Our Life

I have been told by friend's for a while, that this is a great space to enter updates on your life so that we can all stay connected. Even across the country. I thought that I'd give it a try!

As of now my husband, Paul and I have been married for 3 years, we have one handsome little guy named Kenneth who is almost 9 months old to call our own, and a 18 month old Black Lab named Luna. We are a military family dealing with deployment at the moment. I find myself grateful every day that we are Air Force and that it seems to be an act of congress, literally, to have Paul extended beyond 179 days of deployment, when so many of my Army friends deal with 12-15 months at a time. Still it is not easy, my husband is no ordinary Airman, he is part of a special team of guys who disarm IED's called Explosive Ordnance Disposal. He likes to joke and say that he is a Military Garbage Man, and thinks that it's cool that he gets payed to blow stuff up, and take things apart.

Paul hit his half way mark today, today is 90 days on the ground in Iraq. Only 90 more to go before a plane has to take off with him in it headed back to the West. I have learned a lot about myself in the last 3 months, but there isn't one life experience that I've gained that I would freely give back to have one second to hold him right now.

I consider myself blessed to have a great support network, even though military politics sometimes come between us. My biggest support through this deployment has come from a Staff Sergent, Technical Sergent, and Captain's wives. They have been there, and they are there again with my husband as we speak, and yet at times I feel as though there can be no real trust. But that is life when you have women as friends unfortunately. But I really don't know how I would have survived without them. We have made 3 months fly!

Kenneth has grown so much since his Dad left. When Paul left Kenneth wasn't rolling over, he wasn't talking, crawling, or cruising my furniture, he wasn't eating table food, he wasn't pulling up, or even sitting up. He was significantly smaller in stature, he was just beginning to reach out to us for us to pick him up. Now it seems as though over night he has blossomed into a toddler leaving infancy behind. All things that sadly his Daddy only gets to see through the 30 second videos that my digital camera will allow. How often I tear up as I see Kenneth doing new things that Paul won't get to first hand experience with Kenneth. How often I wish that instead of a babysitter once a week that I could instead hand him to his Dad for a few minutes so that I could have a minute to myself!

The sacrifice that military families make are not always so severe as the life of a person, but it is mostly in missing the little moments that they would hold so dear if they were here. It's little boys, looking at pillows with their Daddy or Mommy's pictures on it pointing to it and saying Daddy, with the spouses who are left behind trying to hard to embed their deployed parent into their little minds so that they don't forget. It's in watching their child take their first step, speak their first word, crawl for the first time, scare their Mom (or Dad) to death because they figure out how to pull up when the crib is on the top setting, have their first experience with finger foods, ride their first tricycle, learn to ride without training wheels, etc. All of the little things that most of us take for granted everyday.

A couple of weeks ago Paul said, "Do you know what I miss the most?".... his answer was, "Touching. Shaking hands, holding hands, hugging, kissing..." and he continued on. Tomorrow I will go to Church and I will probably shake a lot of hands, but where my husband is it is all salutes, and attention. No one will shake his hand. Tomorrow I will go in Kenneth's room and grab him under the arms and pick him up, like I do every morning and give him a big hug. Paul will only get that if something goes terribly wrong and someone is severely injured. And yet knowing all of this I still find myself taking every day for granted. How selfish it seems.