Home-Iversary #3

I wish I could subtitle this bad boy. If I could, the subtitle would be "365 Days After 368 Days of Single Parenting"

1 year ago today Grant and I got ourselves ready and went to a hangar at Wheeler Army Airfield and picked Erik up from his 3rd deployment!

A few days prior, I had stepped on a thick piece of glass from the lip of a storage container in our kitchen (thank God it hadn't been G!) and spent the night in the emergency room only to be told there wasn't any glass in my foot. Turns out there was, but I didn't realize it until a few weeks later when a huge shard started pushing out of my foot and Erik pulled it out with a pair of needle-nosed pliers. Aren't you happy you got that extra special look into my life? Anyway, foot pain be damned, I wasn't going to let it ruin my outfit by skipping my super cute red wedges, so I limped in to the hangar careful not to step on my heel. Luckily had a stroller to push!

The deployment itself wasn't as bad as it could have been for me and G, at least not as I recall. People ask me how I did it with a baby and no help, but the truth is that Erik left so soon after G's birth I didn't really know any better. And babies are far, far, FAR less frustrating than toddlers - again, at least as I recall. If Erik left now, I'd be up a creek, but back then it was almost easier. I do remember crying sometimes because I had just had enough, but hell, I do that now! I can't really imagine having felt differently even if I did have help. Babies are tough no matter the circumstance and especially if you are still learning.

Luckily, G was (and is!) a great sleeper. I could get him in bed (by like 5:30PM, seriously) and just sit on the couch and not have to talk to anyone or cook anyone dinner or anything like that. I could just drink wine if I wanted to and watch TV or snooze on the couch, or sit out on the porch or just do whatever I needed to do to decompress. I remember I used to stay up until the wee hours because I couldn't bear to spend my precious alone time sleeping some days.

My sweet friend Mandy came over many evenings and was sometimes my only adult interaction for the day, it made a huge difference and forged a great friendship. Her visits very likely helped keep me sane. When I had parents visiting, we used to go to the gym and then we'd go have a childless drink afterward - like some kind of secret love affair. In fact, one or both of our husbands even called it our summer romance.

There is nothing like nearby friends when you're living through a deployment. Friends who come babysit so you can sleep off food poisoning, or so you can go to the ER and get glass removed from your heel (thanks Melissa for both of those!), friends to spend holidays with, or pick you up when you have to take your car in to get serviced and can't wait in the waiting room for 5 hours with a baby. Sometimes, when your husband is away, it really does take a village to raise a child (and a mom).

And of course we had TONS of visitors which made the time go by quickly (my trick for deployment survival is to always have things to count-down to, and visitors were a great thing to look forward to!). Erik's mom came once to help us move (that's right, I moved less than a month after Erik left because my landlord wanted to raise the rent). Thank God she came to help out with G while I packed and everything. And then our friends Dave and Vickie came (I think) twice while Erik was gone (pretty sure they win the prize for most visits total during our time in HI!), and of course, my mom came 3 times I think, my sister came with her at least once, and my dad also came to visit. We kept very busy with company. As you can imagine, people pretty much beat down your door to visit when you live in HI. But we're finding that to be true now, too, and we're certainly not in HI anymore!

I can say with certainty though that G knew something was missing, even early on. When he was 10 months old, he took to Erik the second he got home for R&R and I swear to you he didn't smile for 8 days after he left. It was pretty darn sad.

Hopefully this was the last deployment our family will endure now that troops are being drawn-down in the Middle East, as it's an entirely different ballgame with kids around; but I'll never forget the lessons I have learned from years of sleeping alone, and living alone, and then from parenting alone.