Usually when I’m asked to speak somewhere or write something, it’s to give insight into the lives of Canadian Forces families to a culture that doesn’t know a whole lot about them. Or what they do know, they see on the news or on Lifetime, a jaded, spun and less than realistic portrayal of a life. Many many days, the military plays very little role in my day to day activities. I get up, I go to a gym in my (civilian) community. I get my kids off to (a civilian run) school. I go to work. I happen to work on the base part time, so that part is a little skewed. But then I come home. I take my kids to Jiu Jitsu at another off base gym. I clean up and watch Netflix. I start over. So while the undertones of my life have been set by my spouse’s employment (I live where we were told, not where we choose. I sleep alone though I’ve been married 14 years), for those mundane daily activities we’re not any different. We’re average. My spouse, though in a combat trade and on his 4th deployment, has never been wounded, emotionally or physically. We walk through life like everyone else. Except we don’t. Not always. And there are times of year where the military stops being one of those quiet sideline participants and starts screaming for center stage like a tantrum throwing toddler. That’s the season of life we are in now. And I could yell from the rooftops that the military is ‘just a…
So I spent time I didn’t have today watching sappy reunion videos on YouTube. I got linked to one on facebook and that led to another of course and like some kind of sick addiction, I kept clicking those buttons like somehow I had both the time and the hydration to spare. But as I sat afterwards, I thought back to the conversation I have had with many people about Internet reality. Have you seen the website It’s Like They Know Us? If you haven’t, go there now.It will open a new window, go ahead. Hilarious, right? Because while having a baby is beautiful and wonderful in many senses, it is also horrible, messy and sometimes terribly, terribly painful. So is everything in life. Everything. And so the reason we lash out at things like unrealistic photos of women in white pants on their periods playing on beige carpeting with perfectly clean toddlers is that it hide the messy. Not just the literal mess, because holy crap this is what my son looked like the last time we were in public. But perfect Internet photos also hide the other mess. The real mess. Stock mom and newborn photos hide what 72 hours of labour, more stitches in places you cant see that anyone should have, a terrified husband and a baby in the NICU when you haven’t even had time to sleep. Ripping your stitches walking to the incubator at 2 am and hiding your exhausted tears in the breast pump room so the nurses won’t see because you’re afraid they’ll think you can’t cut it. And stock couple photos hide the 8am screaming matches, dirty looks and those times when you were…
So this week, I was inspired. Having read before about Sarah Smiley’s book “Dinner with the Smileys“, I was intrigued about the idea of inviting community members to join us for dinner or adventure during my husband’s current deployment. Our last posting and the deployments we endured at it were made bearable by the people we knew. The community that supported us. And while there are people here who have welcomed us so wonderfully, it is a much quieter place. Our home is not the open door of activity it had been when we were living in our old community. But who’s fault was that? Dh has big shoes to fill and we would never replace him. He couldn’t be replaced. He is their dad, invincible and bigger than life in their eyes. As it should be. He adores them and they adore him. Nothing will ever change that. But there is a chance here to fill his temporary absence in my kid’s lives with the wisdom, support and encouragement of their community. So the kids and I brainstormed. We had an opportunity here to learn about our community and grow in our relationships in it. There was a chance to learn, about occupations, about people, about supporting each other and making connections. And since even here on this blog I’ve written about filling those empty chairs with the people around you looking to fill one, it was time to step up. With dad away, we have many months of time that we could be intentional about inviting people from our commmunity to join us. Who would we start with? So we made…
At the request of some who have asked for more info about our No-Gift Birthdays, I thought I’d explain a little. When Freckles was turning 3 I found myself down in the playroom, sorting toys and packing some away for charity. Some had barely been played with. I thought of the time and expense those toys had cost the people who had picked them out for him. I thought of how many toys we were holding on to not because my child liked them most, but because of who bought them for him. I thought of how many more toys were coming at this upcoming party and how long we would hold on to those ones, too. Mostly, I thought of how unnecessary it all was and how there had to be a better way. For the next couple years, we played around with birthdays for my oldest 2. We tried themes, one year buying a fish tank and encouraging people to help fill it with fish and accessories as a gift. Which was nice until the fish that your best friend gave you dies. So that was a no-go. Then we tried nothing. Bring nothing, we said. Just yourselves. People still brought toys. Then that next year my youngest son was born and my friends wanted to host a Baby Shower. Except, my goodness I had more than enough from my last babies. I couldn’t possibly need more. So since Dh was deployed in Afghanistan, I decided instead that if my friends wished to bring a gift to the shower, it could be a generic gift for a new mom/baby and we would drop them off at the Regiment to be given out to all the new moms giving birth…
Some days you feel like a good mom. Lunches are made, homework is done, kids are bathed and in bed on time and it feels not only like you got everything done, but like you know them. You connected with each other them. You feel like you have accomplished what God had planned for you in their lives. And then there is, well, the other 363 or so days a year. Or maybe, that’s just me. But then you have other nights where you are scrambling to throw together remotely nutritious lunches they probably won’t eat anyways, realizing at 10pm you never asked about homework and can’t remember the last time they all had a bath. You feel disconnected with them and at a complete loss as to what it is you are supposed to be doing in their lives. There are lots of those days. At least, for me. And then, there are days like I had this week. Sitting in the emergency room at a rural hospital near my house, rubbing my dehydrated and flu-ish Monster’s back when I realize I can feel his spine distinctly through his shirt. And I think ‘has that always felt like that?’ And lifting the shirt of his fevered little back I see that he’s like…. fuzzy hairy. And I think “did he always have this much hair on him?” And I look at his ribs and think ‘how much skinnier is he than usual right now?’ I can tell them he weighed 12kg at his last trip to emergency last week, but before that? I stopped weighing my kids a while ago. I don’t…
Today, Monster turns 4. As in, my baby is 4. I don’t have a baby anymore. There are no more cribs or diapers in my house. I am so okay with that. Yesterday, we had an Angry Bird’s party for 9 toddlers and I watched as my baby played and talked and opened cards. Instead of gifts, he raised almost $150 for the Soldier On Fund. You have not been reading long if you think I made these. Check out https://www.facebook.com/groups/108334602588902/ Today on his actual day of birth, I rostered in his class. Let me just get something out there. I hate rostering. Seriously, I may be a terrible parent for admitting it, but I don’t like a room full of preschoolers. I don’t like craft time or centers. I don’t look forward to the ‘opportunity to be involved in my child learning experience at school’. I just…. don’t. But it was his birthday today and I smiled through the singing, the gym time and the cutting out of 25 cardboard stockings. During circle time, I noticed that all the kids have their pictures taped to the carpet where they sit during class. Almost all of them. Along with a couple other kids, Monster’s picture is taped to one of the chairs beside the carpet and that’s where he sits. I had noticed this before, but I took my opportunity there to ask the teacher how come he sits in the chair instead of on the carpet. And the perpetually happy teacher (aren’t all preschool teachers simply the happiest people? I thank God people like them were…
When going through the MOUNDS of paper my son brought home from school from this year, I found this. It’s priceless. And it made me think what he thinks my husband does all day at work! Now I am not a keeper of stuff. I keep a few things each year per kid. I’m not going to keep it all. What will he do with boxes of old colouring pages and math equations? But this, this is a keeper. What I want to be when I Grow Up When I grow up I want to be in the army. I want to be in the military because my dad is in the military. I also want to blow stuff up so I can keep our country free. I will train hard to rank up. I will listen to my boss, do parades and shoot from a tank. I will be still at attention. I will have to know to be sneaky. I will have to listen to commands to know what to do. I’ll shoot at targets and exercise. When I’m a sargent I will have a stick. I’ll yell at my men. By (Freckles) So this made me want to write a reply. One I will keep with it. And if in fact this is the choice my son makes when he grows up, I will remind myself the kind of mom I wanted to be when I grew up. Because the older he gets the harder I feel like it will be to do this army thing from the Mom’s perspective, and not the wives. What will happen when I have to let…
When your last blog was really nice and emotional and heartwarming and then you have to write another one about…… something…. it sucks. I was going to try to not even bother writing anything until after Loops for the Troops, but that didn’t seem like the answer either. So, I will write about something totally silly and mostly meaningless to break it up a little. If you want to read something good, you might want to just go back to this post. But if your still with me here, lets talk about small. Small can be a good or bad thing. When you are trying to lose weight, smaller is the goal. When it comes to diamonds, small doesn’t have quite the same appeal. Small is relative. Well, my 3 children are small. Not small like young. Small like “awe, he’s so cute, is he walking yet?” about your 3 year old. Small like never hitting the bottom end of the 3rd percentile on the growth chart. When I had my first, he was born average size. Now, by average size I mean actually average, not Dutch-community where I live average, where ladies have 11lb babies without a hitch. I mean 7.5lb average. But weeks went by and well, while he didn’t lose weight, he gained it very…..slowly. After a couple of check-ups I was on daily weight monitoring with him, We got sent to testing for Cystic Fibrosis and every other possible disorder that might cause stunted growth. All turned out fine. They had us feed him solid foods early, and mix in high-fat milks, creams and even…
