Monday morning went so smoothly I was pleasantly surprised, but it also set me up for a greater disappointment when it seemed that every one of my kids melted down in the evening. Partly because they were tired, but also because their dad is gone. I’m sure getting back to work and getting up early didn’t make it easier to deal with his absence. Mav cried because Andy was flying all night and wasn’t available for family scripture study and prayer as he has been for every night of Mav’s life (at least since we’ve started being consistent about six years ago). Bev cried (or rather wailed and gnashed teeth) because I asked her if she’d rather do activity days or dance and she wanted to do both. But we found a ballet class that will work with our church schedule so she can do some dance, just not all the classes she wanted to take, but coming to terms with that took a good hour of head butting and a bit of breakdowns on both of our parts. And Max cried because he has to do some work at school that he hates and finds pointless, “I already know that stuff.” I told him sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to do. I have to do stuff like that every day! And surprisingly Harvey didn’t melt down till later in the week, though he has been pretty tired after school and still throws fits for dumb things. I was talking to my mom about it and we both agree that it is most likely because something is off with his world and he can’t put it to words or fix it so the little things get to him more. But he has been loving school, which, honestly, I was surprised by. I didn’t think he’d be ok with all day school. But he seems to like his teacher a lot. He says he doesn’t know how to make friends and on a different day he said his friends don’t like him because they don’t understand him, so maybe I need to get him in speech therapy. He’s not as behind as Max was at his age, but he’s definitely not 100% clear. Saturday, we went to a baptism which was nice- I always feel the spirit at baptisms, but Harvey turned to me during the baptism and said, out of the blue, “I miss my dad.” I teared up right then and there. He’s said things like, “Can we do [xy or z] when dad gets home.” And I’ve tried explaining to him that that won’t be for a long time and he replies, “like every day?!” But Andy’s been gone three weeks now, and I think he’s feeling it. So, of course, once the tears started I thought about how we have to wait to do Bev’s baptism and that really made me sad. We’ll be ok and luckily we have a fun vacation planned with my in-laws around her birthday, so hopefully that’ll make it less obvious. It’ll just be another thing to look forward to when Andy returns.
Andy and I have both been reading a lot. We’ve found that without the other to snuggle with, watching shows just doesn’t seem appealing. Not yet. I had a bunch of shows lined up to watch while he was gone, but honestly, I’ve been so busy doing all the things to keep our house running that listening to books while doing it has been the best diversion and form of entertainment. Maybe once we’re in the swing of things. I’ve been writing more, which has been exciting for me because I’m making good progress on my novel.
Tomorrow is my 40th birthday! Kind of mind blowing, honestly. But here we are! Lindsay and Krista threw me a birthday party. It was so fun and nice to catch up with friends and feel young again. I’m so grateful for good friends. I wouldn’t be able to get through this deployment without them. Maybe next week I’ll do a “best of” and lessons I’ve learned in my forty years of life. But today, I have a migraine so I’ll leave this blog for now. Have a good week!