Sometimes I feel out of control.  I don't know where we will be living in a year or two, I don't know how many children I will have, I don't know when my husband will be home from this deployment or when he will leave on a future deployment.  I don't know when I will go back to work.  I don't know what tomorrow brings.  I don't always understand why bad things happen to good people. 

What I do know, is that when I look back on my life, things will come into focus.  The dots will connect.  I have faith that as long as I can keep approaching my opportunities with a positive outlook and with compassion and honesty that I will be proud of my life.  That the picture I have created and will continue to create with the many different points in my life will be beautiful.

Thank you Steve Jobs for your innovation, your wise words, and your vision.  You once said that you wanted to "put a ding in the universe".  I think you did.

Two months ago today I started a challenge where I vowed to buy no new clothes for 3 months.  I had felt like I needed to reevaluate my wardrobe and figure out what I wear most often, how I can use pieces in different ways, and most importantly - save a little money.  It is amazing what you can do when you just tell yourself "no".  I feel that way about dieting too.  It isn't "I want to lose weight" it is "I have to lose weight".  If you don't give yourself the wiggle room to fail, mentally it is much more likely for you to succeed.  So when LOFT or JCrew or Banana Republic would be yelling at me in my in-box about how I NEED to purchase their fall sweaters TODAY or they would be gone FOREVER I would just hit the "delete" key.  And I also did a lot of email purging and got rid of 75% of my email retail clutter.  The unsubscribe button has become my friend.  And you know what?  I am surviving and am not naked.  And those sweaters are still there.  My closet is more streamlined and my credit card balance is lower.

I really haven't cheated.  I even borrowed a dress for the Centennial Aviation Ball.  And wore shoes I already had.  And carried a purse that was a Christmas gift last year. 

There have been a few almost-relapses along the way.  At one point I almost ordered a dress that I really loved because it was back-ordered until mid December.  I thought "hey, it's back ordered until after my challenge, I'll just order it today and it won't 'count'".  Then I stopped myself.  No.  I will not go into a gray area where if things are supposedly back ordered beyond November 4 I will just order them now.  Leave it to me to create an imaginary loophole for myself.  Similar to how chocolate doesn't count on my birthday and things that I eat after a long run don't have calories.

I'll be honest.  The late summer was fine.  I had plenty of tops and bottoms to mix and match with summer belts and shoes.  The beginning of colder weather is posing a new challenge and I am honestly really happy that one month from today I can buy a few things.  The good news is that I now know what I need and won't be just emotionally purchasing items that probably look almost exactly to things I already have in my closet (but had forgotten about).  I am also excited because I am heading to Europe to see my husband in November and will have a little time to get some new clothes for that rendezvous.

Overall, I recommend this challenge to people who are impulse shoppers.  If you were like me, and are sucked in by the "amazing" clearance sales that hit your inbox and then find a package on your front porch that you had forgotten about (I can't be the only one that wonders what the heck that box is, can I?) then I think this is worth trying.  Three months is long enough for me.  My friend Karen is doing six months (eek!) and I think even one or two months would be an interesting endeavour for the average shopper.

There are many deployment rituals to help count down to homecoming.  Some people make a paper chain and remove one link each day to count down ...




My son, God love him, hasn't been the best sleeper.  John left the day before he turned six months old and I knew that one of the biggest challenges I was facing as a solo parent was his unpredictable overnight sleeping, early wakings, and then having to face the day without naps and without any help.  Go to bed early?  Well, I try, but I am usually faced with a house that looks like a bomb went off at the end of the day.  Cheerios everywhere.  Toys, play doh, and baby wipes everywhere.  Me?  Hungry, tired, and annoyed that I can't just plop on the couch and watch something mind numbing like "Extra". 

For the first few months that John was gone I would go to bed at 10, be up for the first feeding at about 11:30, up again at about 3, and then for the day at about 6.  Connor and I worked very hard to remedy this and eventually I had him to just one feeding at 3, and up for the day at 6.  But the goal has always been 7-7.  Down at 7PM, up at 7AM well rested and ready to throw more Cheerios.  You should see my bedside table... Ferber and Weissbluth and all of the "sleep doctors".  Shoot, if Justin Bieber came out with a sleep book I would probably buy it.  I have been desperate.

For most kids, sleep takes effort, strategy, and resolve.  Nobody likes to listen to their baby cry.  It is just one of the many layers of mommy guilt.  Lying in bed, listening to the baby cry and your mind swirling with "this is for his good, he needs to learn to sleep" versus "he is too little, he needs cuddles, he needs me" versus "if I go to him he will just learn that crying = cuddling" and so on and so forth until your baby has settled and you are still lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, and beating yourself up over your choices.  Everything is always worse at night.  And for me, it is always worse without John to chat with and make parenting decisions as a team.  It is all on me.  Therapy bills will be my fault alone.



But the times, they are a changin'.  For the last several nights my son has gone to bed without an issue at about 7 PM and slept, without a peep, until 7 AM.  I find him in his crib with a gigantic smile on his face.  No crying, no fussing - just a well rested, happy, baby.  For the last few nights, I have actually slept from about 10-6:30.  Uninterrupted, amazing, wondrous sleep that I haven't experienced in about... mmm... two and a half years (by the time Kate was sleeping soundly at night I was pregnant with Connor... and when I'm pregnant I sleep terribly).

So this morning I don't need coffee.  Caffeine is not an absolute requirement to function.  Celebratory mimosas for all!

(I realize that by writing this post we are going to have an epically bad night of sleep tonight, but whatever, I'm celebrating for now!)

I have talked about friendship quite a bit on this blog.  Mostly because one of the only major perks to deployment is the bonds you form with spouses and girlfriends going through the same thing as you.  They get it, they empathize, they help, and they don't give you the "oh my gosh I could never do that" line.  The "I could never" line is meant as a compliment but sometimes feels like a veiled insult to your lifestyle choices.  I often want to challenge that notion by asking if they would have walked away from their husband if he had been in the military.  I hope (for the sake of their marriage) that the answer to that question would be obvious.  But I guess you never know.

One topic that has come up a few times in the past week is the idea of having a hard time forming friendships because of the military lifestyle.  I have written about the ease in which friendships are formed because of how open we tend to be in previous posts.  But this was a new angle that I hadn't really thought about.  Will I have a hard time making friends in the future because other ladies won't want to make the investment?  Don't want to get "attached" to someone (or encourage their kids to get attached to my kids) when it is 100% certain that we won't be there more than a few years?

Gosh I hope not.

But it is something that a lot of my peers are facing.  Some are feeling like an outcast at the preschool drop off because other moms look at military spouses as gypsies.  Who come and go so frequently that it isn't worth the emotional investment and eventual disappointment of the PCS.  Can you really blame them?  I try to put myself in their shoes and wonder if I would be so open to the comings and goings of my friends if I wasn't coming and going myself?  Or, will I get to the point where I am just so exhausted from the "goodbyes" that I don't want to bother anymore?

So far, after a little over 8 years as a Navy spouse I haven't become apathetic about forming friendships.  Even when we were weeks from leaving our last duty station I was still enjoying being social and meeting new friends.  Interestingly, one of the women who I made a connection with in the last months I was in Maryland, whose husband flies a totally different airplane than mine, and who I thought I would never crossed paths with again - surprisingly (very) - moved to Norfolk.  She lives about 3 miles away from me now.  If I had closed my mind and never chatted her up because of the factors listed above, we wouldn't have each other now.  And that would suck.

How do you feel about this?  Do you tend to put up a wall right before you move?  If you aren't affiliated with the military, would you avoid befriending a military family? 

Last night I went to the Centennial of Naval Aviation Ball in Virginia Beach

This week has been pretty tough.  I think it is safe to say that when you see a lull in this blog that it means I am probably having a bad week.  That I have been run ragged by my kids, chores, obligations, and just life in general.  By the time the day is over I just want two things: dinner and bed.  Sometimes I just skip the food and go right to sleep (aka deployment diet).  I try to keep things on this blog fairly positive because I am not a complainer by nature.  I try to look at things with a "glass half full" outlook and see the good in them.  One of my mottos is that anything can be done with a "can-do attitude and a sense of humor".  This week I have been struggling.

I think "rock bottom" was on Tuesday night (I think?) when I looked at my front yard and realized that I just needed to mow it.  It had been a long day - the kids and I had been out and about a lot - and I was already tired.  After baths, books, and bed I tied up my sneakers and went into the garage to turn on the lawnmower.  I got started on the front yard and about halfway done I realized that it was DARK outside.  And that mowing probably wasn't super safe.  The days of being able to put my kids down at 7 and have enough time to mow my lawn are over apparently.  And as I continued to mow in the dark I started feeling very sorry for myself.  I had just run myself ragged after two small kids alone, cooked meals, changed diapers, kissed boo boos, read books, done arts and crafts, fed bottles, cleaned the kitchen, given baths, grocery shopped, put them to bed, and kept a positive attitude all day long and here I was.  Alone.  Mowing the lawn. IN THE DARK.  Seriously?

I don't have enough hours in the day.  I am overwhelmed.  I am sick of this deployment.  I am ready to have my partner back.