I'm Pooped

My husband has been gone less than three months and I am pooped. I love my boys so much and I am frustrated that this deployment is sucking the joy out of motherhood. There are days when I just don't get a chance to breathe. I will be so glad to be done with cold and flu season. Today S decided to give C and himself a hair cut. Yikes, of course I haven't taken Christmas card photos yet, that should be interesting particularly because I am pooped and have lost some of my finesse.

The scary thing is that this may go on a lot longer than a year.

Baby Fever

Even though my husband is deployed and I have been on my own with four small boys, I have been thinking about having another baby. I am not sure whether my husband is even up for it. No pun intended, ha ha ha. I thought I would know at some point that I had hit the limit, no more kids. After I had P who was my most difficult labor, I told my husband that I couldn't do it again, and I am pretty sure I used my scary angry labor voice.

We have been so blessed with four beautiful boys, it feels a little greedy to want more. I just love them all so much. I don't think I am done, but how is that possible?

The Ugly

I don't know why I thought I could handle this deployment with grace. The rest of my life is crumbs, mess, and stress, so why did I think that I would suddenly turn into super mom when my husband left? We seem to have skipped the Good and the Bad and gone straight to ugly.

I am exhausted, worn out, and frustrated. I really thought that if I was prepared and upbeat we would skate through the deployment unscathed. Instead, there are crying children, angry children, puke, blood, and lots of Mommy tears. My six year old is crying, my four year old is angry, and my two year old has started hitting kids at preschool. Thankfully our youngest, is oblivious to the swirling turmoil in the house. With four young kids in the house we are basically running a germ factory with our own germ assembly line. I can hardly get one well before the next one goes down with something else.

I wanted so desperately to thrive during this time and I feel like I am struggling to survive. How could I have forgotten how hard this is? I am trying to keep my head up and focus on using the resources that the Army and friends provide. It is so much easier to give advice then it is to take it.

The moral of this story is that Deployments Suck!

I Passed the Mother

I realized that I never posted that I passed the Bar. I got sworn in and the next day we moved to Georgia, ah the life of an Army Wife!

To Work or not to Work

Is it a sign that our new down the street neighbors have a 19 year old daughter who wants to babysit and worked at a camp for special needs kids?

If it is a sign, then someone will knock on the door tomorrow offering me a job. Yeah right, but I am starting to wonder.

I am trying to get signed up to take the Georgia bar. There is an attorney's exam which is fantastic. I am not sure how I will have the time, but here goes.

Family Dog

My husband and I are at odds over having a dog. I am all for it, he, not so much. I am looking at stress relief and unconditional love. I think he is focused on hair and poop.

I was thinking retriever or lab. Our new neighbor is an MP and is in the K9 program. His opinion is german shepherd, but I don't think I could convince my husband.

H seems to like school all though he wants to stay home. I have to get up early to get him fed and dressed. Dressing will get easier, but right now we are getting used to uniforms. If the shorts or pants have belt loops, they have to wear a belt. Of course the px is totally out of brown belts. H refused to wear a striped belt with a rocket ship on the buckle, but had no issues wearing a belt with flames.

Reversal

I was so convinced that private school was the way to go, until we had our interview. Yuck, the woman focused so much on selling us, that she didn't clue into the fact that she was turning us off. I am not interested in College prep for my 1st grader. Also, suggesting that he repeat kindergarten because they did not cover double digit addition in his previous school is a no no.

So we went to open house at the public school and I cried the whole way home. I know that fifty percent of it is this damn deployment, but the other fifty is what I am going to have to ignore. The bright side is that the bus picks up and drops off two houses down which means I don't have to wake people up from naps, I just stand in front of the house. I have a feeling this will be sanity saving in three months.

Long Over Due Update

I have moved away from blogging, I am definitely going to start blogging again.

So here it is, we moved, bought a house, and now we are settling in. My dearest husband is headed out for Iraq shortly. I can hardly believe we are in this place again.

I have set some goals for this next year. Weight loss is the most important, time to shed all this baby weight. I am also going to sit for the Georgia bar exam.

I contemplated buying an rv and traveling all over the country for the deployment, but I figured that was probably not such a good idea.

So we've decided to enroll H in private school, which was a huge decision for us, both of us being products of public education. I really think it is important with this deployment that H have a small class and a small school. I am hoping for lots of attention and love for him.

I am back, stay tuned!

We Bought a House

We took two trips down to our new duty station to house hunt, and last week we put an offer in. Our builder countered our offer by going down a thousand, so we countered his counter by going up a thousand. Apparently he was stunned, his words, that we'd countered. So stunned that he accepted our counter.

So now we are jumping through all the hoops to get the paperwork filled out. It is very exciting, a little nerve wracking, but exciting. On post housing was pretty bad, just like Fort Sill, but closer together and the houses were really run down and people's things were spilling out of the houses.

Off post living here we come!!

Huge Smell

C was running around very stinky, you would have thought that he had a massive load, but instead it was this teeny tiny turd. Huge smell, small poop, that seems to be his calling card. Stinky Stinky Stinky.

The Bar

I am going insane waiting for the results from the Virginia Bar Exam. I don't know what I will do if I don't pass. At least I can drink something this time if I didn't pass.

Cleaning

I am trying to clean and organize before this next move. I want to invite people over and not freak out when people knock on the door!!! I will tackle this disaster. I spent hours cleaning up the play room today. I threw four bags of trash out and I have a huge pile of things for either a yard sale or the thrift shop.

We will maintain this, I am going to label the drawers and bins so the kids can put things back where they belong!!!

There is so much to do!!!

I'm Back

So last week was an insane week. I drove to Norfolk to sit for the bar exam. My Mom met me there so she could watch P. I ran upstairs to our hotel room so I could feed P and cram a little before the next session. As soon as the exam was over I jumped in the car and drove down to Fort Stewart to house hunt. I stayed in six different hotels and looked at close to 2 dozen houses. I also drove around on post trying to decide if we could live in a cramped dark house again. The housing on Stewart is just like the housing on Fort Sill. I met with a builder who can build us a lovely 5 bedroom 3 bathroom house. I just can't decide if we are ready or if the market is ready for us to take the plunge.

It will be a little hard to go live on post after seeing a beautiful house with a laundry room with space for a second refrigerator. Large and lovely or small and dark, why are we even thinking twice??