Wow....8 months later.

I can't believe that it has been eight months since the last time I blogged. I think that I have gotten very caught up in the business of life. I forgot that blogging can be cathartic and that it does good things for my mental health. I would make this the type of post that updates everyone on how I have been and what I have been doing, but to be honest I haven't been doing that much. In short, I still run and I still love it. I still parent and sometimes I love it and sometimes I wish that I could run away screaming and start a single life in a city somewhere. My husband was deployed and now he is back, however my kids and I are now living in a different state waiting for his service to end. He should be joining us in a month and a half. I graduated from college and am getting ready to start graduate school. I will be pursuing an MA in teaching. I think that's about it, and it is definitely the interesting stuff.



I decided to blog again because here I am alone with my kids again. By the time that 2012 ends, my husband and I will have only lived together for 4 months of the year. While I understand that this is a part of the military package, that doesn't make it suck any less. My husband is amazing. We have a wonderful relationship and I love him very much. On top of that, he is a great father and he is very involved. He helps a lot around the house and does more parenting than many men that I know. It has been a really long year for me.



I don't think that a lot of people are completely honest with the public about their feelings on parenthood. I know that, having been a stay-at-home-mom for the last five years, there is a lot of pressure in the stay-at-home-mom community to be all mommy all the time. You are looked down on or judged if you express an interest in a life outside of the home.A stay-at-home-mom is expected to enjoy every minute of it and to devote herself to it entirely. I know some moms who actually do, I know some moms who are honest about the moments that they don't. However, most of the moms I know just put something out there that I *personally* don't think they really feel.



We moms don't talk about how exasperating it is to try and keep a house clean all day long while the messes seem to keep popping up. No one understands how hard it is knowing that the words "go brush your teeth" are going to cause a tantrum but they have to be said anyways. No one especially understands the crushing feeling of having a million things to do, wanting to do them all right, and feeling like you will never get the five minutes you want to just sit there and breathe. I have felt that a lot this year. Being a stay-at-home-mom is defeating me. I am not giving my all to anything because I feel like it's never enough.



I am so tired all the time that I feel like having a job of my own would actually be refreshing. I feel like I would value my time with my children more if I worked outside of the home. I want to enjoy them, not wish that they would go play quietly away from me in their rooms. I want to look forward to the moments that I will share with them rather than dreading the moment that nap ends and I have to deal with more messes. On the weekends (or whatever my days off are) I would like to look forward to doing things with them rather than wishing for a moment of peace and quiet.



I love my kids so much. I love being a mom. I love being a wife. But I think that I need to get back in touch with Molly as a person. For a long time, school was all I needed to keep me anchored as a person. Then I added running and that worked like a charm. But, once again, I need to grow and I need to change. I need to work. I need to start making a life for myself outside of my home. I need to see myself as something other than a wife and mom and student and runner, because I have always known that I was capable of great things and I need to feel like I am doing them.



It's time for me to walk out the front door and grow even more than I already have in the last couple of years.

Celebrating My Babyman.

The child whose birth I am celebrating today is my miracle. Any mother of more than one child will tell you that you don't have favorites, but you do love each child differently. Your love grows and changes and your relationships with each child are different and special. My little Puff is my miracle. He is the baby that I have truly gotten to embrace and enjoy. He is the baby that brought me out of almost three years worth of depression and anxiety and into the light.

My sweet Babyman is my breath of fresh air. He is the smiling, mischievous, little chunk that I look forward to seeing every single day. I remember that one year ago, I was amazed by his beauty, but slightly disappointed that he had brown eyes. Now, I enjoy the sparkle of mischief he has in those dark brown beauties. I love the way that he reaches for me and says, "buh, buh, buh." I love his independent streak and I love how excited he gets to play and how efficiently he entertains himself.

The last year has been amazing because I feel like my sweet boy has helped me to come into my own as a mother. I am a better mother because of the sweet little boy who is one year old today. I can't wait to see him spend the next year developing his own personality and his own set of quirks. I love my sweet baby and I can't wait to watch him turn into my terrible toddler.

Happy birthday, Babyman.

Half-Marathon.

Last year, on March first, I started the Couch to 5k running program. I was about six weeks postpartum after having my sweet little Puff. I had been overweight since 2008, after I gave birth to my older son. I had always made really half-hearted attempts to lose weight after he was born, but I think that my depression really inhibited me and kept me from fully committing. However, last year something really clicked. I was fed up with the way my life was and I was incredibly tired of hating myself. I started that program and I also started Weight Watchers and I never looked back.

This hasn't been an easy road for me. I wasn't raised to eat well and exercise and I don't have the best habits. However, here I stand almost a year later, sixty pounds lighter and roughly eight sizes more trim. Weight loss has been wonderful. I can't even begin to explain the improvement in how I feel. But, there has been one other major gain from this life experience. It took me twenty-five years to figure it out, but, I am a runner.

I absolutely love to run. Nothing makes me feel stronger than running through the compulsion to stop. Nothing makes me feel more at peace than a good run. Running is a huge part of my connection with the world around me and the God that I am learning to believe in. I never knew I had it in me, and now it is something that I never want to lose.

After a couple of months of Couch to 5k, I entered my first 5k and I ran every step. I average 13:30 per mile, but I ran the entire time. Shortly after that, I registered for a couple more 5k races and my performance improved each time. Then, a friend and I trained to run a 10k. We did not end up competing, but running with her was one of the best things to have happened to me in 2011 and I increased my distance markedly. Then, it occurred to me that I wanted to challenge myself in a way that I never thought possible. I registered for a half-marathon. 13.1 miles of running and I was ready to dive in.

I trained hard, however I have been sick on and off recently and my husband leaving for deployment really hindered my ability to train as well as I would have liked. But I still trained and even though I was a couple of miles short in my training, I showed up for the race last Saturday, January 14, 2012. I was reluctant and I knew that my inadequate training was going to affect my performance. However, I still wanted to do it and I knew that I was able to run the majority of the distance.

It was a very cold, rainy Saturday with a prediction of rain. I don't own winter running gear, so I knew it was bound to be interesting. In fact, less than a foot off of the starting line and I ran right through a huge puddle. My feet were cold, my hands were freezing and I realized almost right away that I should have gone to the bathroom before I started. I kept running. The course was gorgeous and I kept reflecting on how I was doing something that I never imagined that I could do.

My mind would occasionally drift to my full bladder and my frozen, wet toes but I would remind myself to think about what I was looking at and I would take a moment to give thanks every time that happened. The things I generally thought of to give thanks for were my kids, my husband, my feet and legs that were allowing me to run, my friends who had supported me, and the finish line. Every single time my mind would drift, I went to what I was grateful for and it helped.

I finally came to a porta-potty at about five and a half miles. I lost about five minutes waiting in the line, but I kept jogging in place. Then, I took off again and that is when the magic happened. I had to run through a residential area and coming out of it there was a small downhill slope. The small hill gave a view of a lake and across the lake there was a beautiful mountain home. The scenery was glorious and I know that slowed down significantly as I came down that hill because I was so taken aback. Then, as I was staring in awe, two gigantic bald eagles (my favorite Washington feature) swooped down and tried to catch something in the lake. It was the most beautiful thing that I had ever seen in my life.

I realized, at that moment, that I was blessed. I was a formerly obese woman, running in a half-marathon, with a deployed husband who was lucky beyond measure just to be there. If I had ever doubted that there was a higher power, those doubts were squashed. I took a deep breath, said a small prayer, and kept running. My GPS yelled in my ear a moment later and informed me that my average pace was still roughly a twelve minute mile. I was in mile eight of a half-marathon and I was hitting twelve minute miles. I kept on at that pace for another two or so miles.

It was then that my run went all to crap. I came through the out and back and I was starting to hurt and feel tired. My feet were so cold and wet that I was actually having some pain in my toes, and then I got lost. I ran about a quarter mile out of my way, up a hill before I ran into a runner who told me that I was going the wrong way. I ran with her to the fork where she went up to go to the out and back and I ran down to head toward the finish line. That mistake cost me about half a mile total and it happened right at the point when my run was getting difficult. I averaged fourteen minute miles the last mile and a half or two miles of my run. My spirits were low and I was just so freaking cold that the whole thing had started to seem absurd.

I was fantasizing about calling my friends to just come and get me, but I really wanted the medal I would get for finishing. I kept running, it was just an insanely slow pace and with an incredibly bad attitude. I was about half a mile away from the finish line when my GPS told me that I had completed 13.1 miles (because I got lost) and that my time was 2:56:??, I jogged a little bit farther before I decided that walking up to the college (where the race ended) would give me a cool down and that I had met my goal and done it not too terribly much over my goal. I walked in, until I saw my friends and they started yelling me to run across the finish. I ran across the finish line, collected my medal, and immediately went into some sort of hypothermia-related shock.

I have never felt so immediately sore after a run. First of all, I needed to get my socks off. My feet were ridiculously cold and wet and I was getting concerned that I might lose a digit. I also needed to stretch and eat and replace my electrolytes. I was shaking and my inner thighs were already seizing up. I did what any, rational girl would do. I went and got a cheeseburger and some hot cocoa with my friends. I also let my friend drive home and kept my feet under an eighty-degree heater the entire way.

It took a while to sink in, but in the past couple of days I have realized the magnitude of my achievement. Not only did I run 13.1 miles, I did it in the freezing cold without good gear. I ran 13.1 miles. I, Molly, ran the entire race. I worked through my mental and physical roadblocks. I ran 13.1 miles. I used to wheeze when I walked up my stairs, and I ran 13.1 miles. I ran 13.1 miles and managed to feel thankful and lucky to be doing it. I am still in total awe of what I accomplished.

The Like Book.

I think that anyone who has ever parented a toddler should know that toddlerhood is like a minefield. Toddlers are...special. Toddlers will eat you up, spit you out, and then come back for seconds. They kick, scream, bite, pinch, don't eat, don't stop eating, refuse to bathe, won't brush their teeth, won't take a bath, and are all around difficult.

I just so happen to be lucky enough to be parenting a child who inherited my stubborn personality. He is, without a doubt, the person who gets under my skin the most in the whole world. Maybe he and my mother are neck and neck, but for the most part my relationship with him is the most difficult thing in my life.

I feel like we are constantly at odds. He is actually stubborn enough to bend my will from time to time, and I am extremely stubborn. I go whole days where I feel bad at the end of the day because I realize that all I have done is yell at him or send him to time out. There are whole weeks where I realize that I have had almost entirely negative interaction with my son. I feel like I will try to do fun, good things with him and it will blow up in my face because it ends in a tantrum.

I love my son. He's funny and smart. He's very people oriented. He loves people and he always wants to make his friends happy. If another kid comes to our home, he offers them a juice box and a go-gurt. He remembers people that we haven't seen in over a year. He loves to read and he tells really good stories. I am pretty sure that he actually thinks he is a superhero and his blue/grey eyes shine when he smiles. He looks exactly like his daddy would look if he had my nose. He's one of the most amazing things I have ever seen in my life. But when he's screaming at me because he wants Goldfish crackers for breakfast instead of waffles, all of that gets lost.

It's like the moment he starts yelling and whining, I tune him out and go into defensive mode. It's not fun on the best of days. It's even less fun when I have no one to relieve me and no break from him at all. He goes to preschool and some days I can't wait to drop him off and I dread picking him up. I don't like feeling that way about my child.

I knew coming into deployment that I was going to have to tackle our relationship head on. I knew that I was going to have to dip into my creative reserves and I was going to have to pour out every last drop of patience and empathy. I was right. We are only a month into this thing, and some days I just don't even know how the rest of the time is going to be possible. Some days, he gets away with murder just because I am so exhausted from fighting with him.

The last couple of days have been better. Today was Day 5 of he and I filling out our "I Like Book." I saw the book on a website that I frequent that offers good deals on baby and children's items and I decided that it was worth a try. I figured that it definitely wouldn't make things worse. The book arrived and I decided that I would start after the New Year so that I could look through it first.

The idea is simple. There are two slots for every day and you write the name of the person who is writing the "like" and then you write a "like." The two slots are there so that both the mother and the father can write something, but since this is my project and my husband is gone I have been having my son tell me one thing that he likes about me. There are extra spaces from time to time in the book for sketching or doing small activities.

Tonight, I told my son that I like when he helps me feed the dog. His contribution was that he likes my smile. My heart melted. I actually shed a tear. For one thing, this activity is so simple that he actually understands what is expected of him and is eager to participate. My son, who I had just had to pull out of the bathtub for dumping water out, likes my smile. My smile brightens his day. He knows how he can brighten my day now.

In only five days, I am seeing a little bit of change in the way he behaves toward me and in my attitude toward him. I look forward to the two minutes we spend "liking" each other at the end of the day. This book could be one of the best investments I have ever made.

I leave you with an oldie, but a goody.

Runtelldat.

I have been sick non-stop since Dave left. I have had a combination of sniffles, nasty cold, flu-like symptoms, vomiting, etc. You name it, I have dealt with it. I have never had the world's best immune system. Apparently the stress of Dave being gone, the holidays, school, running, parenting, and every thing else that comes in life has been enough to make my immune system totally crash.

I have never been the world's best sick person. I am a huge baby. I can't function with a cloudy brain and I have a tendency to just want to hibernate when I get sick. Being sick without my partner around is impossible. I already knew that Dave did a lot around here. I have never taken his contributions for granted but I am used to having help. I am used to being able to hand everything off at some point during the day. Not having that, and vomiting, has been trying.

The worst part of all of it is that I feel like I am being a sub-par mother. I never want my kids to feel like they aren't at the top of my list. I always felt that way growing up and I never wanted it for my own children. But I imagine that kids who see their mom half-dead on the couch all day feel pretty second-seat. The only difference for me is that I was sick whereas my mom was an alcoholic.

Parenting is the hardest thing I have ever done. Every day I meet a challenge that I don't feel ready for. Every single day I have to make difficult decisions. Each and every day, I have to meet someone's needs and do it well. I never imagined how difficult it would be on a normal day. Now that I have had to parent without my husband and while sick, I feel like I probably haven't even imagined the worst of it. I cannot even begin to imagine doing this if there wasn't an end in sight.

My hat is off to all of the spouses who do twelve month deployments and more. My hat is off to the single parents. My hat is off to those of you who have spouses that don't do a whole lot when they come home from work. I can't wait for the end of this, but at least I have an end. You don't, and you deserve one. If you ever need a break, you know who to call. I feel morally obligated to baby sit for each and every one of you.

Illness and Merriment.

The past two days have been awful. I was "blessed" with one of the worst immune systems known to mankind and have been chronically sick since I was a little Molly. I get ear infections, gnarly sinus infections, colds that put me down for days, and whatever else comes my direction. Of course, because of this, I spend almost every winter fighting off different bugs. It's not very fun in the best of circumstances, but it's even worse when there's no one here to help.

Yesterday morning I woke up feeling like death warmed over. I was clammy and had the chills, my throat was on fire, and I was dizzy. Thanks to some of my fellow Navy wives, my kids were cared for all day while I slept. I couldn't manage to keep myself awake for more than a few minutes at a time and it was terrible. Then, this morning, another friend watched the spawn while I went to the doctor. I tested positive for strep and was also diagnosed with a double ear infection. No wonder that I didn't feel well and couldn't stay awake!

After being given a shot of penicillin directly in my "upper thigh," I came home determined to take my other meds and give my children the Christmas Eve and Christmas that they very much deserve. Good thing for me that penicillin acts quickly. I got the house picked up (shit gets pretty gross when mom is sick for a day), started laundry, and baked cookies for Santa. Then I had it out with my toddler about whether or not he even deserves a visit from Santa tonight. Now I have to make a gingerbread house that I really don't feel like standing up for long enough to make. After bedtime, I have to assemble a bookshelf, a play table, and a push toy. Lucky for me, I have cool neighbors who are also handy and willing to help me assemble.

It's really hard to be merry and productive when you feel like garbage and miss your spouse. However, when you have little ones it is also very necessary to go through the motions despite the inclination to hunker down and ignore the world. My kids give me a reason to get up in the morning. They give me a reason to fake a smile and to keep on trucking when life gets messy. I don't know what I'd do without them. That said, I probably shouldn't let them eat the cookies that I handled. I don't want kids with strep.

Wind Down.

I think that any military spouse will say that deployments are stressful and that staying busy is the key to making them go by quickly. However, when you have kids staying busy is a given. The messes are constant, there's chaos, there is an endless string of things that need to be done. I am not really having any issues with keeping myself occupied. Even with the holiday break from school, I managed to compile a list of things that I need to do that I would have trouble finding time for with school going on.

I have been a Navy wife for over four years now, and the big thing that was drummed into my head by everyone. Imagine my surprise when deployment actually happened for us and staying busy is not the problem. Finding the time to wind down has been really tricky. Then, when I do have time to wind down, I find myself in my bed running through the massive list of things to do that I have for the next day. There's no wind down for the wife of a deployed sailor. I'm a mother, a pet owner, a student, a housekeeper, a laundromat, and a runner. How the hell am I supposed to relax with all of those balls in the air?

I have never been a masterful juggler. I like to get things done. I like the satisfied feeling that comes with checking things off of my to-do list. I like making the list because it makes me feel like I have a set of goals. Being that anal retentive has made for an interesting ride so far during this deployment. I'm very used to having a second person to pass some duties on to. Perhaps he drives me a little bit insane because he's not as driven to get things done as I am. Perhaps he doesn't always do those things to my specifications. However, he does them and it significantly reduces the size of my list.

Because of this challenge, I am learning to juggle and I am also learning to let go. If my house is not picked up, I have to let it go. I have to sleep. I have to care for my children. If there are Legos on the floor while I am doing that, I just have to suck it up and deal with them. It's not easy being anal retentive and learning to let go and wind down. It isn't easy doing all of this on my own. It's not easy trying to wind down when life doesn't ever wind down.

Woosaw.