Kimber's Navy Family

I go through phases in regards to house cleaning, where I can't function without a housekeeper and our bathrooms are covered in toothpaste and our floors with dirt clots, dragged in from muddy boots, and there is a layer of crumbs on every surface. Other times, having a housekeeper is more of an inconvenience-- making sure to have the house tidy on a certain day at a certain time, keeping the children out of her way, and possibly getting out of the house while she's here. Plus the expense. Currently, we are in the latter category. So, for the time being, we are back to cleaning our house, 5 kids and all. So how do you clean with 5 kids? Well, our youngest is an infant, so I don't have much to worry about with her, save for feedings and naps interfering. I tend to do loud cleaning, like vacuuming, right after she wakes up from nap. That way she's happy and content to bounce in her Excersaucer. For the in depth cleaning, like the bathrooms, I try to do that when she...

My first trip to labor and delivery for contractions was at 27 weeks. Each week after that I've had to take it easier and easier. I haven't been able to drive the children anywhere or take them out of the house by myself for almost a month. Now we've had preterm labor and steroid shots for baby #5. I've been on modified bed rest for a couple weeks. My OB has told me to keep taking it easy and do the minimum and I'm supposed to lay down and drink as much water as possible each day. My other favorite part of the instruction, "If you have someone to help with the children, you should use them." It sounds easy enough on paper, but our day to day life is not conducive to bed rest. My husband is on submarines and we have 4 boys: a 7-year old, 5-year old twins, and a 1.5-year old. Managing our house (with minimal assistance) and 4 young children while being on modified bed rest has been challenging. So here are my tips on surviving bed rest with 4 children:...

I am really naïve when it comes to politics. First of all, it never crossed my mind that a transgender person would have to use the bathroom for the opposite sex. Why would a transgender female-- a female -- have to use a men's restroom? Have I just had my head buried in the sand? Is that really what it has been like for transgender people before now? I feel like this whole topic of bathroom equality brings up a whole slew of issues that I can't even begin to delve into. I don't know the answer for all of this-- prisons paying for gender reassignment, school locker rooms, on and on. It is a huge subject, a lofty subject. My guess is that any transgender kid in high school is having a much harder day than I am though and, as a momma, that breaks my heart. This topic gets my gears turning. First of all, I don't understand the anger regarding the bathroom debate. Do I suddenly feel public restrooms are a danger? Hell no. Public restrooms and locker rooms have been a da...

Well, baby #5 has decided that I apparently do not need sleep and she isn't even born yet. I thought I would put these wee hours of the morning to use and write a blog post while I sipped my lemon ginger tea in a quiet, still sleeping house. With 4 children and another on the way, I am not always eager to drag all the children to the store for small errands. Throw in having a husband on submarines, 2 asthmatic children, twin preschoolers, and the roughest pregnancy yet and you can bet running errands is my least favorite thing to do (well, changing pee sheets is probably actually my least favorite thing to do). When our twins were newborns, I really started utilizing the convenience of online shopping. Now I have honed that skill to level expert. Here are my tips on making online shopping work for you and avoiding small errands: 1. Buy in bulk The first step to successful online shopping: go to Costco. We plan our Costco trips every 1-2 weeks. Our twins are in prescho...

Your spouse's submarine is heading in to shipyard. You have no idea what to feel. You are excited because his boat won't be deploying, but every time you talk to people about shipyard, they sound negative. What is it about shipyard?! This is our second time in shipyard. In a general sense, here's what you should know: 1. The shipyard schedule starts out pretty good. This is usually the point where people say things to you like, "Just you wait." (Really encouraging, right?) The hours can be somewhat reasonable and the stress level of your spouse is on the normal range. Not to sound like the Negative Nancy's, but the shipyard schedule really does ramp up as the boat gets ready to leave shipyard. Now is the time to savor those work week hours and possibly two weekend days off in a row. Yes, the schedule can be exceedingly disappointing even then (like dealing with a 4 day duty rotation) or a heavy trainer schedule, but-- in general-- this is the time whe...

My husband walked around the bed this morning to kiss me good-bye before heading off to work. "How did you sleep?" he asks. He asks me that. 32 weeks pregnant with our 5th kid (6th pregnancy). How did I sleep? I had heartburn. I woke up a little after midnight and thought I would puke. I had Braxton Hicks. I felt like I needed my inhaler every time I rolled over. And forget about finding a comfortable sleeping position when your hips slide out of place every time you lay on one side too long. Lately I've been doing a lot of pregnancy grumbling. Like a lot of people, I hate being pregnant. The waddling. The huffing and puffing while doing small tasks. Braxton Hicks while trying to load and unload children from school pick up and drop off. The aches, pains, discomfort, irritable uterus, post-partum, all of that. It is all so frustrating. Of course there are amazing things about pregnancy. I love the excitement of seeing two pink lines when all I've been seeing is ne...

You know what's hard? Life. Marriage. Being a parent. All of that. I've been feeling like a failure lately in my endeavors. People say things to me like, "I don't know how you do it!" and "You are a supermom" and "4 boys? You are amazing." Most of it is lip service from strangers, the go-to things that people say to moms (and moms for 4 boys). It goes in one ear and out the other most of the time, but lately those comments have been giving me stress. This was a crazy move for us, a big change returning to boat life and living across country from my family. I feel like I'm barely holding on and that I'm frequently dropping the ball with our kids. We wrestled with our decision to send our oldest to public school instead of continuing homeschooling him. We wrestled with the decision to homeschool our 4-year old twins instead of re-configuring the budget to send them to preschool. We've been wrestling with the decision on whethe...

One of the things I hear about all the time is the idea of a "Navy family," not as in my blog title, Kimber's Navy Family, which refers to our nuclear family, but a temporary family comprised of military members and their families supporting each other. People post pictures about how they love their Navy family, "Don't know what I would do without these girls! Love my Navy family!" Or make comments about how their Navy family helped get them through certain times in their life. I myself talk often about our Navy family . The past couple weeks, the concept of a Navy family has materialized once again in real and practical ways in my life. While we were away from the Navy community during my husband's years at college, I almost forgot about how present a Navy family is and just how much help our Navy family offers. Our Navy family truly becomes far more than just people we meet, but family , people that step into our lives and lift us up, people that brin...