People say to me regularly, “I don’t know how you do it all with no help and having Pete gone all the time.”
Well let me tell you right now with total honesty. I don’t! I fail daily. I have days where I don’t want to get out of bed. Days where I want to drink a barrel of wine. Days where I scream my head off. There is a ton of stuff that I do yes. But I certainly don’t do it all every single day.
I spent two days one week recently doing next to nothing. I laid on the couch watching Netflix, then I got in bed and turn on Netflix. I did the minimal. I made the kids dinner and we did bedtime routine. Out side of that I didn’t do anything else. The kids had those breakfast cereal bars the first morning and I don’t think they ate a real lunch. They just snacked the entire day. Now this isn’t the usual for us but we have those days for sure. So I’m not to hard on myself when these days come around. Sometimes you just need to recharge and I guess for me that means lay around and binge watch crappy shows while the kids raid the pantry. HAHAHA!
I don’t think being a single mom is easy at all but trying to be a single mom, making sure your marriage doesn’t fall apart because your spouse is on one of the many deployments we’ve been through, working a full time job, while being 1000 plus miles away from your family and friends is HARD. Trying to find childcare when you know no one in the area or the people you do know are just as busy and don't have the time to be your backup.
I have cried more times than I’d like to admit over the last 10 years. One night a couple months ago Kayleigh found me on the kitchen floor crying. I’m not even sure why I was crying it just happened. I told her I missed daddy and she brought me a picture of him and we sat there and snuggled.
Pete is gone way more than half of the time, lets be real its more like 90 percent of the time. With him being gone everything falls onto me which is fine and I totally get it. We chose this life. We will live this life. However, I have days where I am just angry and sad that I have to do it all, all the time by myself, and I just miss him in general and that is okay. It’s okay to not be okay all day, everyday. I miss my husband and I know he misses us. So we do what we need to so that we can get to where we want to be in life. I try to not burden him with all the crazy that happens here because I know he has a lot going on where he is and sometimes that’s hard. I have friends/family that I confide in when I need to vent because there are times when you need to.
I think its so important for us to stay busy here but there are times when its just not an option. We do lots of stuff but right now with no work and daycare its basically a free for all. I spend a lot of time cleaning the house daily. Its crazy how fast things get dirty but if I don’t keep up on certain things every day then they get out of hand. I have also been making it a point to get in a daily work out. I should really schedule it for a specific time during the day but I typically do my workout whenever I find myself needing to get it done, usually around lunch time. I try to keep the kids busy with workouts also. They will jump in and do mine with me or I will turn on a kid yoga video for them and they sit in there and do 30 minutes of yoga. Raelynn doesn’t last the entire time. She will get bored with it and run off to go play but it is a great way to get them to focus on something other than fighting. However, with that being said, there is only so much you can do when your kids are stuck in the house together all the time.
Its also not easy to find the motivation to pack up the kids to go find things to do outside of the house. I have days where I absolutely dread taking my kids out. I know I’m not the only one. And I don’t feel bad about that at all. Pete always tells me to take them out and do stuff with them. But let me tell you what happened last time he was home and we took them out to the store or to eat. They screamed, fought, caught attitudes with us, you name it they were just not being nice. I don’t actually remember where we went but I do remember he said that he never wants to take them out again. I’m sure he wont remember that because it usually happens every time he comes home for a visit. I call them visits because he is usually only here for the same amount of time you would go on vacation or to see family.
It is hard to handle everything all the time but if I don’t do what I need to here at home then how can Pete do what he needs to for the Navy? He does so much for me and our family how could I not do my part? Our job is to make sure things are taken care of for our future and we cant do that if one or both of us isn’t doing our part.
So to answer that question I get ask so frequently about how I do it with him gone all the time and how we do it together…
Its hard. It takes a lot of effort. But work is what makes it work.