Settling down after the storm

After a few weeks of our kids adjusting to Daddy not coming home from work, things are starting to settle down.  Bedtime is still chaos, but bedtime is always a little crazy around here.  When you have a one year old that requires complete silence to fall asleep and a four year old that is fighting bedtime every night what do you expect.

This deployment like every deployment has been different.  Surprisingly we have skype for this deployment which is great.  I love being able to see him, but more importantly for him to see our kids.  Our first deployment together as a family was so hard for that very reason.  We had our son a few months into his 15-month deployment.   Since he came home for his birth he was not given mid-tour leave and did not see him again until he was a couple weeks from turning one.  I sent tons of pictures and described the daily happenings, his first smile, crawling, his first words (dada), pulling himself up, but its just not the same as seeing it for yourself.  I loved it that this time that he could skype us and see our little girl walk for himself.  I hope it helps him to be better connected.  I think now that he is a father and going on deployment it will be better.  During his first deployment I don't think it really sunk in, he left a newly married guy and came home to a wife and family.  He was very self-centered during that first deployment - - something that I struggled with.  He just didn't get it - - of course for him, at that time, fatherhood consisted of 10 days in Ohio visiting our son in NICU.  Not a lot to go on, maybe if we would have brought him home with us while he was here it would have seemed more real.  I am grateful that he has become such a good father.

Definition of Grunt and Grunt's Wife

 A Grunt is an infantryman in the U.S. military, especially in the Vietnam War: "They were called grunts....They were the infantrymen, the foot soldiers of the war" (Bernard Edelman).

Which means a Grunt's Wife is the wife of an infantrymen - - which is what I am.  What it means to me is that he is rarely home, even when he is technically home.  It is really almost like having two separate lives, one where you are married and one where you are a single parent of sorts. 

We are just getting ready to embark on our 4th deployment and I have decided to blog my experiences.  This is definitely not a blog to come in search of advice, although I'm sure over the next several months there will be at least a few cautionary tales.