Chapter 3 "Deployments With Kids"

I am still working on Chapter 2 of my book, once I am happy with it, I will share.
This chapter goes through a very snap shot look of what we went through with our children, and the things I had tried to do to help our kids through the long seperations. I am going to be adding links and ideas in my book in this chapter as I get suggestions from friends of mine for ideas of ways to keep kids busy during deployments.

I hope you enjoy this one, it flowed straight out of my fingertips last night! Writing is so much fun!
Thank you for reading, if you have any suggestions please let me know! Have a great rest of your day or night!!

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Picture Taken by me

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This topic will get super emotional, so be prepared with some tissues.

2003, my husband and I found out we were expecting baby #2, Oct 31st 2003. We would have 2 little ones by the time he made his way home from his year long deployment. To say I was terrified would be a gross understatement, and just the thought of it now makes my stomach churn. Our son was 1 year old, and was excitedly waiting to be a big brother! He was an active little guy and loved to be around everyone, especially if you wanted to play “hot wheels” crashing games.

6 weeks after he had left for his deployment, I lost our baby. I was 14 weeks along, and I had no way of letting my husband know what had happened. Our son was 15 months old, my family was a few thousand miles away, and I was 18 years old. I was a little bit on the overwhelmed side, and was not quite ready for what the next few months had in store.

I truly don’t know how our son made it through the following weeks, my neighbors were the ones who kept things rolling for him and I. I was a mess and wasn’t sure how in the world I would keep going on. My only reason for waking up each day at that point, was our son. He needed me, and I sure needed him. I fell in to a deep depression, and was clearly on the brink of a mental break down. I flew to Utah to be closer to our family, as I tried to process what I had just been through. I managed to receive my GED that year, and was able to grow as an adult, as I trudged my way through one of the darkest times of my life.

As sad as this story is, I promise it gets better. I will forever miss this child, although I only had a brief time carrying this little spirit inside my womb. I am forever grateful for the lessons I learned and the strenth I gained from this experience.

Rylan was a baby when my husband was on his first year long deployment, he was full of spunk, and wanted to learn EVERYTHING he could. He was my light. I tried my hardest to keep his mind off missing his daddy. When he was this little, it was very easy to do. Just keep him alive, healthy, and active. That is all I needed to do. As he got older, it got trickier. My husband left for his second deployment when Rylan was 2 1/2 for another year long seperation. This time, Rylan was really unsure and NOT happy about having to say “goodbye” again. With each goodbye, his skin got tougher, and his spunk started to slowly slip away.

I found out we were expecting another sweet little babe 1 week after my husband had left for Korea. Ahhh fate. We are so incredibly blessed that things worked the way they did..but boy oh boy..I was NOT ready for another pregnancy on my own. I drove to Utah with my mother in law, whom had also endured her fair share of seperations and deployments as an Active Duty Airforce spouse. She always got me through these long deployments.

With Rylan being a bit older, I needed a way to help him understand time. One, because he asked a billion times “when is daddy going to be home” and Two, because he needed to know when daddy would be home, and SEE for himself a timeline. We made a link chain with paper, and he got to take off a link each and every night! This helped with the questions, and he felt accomplished each day knowing the chain was getting smaller!

Wes came home for the birth of our daughter, and was able to spend about 2 weeks with us before he had to go back to finish out his time in Korea. The last few months were the hardest.

In my introduction, “Arms stretched out long, rigidly dangling over my right shoulder screaming with tears streaming down his round rosy cheeks “daddy, don’t go!” This was the moment I realized our story book life had come to a complete end. “ I was at the Salt Lake Airport, carrying our newborn daughter in her carrier, and lugging our 3 year old toddler on my right shoulder..this is where the break down happend. We were watching Wes load on to the plane, and Rylan lost it. He kicked and screamed and wriggled out of my arms. I couldn’t hold him and the carrier, so I had to stop and let him lose it. We both broke, right there in the middle of the airport, sobbing in each other’s arms. Mom and son, for the 3rd time, enduring another “goodbye” with our love and best friend. Our daughter slept soundly in her carrier as Rylan and I cried together. I vaguely remember people watching us, or coming by to make sure we were ok. Time seemed to slow down, as Wes loaded on to the plane that day.

My husband returned home from Korea in August of 2005. His father was retiring from the US Airforce, and he and his brother got to present the flag flown over the capital to their father. This was a very cool moment in time! 26 years of served time, his father was a shining example of what it meant to be a proud American Veteran.

We drove from Utah to Texas with a newborn (now 4 months old) and a fiesty 3 year old. We returned back to our home ready to live out the rest of our lives in the military as quickly as we could. The seperation date was coming up in a few years, so we just had to make it with out any more deployments. Well…..that didn’t work out (white t-shirt stained in chocolate sauce people..it doesn’t come out the way you want it to.). We soon found out that we had another upcoming deployment, one that would fall right inside the date of when he was to be seperating from the military…UGH!! We ALMOST made it!

The summer of 2007 we now had a 5 year old and a 2 year old, and we were gearing up to say “goodbye” again. Wes had some training he needed to do before this next tour in Iraq, so we moved back to Utah to be closer to family sooner than he was to be deployed. June 2007 started our 22 month seperation. Now, I had a pissed off 5 year old, whom wanted his father and NOT his mom. And a very sad little 2 year old girl, whom wanted her daddy to play dress up with and snuggle. This deployment was by FAR the hardest one to get through. We had 22 months to push through, but trying to keep 2 kids happy and calm for 22 months was a challenge!
Addie, our little girl, was and still is a BIG daddy’s girl! She would scream and cry each and every night that whole 22 months, she was still too young to understand time and the chain was not helping her feel any better…I mean, imagine a chain strung 2 times across the whole entire distance of the walls of the room. Not very motivating! We made sure to draw and color pictures for Wes as much as we could, and we made videos that daddy would see! That help tide them both over. The kids would each get to choose out a treat for their daddy that was special from them, and we would try to make sure they could put their special touch on which ever item they chose for their daddy.

Rylan struggled a lot with his emotions over the next 2 years, he would try his hardest to fit in, but kids are mean and treated him like there was something wrong with him because his dad was gone. He ended up getting bullied quite a bit in Kindergarten and 1st grade. Even one of his teachers was a poor example of how you should help a Military child get through his elementary years. She repeatedly labled him as “the bad kid” and treated him as such, which in turn, created a monster. Rylan was given a very small chance to improve his behavior in Utah, so we ended up moving back to Texas for him to go to school there.

If you didn’t know, Belton Texas has THE BEST schools in the nation, and we had the very best pricipals and teachers known to man! Rylan thrived in school, and was treated like he should have been! He got good grades, and started to love school. The bullying stopped, and he was enjoying life as best he could.

Fast forward a few months, Wes made it home! The end of January 2009, the deployment was OVER!! We were so glad to have made it to the close of our military chapter!

BAH HA HA HA HA!! Just kidding!! It couldn’t be that easy!

As Wes prepared to seperate from the military, the turmoil began. Rylan was trying to test the waters and see if his dad was going to stick around, or who was the “better man”. Around the age of 6-7 years old, boys tend to have a strong bond and connection with their mom..to the point of a “crush” per se. Of course there was no crushing happening, but there was a mad bull ready to claim his territory. I mean, he was THE man of the house, and now this dude who has been out of the picture for basically 6 years of our lives thought he could just come in and fit right back in? I now know that this was a very normal response to a very abnormal situation. Unfortunately this is where the medication came in, we were at a loss as to what we should do to help him chill out. He was medicated on ADHD medication for a few months, until we realized it was not serving him well, and got him off of it ASAP. He was shrinking to nothing, and was miserable each day the medicine wore off.

You wonder how our daughter was? She was happy as a clam, always was and always is. She just rolls with whatever punches she gets. It is inspiring! And of course, the crying and screaming fits were over..we just had an extra 2 monkeys in our bed near nightly! Can you blame them? We eventually made it through this moment in time and had a handle on what direction we wanted to go in.

To close out this chapter, I want you to know, raising kids while being a military family is no easy feat, and you do NOT have to do it on your own! Find friends and family that can help ease the stress, because you WILL need to have time on your own. Make sure to journal and write down your feelings, because bottling them up will do you no good. Especially when you have littles, and they won’t be able to talk you off your mental cliff. You don’t want to side track your soldier with your “small stuff” at home..like sicknesses (unless big ones come up) or fights with their siblings or parents ect…keep things simple for yourself and your Veteran. Pinterest is a great resource that I wish I had back then, to find good ways to get your kids through long deployments. Try making your kids think you are doing great, and break down at night! Enjoy all the amazing fun moments your kids will bring to your life during this time! There are so many things that I wished I would have soaked in a bit deeper. I was there physically for our kids, but definitely not there for them mentally! Don’t make the same mistake! Your kids deserve to have one parent 100% there for them during this hard time. I know putting your feelings aside for your kids can be a bit exhausting, but it will be so incredibly worth it! Try your best to be the most present person they have! You will have more well rounded kids, and a less worried Veteran if you take the steps you can to make this less scary all around!