Kimber's Navy Family

I started this blog before my twins were a year old, 7 years ago. We were a growing military family. We had PCS'd together 3 times by then. I felt like when I talked to other parents of multiples that there was a marked difference in our family mentality. They all had a long view-- neighborhoods they planned on living in for their children's entire childhoods, or sending their kids to schools that they themselves had gone to or all their previous children had gone to. As a military family, our focus is much more on the present. The time we have together today. Where we are living right now. My husband's schedule that week. We have to approach our plans with an open hand. Because I have found that I make plans and hold on to them with a tight fist and, like sand, they slip through my fingers. The military is always changing the game on us. Our orders were revoked before we moved to this duty station. Granted, they came through a week or so later, but at that point in time ...

I just wrote a blog post on how to support yourself through deployment ( "Supporting yourself during deployment" ) and how to support the military spouses in your life through deployment ( "Supporting military spouses through deployment" ), so the next post in this series should naturally be about how to support your children through a deployment. Nearing the end of our second sea tour, I can say that going through deployment with an infant and going through a deployment with a 3rd grader are vastly different, just as going through deployment with one child compared to multiple children has also been very different. So my disclaimer for this post is that this is a general guide for getting through deployment with kids. I would love to hear about how you get your children through deployment at their ages and stages! My oldest, as I write this post, is 9-years old in 3rd grade. We also have twin 6-year olds, a 3-year old, and a 1-year old. 1. Familiar routines Th...

I recently posted my top 10 ways to help a military spouse through deployment in my blog post " Supporting military spouses through deployment. " It can be really hard to know exactly what to do to help a friend or neighbor or whoever the military spouse in your life is when they are navigating the deployment of their spouse. But how can you, as the military spouse, help yourself through a deployment? Help comes in various ways and sometimes the help you need is abundant and everywhere you look and sometimes you can't catch a break and feel completely on your own. So what are things that you can do to make your life just a liiiiitle bit easier? 1. Deployment pre-planning To quote Monty Python, "No one expects the Spanish Inquisition." Before deployment, before you are navigating the emergency situation on your own, make a list of every phone number you could possibly need. It sounds ludicrous, but when you start making this list and you struggle through th...

Recently on one of my submarine spouse groups, a spouse asked what kind of support is given to the military families while the service member is deployed. Several people answered, but here's the bottom line: no support is guaranteed. Your boat might not have an active FRG (Family Readiness Group). Or Wardroom (for officer spouses). Or you might be geo-bacheloring and nowhere near any of the military support. Or maybe you haven't connected at that particular duty station or you just moved there or you live across country from all of your friends and family or maybe you are going through a hard time: mentally or physically. But here is the great news! Support for military families can come from anywhere: your neighbors, the military community, your friends and family, your existing support networks and social circles, your church, your gym, your kids' schools, long distance, your FRG, your Wardroom, your military base and the programs offered there. Even better, ...

One hundred and forty-four days. When I say it aloud, it feels like a lot. And a short amount of time, because I know it should have been longer. It should have been longer because my husband had to stay behind and finish a school for the Navy, PNEO (Prospective Nuclear Engineering Officer). The timing of his class meant he had to stay behind and finish PNEO for a couple extra weeks after his crew had already left. Those were weeks of bliss. I'm sure for him it was challenging-- PNEO is a lot of studying. But, from my perspective, the PNEO schedule was much better than the boat schedule. He would study in the morning, come home for lunch, study in the afternoon, and come home shortly after I picked the children up from school. It felt like I actually got to spend time with my husband. It was the perfect way to spend our last couple weeks before deployment. Because, in the blink of an eye, our lazy mornings in bed together were gone. Our family evenings together were gone. O...

When I have sat down to think about my blog and the direction I want it to go in, the first thing I think about is, "Why did I start blogging in the first place?" The question is closely tied to my life. I started blogging because I like writing. I like writing and felt that I couldn't do a lot of it with a toddler and infant twins. I felt like we had a busy life that was somewhat different than the civilian friends I know because my husband is in the military. I felt like we are a military family trying to put a lot of emphasis on family , because we do know that my husband is going to be career military, staying in until he retires. I felt like in the community of military families, it is good for us to talk about our search for "normalcy" and to stick together with our unique set of challenges. I felt like talking about these challenges in a public way-- on my blog-- would help shed light on our community and to overlap the similarities as a military family w...

April is Month of the Military Child which has made me think a lot about our 5 military children. Our oldest son-- 8 years old and in 2nd grade-- has attended 4 different schools: 2 public schools across the country from each other (kindergarten in Washington DC and 1st and 2nd in Washington state), plus homeschooling kindergarten in South Carolina and preschool in North Carolina. He has lived in 6 different states and 8 different houses. This is his second time having his dad on a sea tour (though he was 2 years old when we got off our first boat). For our other 4 children, this is their first time having their dad on a sea tour, though not the first time they have been separated from him. However, we were able to video chat and call him on our previous separations. Our 6-year old twins have lived in 4 states and 5 houses. So far they have done school "normally," 2 schools, both in the same state. One was preschool and they have now moved on to the elementary...