The Final Countdown

I think the first two weeks when Nick leaves is the worst, and the last two weeks before we get to see him is the "second worst" part of any type of separation.

The first two weeks, I normally go through an "initial shock" phase of becoming a "solo parent", and it takes me a little bit to find my groove and my routine without him around.

The last two weeks, there's so much anticipation of finally having him back that it literally feels like an eternity.

Throw that into the mix of emotions of having to "reintegrate" our family once again, and the stress of that gives me major anxiety.

I've written before how hard reintegration has been on our family because we've had to do it so often.

The worst part is that right when we find our "sweet spot", Nick is leaving again.

Between the advanced course and OCS this year, we only had 3 months together...between the advanced course and his last trip to OCS (as an instructor) last summer, we only had 4 months together....see a pattern here?

Now that we are on our final stretch of our countdown, I have all this anticipation and excitement.

I can't wait to have someone to sit on the couch with at the end of the day and unwind with.

I can't wait to have an extra set of hands to help out with the kids.

I really just can't wait to have my best friend back home.

But I know that everything won't be automatically "rainbows and unicorns" when he gets home.

I don't want to fall back into our old patterns of reintegrating, because honestly, it was hell.

We didn't do it "right"....which I'm not sure if there's a "right way" to reintegrate...

But I know there's a better way than the way we have been doing it.

Normally, I would just throw him into our lives, and expect him to know how everything's been working....

That caused resentment on his part, because he obviously didn't know how I had been running the household.

That caused anger on my part, because...well...if he hadn't left in the first place, he would know...

The silver lining is the fact that once this is over with, we have AT LEAST the next two years with no separations, and we can find some sort of "normalcy" in our lives for a short while.

Dannika had her 5 year well check appointment yesterday.
She's 43.5 inches tall and exactly 43lbs!
She's gained 5lbs in the last year and grew 3 whole inches!

What a difference a year makes, huh?

My bad knee has been bothering me again, so I only hit the pavement twice a week nowadays.
I get my cardio in on low impact machines at the gym the rest of the days.
I did 7.5 miles on Sunday at a pretty quick pace with the stroller, and I'm still experiencing some pretty excruciating knee pain from that run today! eek!
I have an appointment at the VA in a few weeks for a follow up since my knee surgery in the Marine Corps!

Dannika's gymnastics gym had a Disney theme going on this week, and she insisted that I snap some photos of her with some of her favorite princesses.

This girl can do a pull up all on her own on the rings at gymnastics.
She's now obsessed with doing them!
Good thing we have some rings on the swing set at home!

Here's to the next two weeks!