Hurry Up...and Wait...

 I've heard about it for years, I've joked about it for years, the mantra of the military is hurry up and wait...But OMG is the hurry up and wait getting to me this time.

We know what the orders are

We know the dates

We can't actually do anything because the actual orders themselves haven't dropped.   I need to get little dude on the CDC wait list, we need to find out if military housing is a viable option or if we need to secure civilian housing, we need to schedule movers and ship hubbys car...so many things to do and none of them can be done yet.  So many different pieces that all rely on each other.  

So I'm doing my best to channel my stress into productive actions.  We know regardless of all the other stuff that we will be selling our house, so I've moved into full scale get this place ready to list mode.  We have gone through our entire bedroom and purged our wardrobes down to what could probably be considered minimalist capsule wardrobes at this point.  I have thrown out/donated pretty much anything that doesn't bring me joy in every room except our master bathroom and office, and now we are preparing to move on to minor painting and landscaping work.  

Today we have a sitter for little dude so I'm hoping we can finish our master bathroom (I don't even want to think about the expired/old makeup I'm about to throw out), office, and hopefully go through the 2 giant totes of hand me downs for little dude that I haven't looked at yet (They all start at size 3T so he isn't ready for them but I honestly have no clue what people have given us) today.  It's an ambitious goal but one I'm willing to work towards.

One of the sailors at Hubby's command tested positive for the plague last week, he was technically exposed but they were both masked and more than 6 feet apart plus hubby is vaccinated so we aren't overly concerned about it being brought into the house, however out of an abundance of caution he will be staying home Monday so I'm hoping he can scoot our china cabinet and bar out from the wall in our dining room and tape around the edges for me so that I can get the trim work in there painted this week.  Things are starting to move into a bit slower season for me at work so I should be able to sneak in a few longer lunches this week to knock out some stuff.  Once we finish purging stuff really all that is left to do is paint the trim in our dining room and living room and put mulch in the flower beds.  I would also like to paint the master bathroom but at the same time I don't necessarily think that it will be a make or break item for selling the house. 

My real drop dead goal is to have my personal to-do list done by May 2 so that our realtor can come the first week of May and hopefully start helping me properly stage the house and take pictures to get things listed or at the very least give us her list of things we have missed.  

Wish me luck!

Starting a New School (Daycare) During a Global Pandemic

 Since a lot of kids are in the process of going back to school right now and I know that looks very different from last year for all of them wether they are going back for in person instruction or virtual learning or some sort of hybrid model due to the current pandemic I thought I would take a moment to talk about our decision to not only send Little Dude back to daycare but to start at a completely new facility in June during what we thought at the the time was the height of the pandemic for our area.  

The daycare that Little Dude attended in Virginia Beach from the time he was 11 weeks old until he was approximently 8 months old (with a brief hiatus when we had to go back to Kentucky to help my mom while she recovered from surgery) was perfectly fine.  I loved the diversity in students and staff and very much liked the way they were set up for infant care.  They allowed me to use cloth diapers and glass bottles and gave great daily reports about how Little Dude had spent his day.  

However there were 2 things I really did not like about this center - first and foremost they had an open floor plan with all ages other than infants separated by half walls at most and with 4 year olds and up in the same area together (the center also offers before and after care so there were 4 year olds in the same space as 7 or 8 year olds).  While not an inherently bad thing it is not a set up I would choose for my child to be in daily; specifically I would walk in sometimes and a child who had learned a new 4 letter word would be using it loudly so that all of the other children were now learning a 4 letter word, while my husband and I certainly drop our share of F bombs I don't want my child to learn those words sooner than necessary.  Second, and perhaps more importantly, the center does not allow parents to provide their childs food, all children must eat the food provided by the center.   While the center serves a perfectly fine USDA menu similar to what I had when I was in school my husband and I don't necessarily agree with these guidelines (more on that later) so for these two reasons we had left Little Dude on the waiting list at a couple of other daycares that we like more than the one he was at in VB in hopes that something would open up before he was too far into solid foods.

Luckily for us a global pandemic happened and Little Dude was home with me starting in mid-March before he was really eating more than vegetables at daycare and I had full control over the food he ate daily.  

Working from home with an infant is not easy, even though he was only really army crawling and not getting into things yet it was tough juggling giving him the attention he needed and getting my work done.  Many nights I would log back on after putting Little Dude to bed or be feeding him dinner in my office while I continued to work because trying to juggle being a full time single mom (remember hubby was deployed until mid June) with being a full time work from home employee was tough.   

In the beginning of May I realized that Little Dude was starting to need more hands on attention than I could provide and still get work done, so I called in reinforcements, my mom came to stay with me for a little over 2 weeks and I was able to bust my butt and get reasonably caught up with my work.  I knew it would still be tough working from home once she left but we had a general idea that hubby would be home soon and I knew once he came home worst case I could make up the time I needed to stay caught up with my job in the evenings after he came home from work.  

Luck was on my side though.  The day my mom left my phone rang and it was Lincoln's daycare, they had a spot available for him if I wanted it.  I didn't have to take it and I could keep my spot on the wait list until another spot opened up but I could start as early as the next Monday if I wanted.   

I talked with the daycare director about the steps they were taking to mitigate COVID-19 risks and decided that the best option for my mental health, Little Dude's development, and our family as a whole was to send him to daycare.  While there was certainly a higher risk having him at daycare than having him at home I was impressed by the steps the school was already taking and decided that it was worth the risk for us.  

Little Dude has now been at daycare for almost 3 months and there hasn't been a single red flag.  They center has not had any cases of COVID among the students, staff, or had any reported related to the immediate households that any students are part of.  I am a little extra concerned right now as school is starting back up since the center is integrated with a K-12 school but they are even taking extra steps to protect students there by limiting interactions between grades, using different entrances for various grade levels and keeping staff assigned by age range (daycare, K-2, 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12) and keeping lunches in classrooms.  

Overall I think that it is a tough decision that parents are having to make and that each of us has to make the best decision we can for our families while balancing the risk of exposure against work obligations, technology access, developmental and social needs of the child, and mental health of all involved.  I even have one friend who has enrolled her youngest in a private school so that he can attend in person starting day 1 this year while keeping her daughter home for virtual learning through the public schools simply because the children have different personalities and needs and she felt that was the best option for each kid.  

It's tough being a parent and I want all of you to know that as long as you make the best decision you can with the information available in the moment you aren't doing anything wrong and you are a great mom/dad for your kid.  

 

Care Packages During Deployments

 Do you ever wonder the best way to send a care package to a deployed service member?  Or wonder what to send?  I don't necessary know about other branches but with deployed sailors in the US Navy the answer is simple...AMAZON PRIME!  

Last time my husband deployed I did  great job of sending a flat rate box full of goodies every month.  I took joy in making trips to the store to pick out items to send, decorating and filling the box, and going to the post office to drop it in the mail.  The USPS does a great job of making sending care packages as easy as possible, they even have a great kit you can order delivered straight to your house of shipping supplies. You can even order the kit here it comes with boxes, tape, address labels, and even customs forms.  

But here's the thing, this deployment I had a new baby, traveled to help take care of my mom after she had surgery, and then COVID-19 struck and I tried to avoid unnecessary trips to public places...so Amazon became my saving grace as a wife.  

Here are the perks of using Amazon to send your deployment care packages:

1. Free Shipping
2. Ability to send exactly what your service member needs without pressure to fill a specific size box
3. Flat rate boxes are all the same size and shape and therefore stack nicely, meaning they are usually bundled on the same pallet.  If a mail drop gets cut short guess which pallets have to wait until the next mail drop, that's right the ones that are nothing but flat rate boxes of care packages
4. If an order doesn't arrive in a reasonable amount of time Amazon will give you your money back, one of my orders for my husband (that I ordered in February) was split into two packages.  One package arrived in late March, the second package was just delivered to his office this week.  Amazon refunded the purchase price of the items in the second package in April when I submitted a claim that it wasn't delivered.  While flat rate boxes do include insurance the filing process with the USPS for your insurance claim is probably a little more difficult than just clicking a button in your Amazon account.

So all in all I realized that I did not totally fail as a wife this deployment with the care packages and hopefully others will take this to know that it's ok if you just use the ease of online shopping to send your loved ones the things they need.  Service members love getting cards from their kids and things from home but sometimes when they ask for a specific brand of granola bars it really is better to spend the extra $2 from Amazon and just order it on the spot. 

The Power of a Praying Wife

For my first focus of the Lenten season I am reading The Power of a Praying Wife by Stormie Omartian.  My intention is to read one chapter per day, so today I will be reading chapter 4.   I am very impressed by Stormie's straightforward approach and the way she speaks straight to the reader, be they the wife of a devout Christian or of an Atheist.   I find myself relating to a lot of the points she makes (who hasn't prayed for their husband to change and start putting his socks in the laundry basket on his own, or spoken to him out of anger instead of love?) and am going to make a concentrated effort to pray for him in the right way and let God bless our marriage in the way he intends for it to be blessed.   I'm really excited to finish the book and may even read ahead.

Here is an image of the book cover/link to it on Amazon if you are interested:


There is also an edition specifically for military wives, be they the wives of AD service members or service members themselves which is available for free through many military chaplains.

Love letters

Do you write real true to goodness letters? Not emails, not cards, REAL pen to paper, pour out your heart, letters?

I actually do from time to time. My grandma has email but who doesn’t love getting a letter in the mail every now and then? So sometimes—even though my handwriting is horrible-I will sit down and send her a letter. She has never mentioned them to me directly but apparently every time she gets a letter she calls my mom and goes on and on about how much they enjoy getting letters from me. I don’t send them nearly enough but about 3-4 times a year I sit down and for no reason other than because I know they will appreciate it, I write my grandparents a letter.

But what about love letters, I have no idea how to write a proper love letter but I do love my husband very much, and I do send him letters on a regular basis.

Let me start at the beginning:

When my husband went to boot camp I wasn’t sure what to expect. I didn’t know how often he would have access to email, and I knew how many spam emails he received so I didn’t want to risk him missing my quick notes to him buried in the spam. So instead I started writing him letters. I knew he would get mail on a regular basis so I wrote him a letter every day (almost) and mailed them at least 3X per week. He said between me and a few old ladies from the church he received some sort of letter or card almost every day at mail call. These notes and letters helped keep him from getting as homesick and made the time pass a little faster.

My husband also sent me letters while he was in boot camp, and boy oh boy did I LIVE for those letters. He usually mailed them once a week(ish) and if I hadn’t received one by the time the mail man came on Thursday I was pretty antsy at work on Friday knowing there should be a letter waiting on me when I got home. There was something about seeing his handwriting that just made the separation a little easier. I carried the letters around with me in my purse and would read them over and over again.

After my husband graduated from boot camp I took all of the letters from boot camp and created three binders full of letters, notes and cards in page protectors so that in 20 years we can look back on that time and remember (or in 100 years our great-great grandkids can talk about how funny cursive handwriting looks!) One binder is letters from me to hubby, one is letters from him to me and the third is all of the other notes and cards and letters he received from friends and family. I did my best to arrange the binders in chronological order but of course not everyone dates ever card/letter so the third binder is arranged more by person than time line.

Now my husband is gone on his first deployment. We are lucky because his job gives him constant access to internet (as long as they aren’t in River City) and therefore we can send and receive emails throughout the day. However there is still something special about a written letter, so I have once again started the practice of writing a letter every day. I hope that they mean as much to him as they do to me and he keeps them again so that I can add them to the collection. I’m also anxious to see if he sends me real letters again, I hope so because I did love them so much during boot camp.

But the question still stands…How does one write a proper love letter? In my head I envision myself writing flowery prose about how my heart flutters at the sound of his name like something from Jane Austen, in practice I when I reread my letters they sound more like a note passed across a kindergarten classroom, do you like me check yes or no. In reality I am sure I fall somewhere in the middle…so how about you? Do you write love letters to your significant other? Any tips on how I can make my letters something that would make Jane Austen proud and a Nora Roberts blush without being embarrassing? I promise to share any secrets I come up with over the next XX months while hubby is gone.