weeks a year]. This should be no sweat since we survived his Advanced Individual Training (AIT) for five months this spring, but there will be challenges.

In February, I was in the middle of a school year. Now, I've been in school for one week, so the stress levels are much higher as I put in the extra effort to start the year off right.

And now I have two toddlers. Today is Baby Bear's first birthday--he's been walking for about four weeks now. Goldilocks is two as of May and is a stereotypical two, so that makes everything interesting, and by interesting I mean crazy and dramatic.

We're still trying to get back into our routine since the summer was not as high structure. That makes the absence of the other parent that much more of a challenge, because I have to be more organized.

I'll get it together. It just stinks that AT is in August. But, such is life.

Two weeks. We can do this.

Back in the Weekend Warrior Mode

We're glad to have MWW back at home, and we're ironing out the wrinkles in our routine. He's been busy getting back into the swing of things at his civilian job, working through a backlog of cases and sorting out the mess that the interim attorney left for him. Things will be much better next month as I go back to work and we have an actual routine again, not this make-it-up-as-I-go staying home with the kids thing (I'm a teacher, so summers are just awkward anyway). And it will be better because MWW will have a grip on things at work again and be less stressed. Maybe.

This last weekend was the first drill weekend since MWW came back from training last month, and of course it was a 3-day drill. Honestly, it was much easier to do the three day thing now that I've done the 5-month thing. What I am not really looking forward to is his TWO WEEKS A YEAR part of being in the National Guard, because those two weeks coincide with my first two weeks back at school with students, and probably one of those nights will be Open House, so I'll have to figure something out.

I do thank the Lord that he will not be gone the first week of August, which is when I go back for teacher inservice. Those are the nights that I will want to stay a little longer trying to get stuff done.

So, actually, we won't be able to find a new normal until September. Okay. That's reasonable. I'll have a 1-year-old by then. He'll be walking (nay, running) up a storm, I'm sure, while the 2-year-old continues to become more and more spirited. Haha. And I'll be back at work, so it will be easier to find balance.

Guelph Therapy

I'm writing this post from Guelph, Ontario.

Strange name, mundane place. But, it's a perfect place for the family to spend time together post-training. Yes, the time flew by in the end, and MWW is back home with us. Or, rather, in Canada with us. Wherever. :) We are here to work out the kinks before taking the circus on the road back to Alabama. Get to know one another, work out the kinks.

I think the hardest part now is holding my tongue and/or thinking before I speak (and then speaking in love, convincingly). I have a tendency to come across as defensive or sarcastic, or both sometimes. And so, when something is said that sets off alarm bells in my head, and the walls of self-protection spring into place in my mind and heart, I have to remember: He hasn't been here. He didn't mean it the way I heard it. He doesn't know.

And then I have to talk myself down from that ledge. On my family blog, I recently wrote a post on bitterness, mostly about my recovery from a job situation from three years ago now. Sometimes when I have the above-described reaction, I have to search and see if that taste is in my mouth. Am I bitter that he gets wound up about a screaming child at bedtime, knowing full well that he just had five months of mostly uninterrupted sleep at night? Yes, sometimes the taste is there (have I mentioned that the 10-month-old doesn't sleep for stretches longer than 3 hours still?), and sometimes it's not. Depends on the day, depends on the interaction, depends on whether or not I got a nap. Haha.

The good news is that we're both still growing. We are not static individuals. We just need to remember and practice how to communicate with each other again without making assumptions. I was reminded of this during the sermon at my cousin's wedding this past weekend as the pastor explicated the "Love" verses from Corinthians. She mentioned that love assumes nothing, but rather makes sure to clearly communicate and have all necessary information. Oh, yeah. That. I'm working on it. It will get better.

Adjusting

It's been one month since I last posted over here. We had MWW at home for a couple of days before he had to report to Fort Benning, and it was wonderful and stressful both. He was sweet and supportive most of the time, but sometimes it felt like he forgot that he hadn't been here for four months and would say or do something that was insensitive. It wasn't on purpose, mind you, but it was stressful because I had to remember not to take it personally. However, the good definitely outweighs the not-so-good of having him home.

Since Mother's Day, he's been coming home on weekends and a lot of the time it feels like we're slightly out of sync (though that may just be that we're on Central time and he's on Eastern, even when he's here with us). But we're adjusting.

I wonder if they'll do any reintegration training before they leave Fort Benning before Father's Day weekend? And if they do, will he pay attention? Or will he think that it doesn't pertain to him since he's been coming home on weekends? I hope he at least doesn't tune them out.

Two more weeks until we have him with us for the long haul, you know, except for that whole one weekend a month, two weeks a year thing. This time has really flown by. If I didn't work full-time and have two little ones to keep up with and a slew of good friends to check up on me, I would be out of my mind. I thank the Lord for the people he has put in my life to make this time apart more bearable.

Until next time.