Category: Mommying

The Life of the Military Mommy Examined…

There are deployments to handle, ridiculous work schedules to contend with when deployment is not on the table, and let’s not forget the ever entertaining moving every coupla years whether you need it or not aspect! I am a very lucky military spouse, in that my hubby hasn’t deployed in a while and we have been in one place for three and a half years (though we’re moving in a month!) But this post is dedicated to all the other MMs out there who don’t have it so easy, and who deal regularly with some of the downfalls of being a military mommy:

1. Doing it all yourself. You came into this marriage happy, bright and maybe the teensiest bit naïve… a crisp military uniform will do that to even the strongest and most practical woman (trust me on that one – I am she.) And you thought to yourself, “we’re in love. We can handle anything.” And then he left. And the crap flew. It is a little known fact that things only go wrong when your husband is deployed or traveling for extended periods. During my hubby’s last extended all-expenses paid trip to the Middle East, every smoke alarm in our house went off at the same time at 2am. That’ll scare the night cream right off yer face, let me assure you!

The military member leaves, and often leaves a family behind. For a long ass mutherfurkin time. And the spouse muddles on, managing a house (and all the glorious chores that go with it – including all the ones HE usually does), kids, a job (sometimes – we’ll get to that one) and more. And that time when you get home from work and the kids are just home from school and everyone needs something and the whole world is melting down but it will be okay soon because your husband will come home to distract the crazy orangutans you call your children? Yeah, he’s not coming. You’re on your own.

2. Being considered lazy. We’ve established that the military mommy can be quite busy, particularly if the hubs is away. And yet there are those who call military spouses lazy because many of us do not work your typical 9-to-5 job, and many of us do not work outside the home at all. Hmm… why would that be? Let’s role-play, shall we?

Interviewer: So, you’re new in town? What brings you to (insert name of military town here)?
MM: My husband is stationed here.
Interviewer: Oh. So you’ll be leaving soon then.
MM: We just arrived. We’ll be here at least two years.
Interviewer: Okay. We’ll let you know.

Yeah. So there’s that.

3. Marriage isn’t easy. And when one of you is away, it’s damned near impossible. In some ways it becomes MUCH easier since you get to do whatever you want, make the decisions that you think are right and comfortably settle into YOUR life. But the difficulty comes when big decisions must be made at a distance. Skype doesn’t really replace the face-to-face, side by side conversations that marriage and parenting often demand to succeed. And when my hubs was gone last time I often didn’t hear from him for weeks at a time. So sometimes I just had to do things on my own without his input. And what happens when your beloved spouse comes back home – into YOUR house, where you have been comfortably doing things YOUR way for however many months he’s been gone? Damn tootin. It blows.

Welcome home, dear! Don’t touch a damned thing!

4. Your kids didn’t sign up for this. I don’t know about your kids, but my three year old and one year old don’t understand much about the passing of time. Turbo knows that two episodes of Dragon Tales last about as long as it takes Mommy to make dinner and that he goes to bed somewhere near the time that the sun begins to set. He doesn’t know what it means when I tell him that Daddy will be home in two weeks, much less two months or one year. Can you imagine telling your three year old that Daddy will be back when he’s FOUR? I haven’t had to go through this (yet), but women all around me do it every day. And I have no idea how.

With older kids, managing the constant moving is a struggle. Being a teenager is tough. Being a teenager who is the new kid in school every other year is even tougher. And these moms get to explain to, cajole and console their kids with every new town, every new school. Sure, in the long run they’ve built enviable life experience, but does a twelve year old really need to think about that yet?

5. Being a Nomad sucks. When you move to a new town every few years, you go through many of the same routines – figuring out where to shop, where to eat, how to get from point A to point B. And you meet your new neighbors. And the new teachers. And all the other spouses stationed in this new place. And after you’ve done it a few times, it isn’t too exciting to have everything be new. In fact, you just start to want for everything to be old. What a luxury it must be to live in the same house for ten years, or to get to know your neighbors really well, or to feel like you can make friends with anyone you want because you won’t have to experience the lurking sorrow of leaving them. The Military Mommy sometimes just doesn’t bother anymore. It’s too hard to get yourself ingrained in a community time and again only to leave. You start to tell people when you first meet them that you are a military spouse and therefore temporary. You might as well just wear a sign or scream, “I’m leaving soon. We can’t really be friends. Don’t get attached.”

And having said all that, I should probably say something like, “But I wouldn’t change it for the world.” And that wouldn’t be true. The fact is that I dream about having a “forever home,” and a place where my kids can live without wondering where we’ll live next. There are those who tell me, “You chose this life.” And all I can do is shake my head because they just don’t understand. I chose a man, and this is the life that came along with him. I wouldn’t give up the man. But the title of “military spouse?” Yeah, I’ll be happy to hang that one up someday.

Speaking the Truth

I am going to tell you the truth. It’s going to make me look bad, but it needs to be said because I think if I don’t say it, I might lose my freakin’ mind pretty darned soon. Sometimes I don’t enjoy being a mommy. Like, pretty often actually.

Now don’t get all high and mighty and suggest that I should’ve thought of that a long time ago, blah blah blah. I already tell myself that every day, but really — before you had kids could anyone tell you anything that measured up in the teesniest little bit to the crapstorm that actually IS having kids? No. Now keep in mind that I didn’t say — and I will never say — that I don’t like my kids. In fact, I love them and I would never ever give them back, even knowing everything that I know now. So quit eyeballing them. They’re MINE.

What I’m saying is that there are times, a lot of times, more times than I’d like to admit, that I am sitting in the midst of pillows flying, the baby screaming and Turbo shrieking and hurling himself off furniture, and I’m thinking, “I wish this would stop.” The times that I most often disenjoy (yes, it’s a word. I just made it up, so there.) being a mommy are the morning and the evening. The in between part (when I’m usually at work) is pretty okay. Does that make me a bad mommy?

In the mornings, Turbo hops out of bed promptly at the asscrack of dawn and refuses to give me three minutes to shower, put on makeup and get ready for work before he begins telling me all the things he wants. (Hot chocolate, a snack, a movie, not to go to school, not to get dressed, etc.) We have a bunny clock — the bunny is in bed, Turbo stays in bed; the bunny gets up, Turbo gets up! (seems so simple), and it’s set for 6:45am. THAT is what time the bunny gets up, my friends. But Turbo? No. Asscrack. And when I suggest that he goes back to bed until the bunny gets up? Mayhem. Screaming, pounding on walls. More screaming. It is horrible. And it’s not a great way for a non-morning person type to begin her day before she’s even had coffee. And this is most mornings.

In the evenings, the screaming usually begins on the way home from school/daycare. The boys poke each other and Turbo pretty much does everything he can to ensure that Lunchbox will begin screaming. Then we get to listen to it all the way home. Fun. That sets the mood just right for the rest of the night, doesn’t it? I honestly think that having a baby screaming in the backseat should take the same kind of traffic precedence that a wailing siren does. I should get to blow through stoplights and swerve through traffic just to get home as fast as possible to MAKE. IT. STOP. If a cop pulled me over while that was going on, I’m pretty sure he’d let me go just so he didn’t have to listen to it while he wrote the ticket. Anyway, that’s just the car ride home. Then there’s the wailing baby attached to my leg while I try to cook dinner while Turbo demands a snack and a drink within three seconds of opening the front door. He has also become frightfully accustomed to watching “Dragon Tales” or “Scooby Doo” or whatever his Netflix video of preference is at any given point in time AS SOON as he gets home. I know that I am a bad mommy for letting him watch TV right when he gets home instead of encouraging creative play, yada yada yada. I KNOW.

Then there’s dinner. Dinner time is a special kind of hell evidently reserved for people like me who are being paid back for having wonderful fun during our younger more independent days. There is food everywhere. No one of the testosterone-fueled variety will stay in his chair for more than three seconds. There is bribing involved. I am usually told at least once that whatever I’ve prepared “looks yukky” or that Turbo doesn’t like it (whether he’s tasted it or not). It’s just an absolute DELIGHT.

By bath time, The Major is usually home, and I’m pretty close to cooked. I often let him handle it and sometimes bedtime too because I fear that I might snap and send a child flying through the air.

And all of this leaves me with a mess to clean up, a headache, and a crapload of GUILT. For being a bad mommy. For not loving my kids enough. For having so little patience with them. For getting so aggravated. For… everything.

But there are those flashes of brilliance at our house, too. The times when a tiny face looks up at me with sheer love and little arms come up around my neck, and I know that I can try again tomorrow to be the mommy I want to be — the mommy they deserve. At those times I know that I’m doing okay somehow because even though I’m impatient and close to the edge, they aren’t. They’re always ready for a hug or a snuggle. They’re always ready for me to try again. Somehow, despite the bad mommying that I feel they get so often, they’re turning into sweet and loving little people, full of joy for life. As long as I don’t do anything to break that, I think we’ll do okay.

We Don’t Forget…

Today we are loading up a PODS container and beginning to see all the boxes appearing, dust coming off of things that haven’t been moved in forever and cabinets opened to groans — “WHY did we keep all this crap this whole time???” But while we’re going through the motions of another PCS, in the back of our minds, we’re also thinking about those we’ve known who won’t have the privilege of suffering through another crappy moving experience. Because while it certainly sucks — it is a PLEASURE. You know why? Because The Major has always come back. Every time they’ve sent him somewhere crappy. Every time I didn’t get to hear from him for weeks because he was forward deployed. Every time I have been so worried… he has come home. And that isn’t always the case.

We are part of an aviation community. And while accidents happen in all arms of the services, here at home and in theater, when they happen in airplanes and helicopters, people don’t tend to survive. And we hear news regularly about accidents here at home that happen on what those families thought were just regular old workdays and school days. And I don’t forget that. When I send my kids off to school and The Major leaves in his flight suit and kisses me goodbye as he heads out the door to an early brief, I don’t forget what he’s out there doing. I have tried, but when you live near an airbase, you hear, see and feel jets and helicopters ALL the time. And it is impossible to forget that it’s my husband up there, flying at nearly the speed of sound in a metal container. (All in a day’s work, right?) But he has always come home.

So this post, like this day, is dedicated to those who didn’t come home. We continue to go through our day to day, a proud military family putting up with whatever crap comes with it, in their honor. We don’t forget them or the families who miss them every day, not just today. Thank you for the sacrifice. We will never be able to repay you for what you gave to this country.

One…. Two… Two and a half…

This is a real book… maybe it has an answer.

I used to substitute teach preschool when I was earning my teaching credential (which I never used… this is one of about a gazillion jobs I’ve had in my life … that will be another post for another day…) As a result, I believed that I really liked young children and that I had scads of patience and would therefore be one of those very composed and put together mommy-types who did not need to scream at their children to get their point across.

I was wrong.

My temper is vertically challenged. It’s shorter than Tatoo on Fantasy Island. It’s shorter than the smallest member of the Lollypop Gang. It’s… well, you get it. I’ve got nothing but more jokes about dwarves and little people and really, that just isn’t all that nice. Nor is it the point of this post.  The point is that I have found myself literally shaking in an effort to avoid doing something to Turbo that will scare him so badly that he will hate me for the rest of both our lives. I am working on this, I really am. That being said, I haven’t done that thing yet (not sure what that thing really is… I’m not gonna find out, I promise). But I have tried lots of other things in an attempt to get the little monster to step back in line. The worst thing is that Turbo has what I have decided is a nervous habit. When he is in a lot of trouble and is most likely uncomfortable and slightly scared because mommy’s face is turning crimson and spit is flying out of her mouth as she yells at him, he does the worst thing he could possibly do. He laughs. And if you’ve ever been pissed at a 3 year old, and find yourself telling ’em how it’s gonna be, the last thing you’re going for is to make them laugh. Be silent? Yes. Tremble in fear of my sinister sounding mommy-threats? Oh yes. But laugh? No.

I’ve done things in efforts at discipline that have mostly come to no fruitful conclusion. Probably the best example is when, not a half mile from our house, Turbo was doing something — of course now I have no clue what it was — that led me to offer the lamest threat that my parents ever used, “Don’t make me pull this car over!” Well, he did. And I did. And then I had no bloody idea what to do. I pulled over, braked hard and jumped out, furious. And then I stood there wondering what parents are supposed to do once they’ve pulled the car over. The best I could come up with was to open his door and get my face right in his tiny face (which did look scared at this point) and tell him to cut. it. out. It actually did work. But I hate feeling like I’ve working  a plan with no idea how it’s supposed to turn out.

My greatest parenting tool (which will reveal how utterly clueless I am at this) is to count slowly to three. What is weird is that it usually works. It’s even starting to work with Lunchbox. They do something crappy, I give them the look, issue my warning and then start counting, and whatever it is usually stops before three. My mom was in town one day when I had reason to count, and she leaned over and whispered, “What happens at three?” I was honest with her. “Mom, I haven’t got a clue.”

So, what happens at three? Anyone? Anyone?

Fighting the good fight

Like lots of moms in their thirties (I thought about adding a modifier there, but “late” just makes me sound almost dead, so we’ll leave it alone), I am fighting the battle of the ever-expanding waistline.  I shouldn’t make it sound like this is something I’m focused on only as a result of being a mom (though 2 pregnancies definitely added to the struggles). I’ve been focused on the physical — probably far more than is healthy — since I was a kid. I was a ballet dancer all through school, missing lots of school stuff for rehearsals and performances, and taking classes every day after school into the late evenings.  Which meant that I spent a lot of time in a leotard and tights, comparing my body to the bodies of others. And if the scrutiny had been only my own, I might be somewhat healthier, but I had a ballet teacher who taught with a long black cane, and asked questions like, “been in the cookie jar again, have we?” I’d get home and my dad would refer to me as “chubs” whenever he found me eating (I actually think he may have some fairly unhealthy attitudes about food, but that’s another story).  Anyway, add it all together and I had no clear picture of what I looked like. Now that I look back at photos from those years, I can see that I was perfectly healthy and pretty thin.  College brought ups and downs with weight — I quit dancing and struggled with having no physical outlet and gained and lost 10 or 15 pounds.  By my senior year, I’d found the gym and replaced ballet with step aerobics and treadmills.  The photos from college vary, in some I’m thin, in some I’m chubby.

As an adult, I knew that I needed to work out as a sanity insurance policy, and that has helped keep things steady for the most part. I actually became a personal trainer for a while and keep my certification current though I don’t train clients at this point (because of my “real” job, which annoyingly seems to take up quite a lot of time.) So I know how I should be eating and how to get myself in shape when things have slipped. And sometimes now I think that maybe my distorted vision has gone the other way. I’ve looked in the mirror recently and thought, “not bad,” when the swimsuit shopping experience, complete with double “check-out-your-own-ass” mirror says otherwise.

As a result of the swimsuit shopping experience, I’ve had a bit of a talk with myself, and seeing as how I’m still here after the rapture occurred and all, I think I’ve got till around October to get myself into a bit firmer shape. (Isn’t October when the rest of us, those who didn’t get “saved” yesterday are supposed to be taken to hell? Well, it’s hot in hell and I’m sure I’ll want to wear shorts, so I’d like to look good in them…)

And this long drawn out stream of consciousness boredom you are experiencing is nothing more than my way of mentioning that I’m trying to work out more often and eat better. So you may be hearing about that at times. Apologies in advance. And the eating part will have to start tomorrow, since we just arrived home from a sushi and Baskin Robbins feast. Tomorrow, look out!