For those of you with a military move on the horizon, here’s 54 quick and easy steps to get you on your way. Listen to spouse spend 1-11 months talking with certainty about things the Chain of Command or Career Manager have told him regarding his posting. Resign yourself that a move this year is likely. Start half-ass ‘decluttering’. Plan for a garage sale you won’t have time to ever put on. Come up with smart ass response to the questions “where are you moving?” and “when are you moving?” before they drive you insane. Realize you never did put back the baseboards you took when you put in the floors. Hastily put them on. Realize your walls need painting first. Paint all the walls. Realize you probably only need 6 hours sleep a night. Start to panic early March – Mid April when no Posting Message has been received. Listen to spouse spend 1-6 weeks talking with certainty about things the Chain of Command or Career Manager have told him regarding the ‘for sure coming any day now’ message. Say goodbye to spouse for deployment/course/exercise. Receive posting message next day. For entirely different location than discussed. Register with Brookfield. Get lulled into a false sense of hope that it was not that hard to log in online. Contact Realtor. Find Power of Attorney at the bottom of a drawer. Find a price point somewhere between “I need this to sell quickly” and “I need to afford to buy a house when I sell this“. List the house. Meet with Brookfield. Check off everything you want them to tell you about like you know how this is going…
Last year a couple months before Christmas, Dh left on one of those last minute gotta-run-babe-not-sure-when-I’ll-be-back-love-you deployments. As Christmas came, we had settled into a routine. And while I had made some purposeful plans for the kids so we wouldn’t sit on our butt and feel sorry for ourselves (volunteering for Santa’s Anonymous, Food Bank drives, etc), as the day approached none of us were in the mood. Then on the 23rd my 12 year old crawled into bed with me in the early morning and said “I don’t feel like having a Christmas where we pretend it’s okay Dad isn’t here.” I thought about that a long time. This wasn’t the kid’s first deployment by a long shot, they knew how it worked. I couldn’t make Dad appear, the hard truth he was a world away and we could pray our hearts out but there would be no Christmas surprises with him under the tree. He wouldn’t be there. But did that mean we had to have a crappy Christmas? Were we obligated to have less of a day because he wasn’t there? It was then I realized that we had options. In fact, there were things that we could do BECAUSE Dh wasn’t with us. Not just what we could do ‘still’ but what we could do INSTEAD. Dh isn’t a fan of big cities or crowds, so while I’d always wanted to go to NYC, he wasn’t so keen. New York City also terrifies me. So there’s that. I mean…
Today I went to a kid’s Remembrance Day service the day before the stat holiday tomorrow here in Alberta. Dh came, in uniform. This is something he does the odd year he’s in town because it makes my kids unbelievably happy and he’s a good dad. Even though he looks about as comfortable as a very polite bull in a very loud china shop. And they did all the things we do at Remembrance Services. They read “In Flanders Fields.” They sang a song. We sang O Canada listened to the Last Post and we had a moment of silence. Then the kids laid wreaths. And during it all, it was loud. The school goes from preschool age all the way to grade 8. The young kids are just that; young. They whispered until the whispers grew louder. They fidgeted. They fussed. And teachers, they tried diligently to teach them to stop. To make them be quiet and respectful. It only sometimes worked. I remembered then those days when I had very small ones. And I would stand, on my own usually, in the back of a crowded gym on Remembrance Day at 11am. And I’d bounce and I’d feed and I’d beg and I’d do literally everything physically possible to keep my babies quiet. I usually failed. One time I got up with a fussing baby, and I went to leave, not wanting his muted wailing to interrupt the ceremony. Just outside the door an older Veteran grabbed my arm and he said ‘let him cry. We’re still glad you’re here.’ And then, with Dh a world away,I cried too. Today my youngest son and…
The following is a loose transcript of the 2nd half of my key note speech at this year’s Military Family Services conference. I’m so grateful for the opportunity I had to share at the conference and hope that it was even a little successful in what I set out to do, which was only share a story in the hopes it would get people thinking. I’m just one family and have only my own voice. Thanks so much for letting it be heard. After sharing my story, I think it’s important that we first understand that I am coming from just one family. We are not special; there are thousands just like us out there. But we all come from slightly different perspectives. The Canadian Forces has many different trades, jobs and postings that will all lend itself to very different experiences. Each military unit has its own unique culture. And each family within it, their own story. Blended families. Dual services families. Same sex partnerships, families with or without children. We can run the gamut of religious, political and social diversity. Looking at us all, what then is our goal? Are we looking for temporary fixes or long term resiliency? Are we giving tools or band aids? If we are, in fact, trying to teach families resiliency, how do we do that? Well, I can say that in our story, I know what didn’t work. There were times that I received more services than others. One deployment, I even received help from the Regiment by the way of a driver to take me to appointments that I was unable to drive to for medical reasons. Which was amazing, and needed at the time as we were new and I…
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…
I like to play favorites with my kids. I like to say things like ‘You’re my favorite oldest son.’ ‘You’re my favorite daughter.’ ‘You’re my favorite kid in this room right now.’ Or, more simply, ‘you are my favorite kid named insert child’s name here‘. Eventually Freckles got wise. He started to say ‘But I’m you’re ONLY one!’. Which I could have laughed at and left. Because how terrible would it be if we then told him that actually we had at least half a dozen test Freckle’s before him who live under the stairs because they didn’t meet standard? I mean, a good parent wouldn’t tease their child that if they keep annoying them they’ll just put him with the ‘other Frecke’s’ and try again. So obviously, that has never happened….. …… When Freckles was born, he had a slight disadvantage from the other kids. I was his mom. And I had never held a baby before. I had never fed a baby. Never changed a baby. Never cuddled or comforted or spent even 1 minute trying to convince a baby to stop crying. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. After Freckles was born I made DH show me how to change a diaper quickly while the nurses were out of the room so they wouldn’t think I was incompetent. My inexperience didn’t stop me in any way from judging other parents, mind you. Oh, I judged. And when I saw those posters advocating against shaking your baby, I thought ‘…
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…
