Kimber's Navy Family

What do you do when your love is away? Does it worry you to be alone? How do you feel at the end of the day? Are you sad because you're on your own? No, I get by with a little help from my friends. Mmm, I get high with a little help from my friends. Mmm, gonna try with a little help from my friends. -The Beatles I've spent a lot of time talking this week. Well, first I spent a lot of time reading, avoiding what I was thinking about. Then it built and built until I was lying on the floor of our sunroom crying during naptime. While I was lying there, sun shining in, I thought, "What am I doing? I need to talk about this." So I watched the clock until it was an appropriate time to call my girlfriend who is in a completely different time zone. As soon as I heard her voice, I started crying. "Hello?" Crying, "Is it the crack of dawn there?" "Um, I think you have the wrong number...?" "It's me! Kimber!" "Girlf...

I am embarrassed to admit this, but up until recently I thought that our children were the additions to my husband and I's life, that we were supposed to adapt them to the rhythm of our lives. Surveying our house the other day, I realized how foolish this was. Who's calling the shots here? So I'm re-writing the game plan. As they say, when in Rome, do as the toddlers do. 1. Reason is not real. Who cares if you need a nap because company is coming over later? Who cares if you are only crying because you are tired? Who cares if there isn't more after all? These "reasons" are not tangible things and therefore they do not exist. 2. Throwing is a form of communication. Whether you are done with your meal or showing your brother a cool toy he can't touch, throwing is a great way to get your message across. 3. Use your body language. Take this very literally. If you are feeling down, flail on the floor. If you are excited or happy, run in circles with y...

The other night I wanted to look at a first word book with the toddlers. O wasn't sharing very well and was being a little wild, so I took C by the hand and asked him to help me find the book. I closed all the doors in the hallway before opening the baby gate-- no sneaking in the back bedrooms-- and let C through. As soon as O heard the gate squeak, he threw down the stolen and unshared toys and sprinted after us. C raced to the bookcase and yanked down D's (their older brother) favorite pop-up book. Knowing that pop-up books and toddlers don't mix, I tried to get C interested in a different book, the one we went down the hallway to get in the first place. C didn't want anything to do with board books, nope, only paper books for him. He pulled out book after book, flinging them on the floor. I kindly told him, "No, thank you!" and set him to work putting them back. O, in the meantime, ran to the other side of the bookcase and was surveying the scene. Mistaken...

"In that lonely place Frodo for the first time fully realized his homelessness and danger. He wished bitterly that his fortune had left him in the quiet beloved Shire." -JRR Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring Sometimes I really chafe under the military lifestyle. I try not to and there really are so many things I am grateful for. But sometimes, it rubs against me like a pair of ill-fitting shoes. My husband and I have been discussing buying a home sometime down the road. On a submarine wives forum, a bunch of wives were talking about their home buying experiences. Some families have had great success buying along the way, either selling or renting out as they go. Some families have not had success and have suffered great loss. We've been renting for almost six years now and it is getting old, especially as we add more children in the equation. My husband wants to own his own house; I just hate renting. (We aren't confident that those are good reasons to jump int...

This is such a ridiculous problem, yet every time I encounter it, I'm unsure what to do. Most of the time, I shower at night after the kids have gone to bed. Once in a blue moon, for one reason or another, I need to shower in the morning when the kids are awake. It happened to me last month and I frantically texted my girlfriend who also has twin toddlers, "What do I do?!?!" There are a multitude of reasons as to why this is such a problem. #1. I can't shower at naptime. Last month, we officially separated the boys for naptime. We now have a Pack'N'Play standing in our room full time. Since our bedroom is very small in the first place, it is perpetually in the way. But we deal with it because now it takes less than 2 hours for the toddlers to fall asleep at naptime. What does this mean for showering? To shower at naptime, I would need to get all my shower stuff, my make up, my hair stuff, and my clothes (though I never can decide what I want to wear until I...

  Well, cold and flu season is approaching, which also ushers in my least favorite season: prime time to catch RSV. If you are familiar with our story, you know one of my twin boys caught a severe case of RSV (Respiratory Syncytial Virus) last year that had him in the PICU for four days (see " RSV and premature babies "). This year he may be eligible for the Synagis vaccine because of his reactive airways (see " Reactive airways "), as he takes Pulmicort twice a day, has already gone in for breathing treatments, and was on Orapred all of last week. A couple things were brought to my attention this past month that are very important heading into this RSV season: 1. Premature children are at a higher risk for RSV the first two years of their life. 2. Even if your child had RSV last year, he could catch it again this year-- possibly with the same severity or worse than he had it the year before. The RSV vaccine is exceedingly expensive. Because of that, there...

   Every day in every way, it's getting better and better. -John Lennon   I think I've cracked the code on what people mean when they knowingly tell you, "It gets easier." For the longest time, I've wanted to ask these people, "What on earth do you mean by that? I've heard this since my oldest was born!" Four years and change and here is what I think they mean: survival and self-sufficiency. Survival: you get through it. When you have a newborn, you first must learn to feed it. This "gets easier" with practice. Feeding a one-year old can actually be much harder than feeding a newborn (don't freak out, new moms). Newborns don't throw food across the room or refuse to eat something because it is squishy/mushy/crunchy/green. You also pretty much know what a newborn will eat: breast milk or formula. One-year olds demand variety (or, perhaps, the same thing for every meal, turning mealtimes into a battleground). But-- here is...