The long promised news - the not so bright side of the military life

Good morning y'all!

Remember a while back I mentioned some good and not so good news? The good news was the job I got....well, I can now share the not so good news with you. We just dropped off daddy at the airport and said bye as he left for his deployment, as did his sister by the way. It is our first deployment as a family. The last one happened right after Joseph and I had met so it was an entirely different situation. We weren't even dating yet so I had my life and he had his, so things were pretty simple as far as any legal issues were concerned. But more importantly, we didn't have kids that needed to be prepared and could cry for their daddy.

Excuse the fake smiles but it wasn't exactly a moment of joy....

Over the past couple of weeks we noticed the kids behavior changed, they were more sensitive, whiny, clingy and defiant. We tried to explain to Nia that daddy would leave for work for some time, however, she's still too young to fully understand. And Isaiah had no clue what's going on, but he could definitely sense a big change was about to come. It always amazes me how sensitive kids are to any changes, even without you saying a thing, they know something's going on. As the date got closer, Joseph got more tense. When he deals with something, he draws back and needs alone time. While I'm capable of understanding that, the kids just wanted to spend time with him. There were times where it was hard for him to be the happy, entertaining daddy, they wanted him to be. In addition, May always seems to be one of the busiest months so that didn't really help with having enough family time. I don't think there's ever enough family time before a deployment though.

We're certainly grateful that we don't have to worry about his safety as much as some other families do. But that doesn't make the separation any easier. He will miss birthdays, our anniversary and holidays. What bothers him even more, he will miss some of Isaiah's milestones. Joseph is pretty involved, always has been, so he wants to be a part of those moments when our kids achieve new things. Especially since Isaiah has to work twice as hard to achieve some of those milestones. At the same time, I will have to deal with these two monkeys (that are quite a handful: terrible tows and tantrum threes!!!) and we all know things that never happen when they're home will happen while they're gone! Let's face it though, it's part of their job. I knew that before we got married. So in order to keep my sanity (and both kids alive) we will try to stay busy, which shouldn't be a problem thanks to Pinterest and some of my family visiting! And of course we'll post plenty of pictures of the things we do! Our first project will be a daddy wall, to help Nia get the concept of the time difference and distance. So let me get some coffee and take a shower so we can tackle the day. 3:30 am was way too early for me to start my day, especially after barely getting any sleep....

Thanks for following! Love,