Kimber's Navy Family

Something that I have struggled with my entire decade as a military spouse is to find meaning in military life. When we first got married, I talked to seasoned spouses in our FRG and they would have these stories about how, "Oh, I remember this one deployment right after our first baby was born... He was deployed after our second was born as well..." Or, "That was the move that the movers broke half our furniture and the moving company was refusing to pay us a dime for it..." They all had these stories to tell about their misadventures as a military spouse. As a newlywed, I would come home and (attempt to) make these elaborate dinners. I remember the night I made gravy with dumplings and he never came home until I was in bed that evening. I was so disappointed that I couldn't even eat any of it myself. I would tell this to the seasoned spouses and they would say, "Oh, yeah. My husband couldn't be reached when one of our kids broke a bone" or ...

I had a bit of a weird experience today. I went to my MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) group and each table has a mentor mom. Some of the tables had mentor moms like you would expect-- grown children, grandchildren-- but most tables had moms like me. Moms with 9 year olds. None of them had babies in the house anymore-- my youngest two are 3 years old and 1 year old-- but one gal, her youngest was 4 years old. I feel like I should have been empowered seeing that I could be a mentor mom. Instead, I felt like, oh crap. WHY DON'T I HAVE MY LIFE TOGETHER. Just that morning my oldest son (in 3rd grade) was in trouble for fighting with one of his 1st grade brothers. After breakfast, I found packed lunch pails strewn about the dining room instead of put in backpacks, like I specifically said. Our 1st graders went in their room and pulled out art instead of brushing their teeth and getting socks on. The baby spent the morning climbing furniture and emptying drawers. And our 3 year...

I have been failing a lot at parenting lately. Not just the little things, like yelling when all the kids start talking to me at the same time and dinner is burning and homework isn't done. But on big things, like what do I do when my children are struggling? What do I do when I don't know the answers? The other night one of our boys was in trouble for something and I had him get ready for bed while his siblings cleaned up their art supplies and tidied their room. I went in my room and cried. I have no idea what I am doing. I think a lot of times that's why we as parents struggle so much with all this mommy judgement. People tell us how horrible our children have been lately and we know. We are there, day in and day out and we see the bad behaviors and we are trying. We don't want our kids to do that. We don't want our kids to be "that kid." We don't want to constantly have a wrinkle of worry between our eyebrows and a creeping tension headache, wait...

I love my parents. Not even a little bit, like, a lot. As I've grown up, they have gone from being the World's Best Parents to The World's Best Parents AND My Closest Friends. They are so supportive of our Navy family and welcome us with open arms and an open door anytime we want to visit or even move in with them in between duty stations or during deployments. However, as great as they are, living with family can be a sticky situation even with the closest and most understanding families so I wanted to write this blog post to air some of my complaints that I have with my family publicly without consulting them first (best way to handle family drama, right?). 1. My mom always has laundry for me to put away. She comes around to all of our rooms, finds and collects the dirty laundry we have stashed in corners, washes, dries, and folds it and then puts these HUGE piles of clean, folded laundry at the foot of my bed for ME to put away. Like I have ALL THIS TIME to put away l...

NOTE: I do want to start by saying that our kids' ages are 9, 6, 6, 3, and 1. I know that as they grow, there will be more and more differences between boys and girls. I want our children to be free to like a "boy" activity and be free to like a "girl" activity. That doesn't mean they have to and I'm not pushing any of those things on them, but I think it is important they aren't shamed for their interests and, even bigger, they don't shame others. That doesn't mean they never tease each other over "something is for boys" or "something is for girls," but when they do, I address it. Because I feel it is an important lesson that girls or boys do not get boxed into behaviors or activities (or jobs or roles) solely because of the gender they were born with. THAT is how we are going to make positive changes toward gender equality. I also want to add that I was over the moon thrilled when we found out we were finally having a gi...