Home Stretch

I'm happy to say that we'll be welcoming DF home later this week, barring any travel delays. Hooray, the boys and I have almost survived this month and a half of his deployment! At first, it was really hard. Then it got better. Now it seems almost normal. We're all looking forward to having him back, and I'm sure we can adjust to a new normal with a 4-person family.

In time, I suppose I'll look back on this season as a monumental event in our family's life. But in living it, I've just been trying to get through one day at a time. Now that it's almost over, I thought I'd reflect on some of the highlights.

Visitors

My sister, cousin, and mom all came to visit during this time and it was awesome! I didn't expect visitors to come so soon after we moved, but I guess people took pity on me :) It was really nice to have extra hands around to help out. I was able to accomplish such tasks as picking up dry cleaning, retrieving packages from the leasing office, exchanging items purchased in error because I couldn't read the fine print and keep my kids from destroying a store at the same time, going grocery shopping by myself, etc. You know, glamorous stuff!

Exploring the Area

I don't mind taking the kids to most parks or libraries by myself, but there are other places that I'm not interested in attempting solo. With the visitors in town, we were able to check out the Natural History Museum, the San Gabriel Mission, and the beach (Santa Monica). Wow, LA sure has a lot to offer!

Making Friends

Since I enjoy talking to people who can form complete sentences and discuss complex ideas (as contrasted with my usual conversations of "choo choo! choo choo!"), I have joined a couple moms' groups here to try and meet other grown ups. I'd say that, compared to Memphis, people seem a little more open in talking about real life stuff, but not quite as friendly as Southerners overall. So, I'm still working on that front, but I think I have some good potential connections in the works. At least people are accepting my Facebook friend requests, so I'm going to take that as a good sign :) And I randomly reconnected with a friend from college who lives in the area, which was cool.

Connecting with the Kids

I've heard you are supposed to spend one-on-one time with your kids to be a good parent, but that's rather tricky in my situation. Sometimes one of them wakes up earlier than the other from nap time - today it was Gibson. So I got him up and said, "Since Gus is still asleep, you get to have special time with Mommy! What do you want to do?" He wanted to play with some toy animals, which was fine until I made the elephant pretend to eat a snack and Gibson got all pouty and sad. Really not sure what I did wrong there... Then I asked him if we should wake up Gus, and he excitedly ran into the bedroom. Apparently he was craving brother time, not mom time! At any rate, I've tried to spend lots of time playing with them (together), reading stories, coloring pictures, going on walks, and all that good stuff. 

Creative Problem Solving

Without DF around to bounce ideas off of, I've been left to my own devices with these two little munchkins. Bedtime has been extra...interesting. Back in Memphis, we had a pretty good routine going on that required the full involvement of both parents. So not only have I had to adapt to doing it all by myself, but the boys are also getting more creative in their bedtime stalling techniques, which requires a new level of strategizing! 

For example, I've figured out if I let them sit on the bathroom counter with their feet in the sink, then they will let me brush their teeth. (I used to be able to kind of hold them down and force the toothbrush in their mouth, but they are getting too strong for me, so I have to use psychological techniques. And DF is the one with a degree in psychology, not me...!) Then we used to sit in our glider chair for story time (all 3 of us), but that wasn't working. I tried having the boys sit in the chair with me on the floor, but once one of them flopped over the side and landed on his head, I decided that wasn't the best approach. Now, we all sit on the floor together while I read two stories - they each pick one. (Of course, then they both want to read a bunch more...) And while typing the above I literally thought of 5 more things that are different than Memphis, but I'm going to stop the list there because, well, it's becoming obvious that I didn't get to talk to any adults today, isn't it? ;)