Meltdown Mania

Hello family!

Well a lot has happened since my last post.  I usually am able to talk to Stephen once every 3 days.  They are 6 hours ahead of us, so we tend to get to talk around lunchtime or just after on those days.  There isn't really too much going on with him.  Every time I try to ask what is going on and how things are doing with him, he just says he is soooo busy with his job and has so much to do.  He said that most nights he has been going to bed between 2:00-3:00 a.m. working on his job.  I just can't believe he's still doing that much work over there like he was here....it's craziness! But I did tell him I didn't want to hear about his "no sleep" because there is NO WAY he is getting less sleep than me :) He agreed!

As for me...well.  In case you can't tell by my post...I totally had a meltdown this past weekend.  Literally.  My Mom and our good friend Ms. Lyn came up for a visit so we could keep putting my house together and decorate :) All day Friday little Joshua wouldn't nap, rest or let me put him down. Porter was his typical hyperactive four-year-old self and I had mad cleaning to do.  Needless-to-say, I was so exacerbated on the phone with my Mom that by the time they got here I think they just wanted to take over the kids for me so I could sit down for just one second and breath.

That afternoon Joshua started having a dry cough and I didn't know what was wrong with him.  After getting up with him three times that night to feed him, he began a deep congested croupy cough that had him gasping for air.  I couldn't take it and woke my Mom up to go to the ER with me.  Thank the LORD they were here because I didn't know what I would do at 4:45 a.m. by myself taking my two kids to the ER.  My experience at the ER was great and the doctor basically said that little Joshua has a cold and is fighting it very well.  The only concern is that he's not 2 months old yet which is when they get their first vaccinations so he can't fight off stuff that he normally would be able to.  So, first ER visit during the deployment and it went well.  My Mom and Ms. Lyn were totally crucial this weekend for my sanity.  I've cried from not enough sleep to being overwhelmed to totally missing the person that I need the most during these times.  I so enjoyed my Mom being here and she knew exactly what I needed this weekend.  We decorated, went shopping and spent money.  It was great and I was able to get some much needed time alone without either kid thanks to Ms. Lyn.  It was all around a very stressful, successful and fulfilling weekend. :)  Deployment sucks but family and friends make it possible!

Joshua went back to the doctor yesterday for a follow-up visit and found out that he has a viral rash over his whole body.  This probably explains his crankiness, not sleeping and always wanting to be held.  I feel so so bad for him, but hopefully he will fight it off quickly.  I had to go back today for another follow-up visit to make sure things were progressing the right way...and they were.  His breathing is crackly and his cough is super flemy, but the doctor said that means the stuff is breaking up in his chest which is good.  His rash is still there, but we go back next week for his two month appointment so we'll see what they say then.  I swear my life lately has been one BIG doctor visit!

My week is so crazy, but so much is getting done.  Porter has his home visit tomorrow for his new school that I just signed up for today.  Yes people...he will be attending the DoD school here on base for my sanity alone :)  The school bus will come pick him up and drop him off everyday right in front of our house!! Yay!! The teachers do home visits before school starts to meet the children and they are coming at 8:30 tomorrow morning.  Then my New Parent Support nurse is coming at 10 a.m. to do Joshua's two-month assessment and Porter's 4 year assessment. We might squeeze in a playground playdate/lunch and then Port goes to his first dentist appointment at 2 p.m. which is followed by my FRA (Family Readiness Assistant) meeting with the squadron at 6 p.m. at the USO.  And this is just my Wednesday... Life sure doesn't slow down no matter how much you want it to :)

The last thing I need to address is that I made a slight boo boo on Stephen's address.  I waited so long to send it right and of course I messed up.  Stephen said it's no big deal the way I have it because it will get to him in case y'all already sent stuff.  However, on the line where I wrote "S-1"...it should say "S-3".  This is his "shop".  S-1 is Admin and S-3 is Operations.  So it will get to his squadron, but go to Admin instead of Operations.  They all know each other there, so if it goes two doors down, they will walk it over to him :)  I promise.  But if you haven't mailed anything yet, change it to S-3!

I hope everything is going well with y'all and that y'all are getting ready for football season to start (I know Heath is dying for it to!:)  Please shoot me an email or message anytime you want to get in touch!  We miss everyone and hope to see y'all soon! Much love!
~Amanda

This is Joshua's pic at the ER Saturday morning.  Once he woke up he was a happy little dude and was just checking everything out and smiling :)

This is LP's new Pre-K haircut he got today!! He is getting so big and old!! :(

Stephen's address

Good Afternoon!

  These past couple of days have been so so much better than the last week!  That phone call from Stephen has seriously changed my mood around the house :) I'm in a state of happiness for awhile!

So...I FINALLY have the infamous address for all of y'all to send any mail or care packages.  Here it is:

                                                            Captain Stephen J. King

                                                            SPMAGTF C.R. ACE S-1

                                                            Unit 13926

                                                            FPO, AE 09510-3926

I'm not sure how long it takes to get out there, but if it's anything like Afghanistan, my friends have said it takes about 2 weeks to get there. :)  And just remember (I'm sure all of y'all know this), but if you send food over make sure it is non-perishable.  This will always be his address, but he may not always physically be in the same place all the time.  So...the packages may sit for a bit if he isn't in the same place for awhile. 

Nothing much to report here.  I did have a special visitor today!  Our old FRO (Family Readiness Officer) for Stephen's squadron stopped by to visit me today.  She is the liaison between the squadron and the spouses.  Anyways, she left our squadron the beginning of June because her husband was getting out of the military and they were moving to California.  Long story short, she was in town for two days and called me to see if she could come visit since she she left before Joshua was born.  She is amazing and I miss her so so much.  They went to our church, went to the Citadel and she is amazing :) She is also a syndicated author and she brought Porter and Joshua a gift which was one of her books that she published.  So cool!

As for me...I have finally been able to get back to my cleaning schedule and my house is FINALLY getting cleaned the way it should.  It took me 7 weeks, but I am in the place where life can start normalizing again :)  Well that's all for now!  Have a great end of the week everyone!

This is the book Carissa gave to Port and Josh :) She has a whole series of "The Little Marine".  They're great!

My girlfriend who just welcomed home her hubby 2 days before Stephen left came and dropped off a bag filled with these goodies since Stephen just deployed:)  I have the BEST friends!

This was the note she had inside the bag.  This verse was on the front....

 ...and this was on the back :)  Everything she listed on here she stuffed the "Little Jar of Sunshine" with!

Good Evening!!

I hope everyone's had a great start to the week.  We have been busy as usual. I swear I don't know how I function everyday with only a couple of hours of sleep at a time during the night and no nap during the day. My eyes literally start stinging at 8 p.m. when P & J go...I mean "try" to go to bed :)

Well, Sunday was the my first day of deployment emotion.  Porter had a friend's birthday party to attend.  All of fellow marine friends were there and it was a wonderfully grand time with little Joshua hanging out in my Boba (my new front carrier to make me feel semi-normal).  I left the party Sunday to head over to the birthday girl's house with my friends to watch her open presents and eat dinner since all of our husbands are deployed.  Well I noticed I had missed a few text messages from my husband and a couple of calls which would have been my first time literally talking to Stephen since Canada. Soo....needless-to-say, I was all kinds of upset about missing it because of the birthday party, bad timing and a two tired screaming kids in the car back and forth to houses.....ugh!!!

I have learned over these past two days that I'm going to have to either A) keep my phone on me at all times or B) not get upset when I miss communication with the hubs.  Right now at the beginning of the deployment I think I will stick with A :)  It took me a whole day to get over myself, but I was finally able to talk to Stephen yesterday afternoon which made everything all better.  Conversation was quick, but I was able to get out of him that they are still living it large on this deployment.  Instead of sleeping in some kind of shack like they have gone to be trained in twice in California, they are living in actual houses...like a 3 bedroom 2 bath house.  Seriously.  He said their A/C is great which is nice, but he did say that there are a lot flies.  When he was talking to me he said they were just all buzzing around his head. Yuck...but that's the last time I've been able to talk to him.  He said he was busy doing his job again, NAVO (navigations officer).  I can't wait to hear what all is going on once the group they are replacing actual leaves.

As for Porter, he went to the doctor yesterday and it went well.  He is fighting some kind of bug, and his lymph nodes and glands are doing their job.  However, we have to go back in two weeks for a follow up until his lymph nodes are back to normal size again.  Joshua is healthy and...vocal :) Porter was way too chill and Joshua is a grunter.  Awesome! He's crying as I type this  until I actually go in and pat his back and shove that little paci back in :)  And Porter is talking to himself until I walk by to go to bed and then he'll try and coax me back into his room saying he's "too scared to sleep with just himself...he needs somebody to cuddle with him." Ahhh, there is never rest for the weary...NEVER!

Ok, that's all I have for this evening! Here are some pics of the past week and half.  Goodnight all!



This is our last night out as a family!  Stephen took Porter to see Planes as a last father/son bonding session and then we went out to dinner. Last pic of all of the boys together until Joshua is almost 1! Crazy...

 Apparently I'm supposed to be blowing raspberries on Joshua so he knows it's from his Dad.  I'm not a pro at it like Stephen is, but Joshua sure does stop and stare every time we do it!

 This video melts my heart.  Stephen recorded himself reading three of Porter's favorite books for them to watch while he's gone.  This was the first night Porter and Joshua saw the video of Stephen reading the Bernstein Bears "The Spooky Old Tree".  In the video Stephen told Porter to get tucked in, so Porter scooted back in the chair and said "I'm ready Dad."  After the book was over Stephen told Porter goodnight and Porter just waved and said "goodnight Dad!" So glad he did this for the boys to seem like home while he's gone.

 This is a picture Stephen sent of them the first day flying into St. Johns in Newfoundland.  Pretty sweet!

 This is what the flight line looked like once they landed in Canada.  I never get tired of seeing all of the Ospreys all together like this.  It's pretty neat!

 

Made It!

Ok..so I know I literally just posted my first blog, but before I sent out the message I received a text from Stephen.  He has officially made it! I don't know any details of where or anything, but he is safe.  He said he will call later and give me more info so check back in later and hopefully I'll have something posted :)

So I guess the deployment can really begin now.  My girlfriends have all told me that the worse part of the beginning of the deployment are the two weeks before they leave.  Literally, I saw Stephen as he was crawling in bed most days in those weeks before as Phil and Ann can attest when they were here.  He was mentally not here and I had already checked out (emotion-wise).  From the Deployment Cycle diagram that is completely normal.  Luckily, the good part of the deployment starts now which is the COUNTDOWN! Yes the countdown to homecoming can finally begin.  I'm not sure how many days or months I'm counting down yet, but I can count DOWN which is way way better than counting UP! :)

I will post Stephen's address later.  I have it, but need to make sure I'm writing it correctly before I post if for all of y'all!  Take care and I'll have more info to come soon!

Deployment...Week 1

Well the first week has almost come to a close of our first deployment and I can honestly say that we are doing well.  My goal during this next year is to keep all of our family up-to-date on our life here in the states and abroad.  Hopefully once or twice a week I will be able post on this site so long as my two children are peaceful at the same time :)  As we speak, they are both taking naps so I will hurry along.

Monday started bright and early with EVERYONE waking up at 4 a.m. to get a smidge of family time before THE drop off.  I pictured my 'goodbye' with Stephen for our first deployment rather different.  As I pulled up to the squadron there was hardly anyone in sight except for a few cars with some people standing outside and a white van to shuttle the few people to Cherry Point.  Needless-to-say, Stephen had stuff to do in the 15 minutes before they boarded the van so he hopped out of the car, walked around to each of our rolled down windows and gave us a kiss goodbye.  He walked away waving and I drove away with Porter asking if he was 'the man of the house' now.  We have done many drop-offs like this for trainings that Stephen has had in the past that have lasted for 1-2 months at a time, so honestly the weight of the deployment hasn't hit the three of us yet.  

Having a child who is unfazed by Daddy's disappearance has made each day as normal as possible.  Porter is such a strong little guy.  After asking if he was the 'man of the house' as Stephen has drilled into his brain before he left, gave Porter the thought that he had some kind of say so in things now.  He then proceeds to ask, "does that mean I'm in charge?"  Oh Porter...you are such a manipulator :)  However, he amazes me by how mature he is with our ever-changing lifestyle.  On the ride back from the squadron I told Porter as I have for the past few weeks now that he may see Mommy get upset or cry sometimes because I'm sad Daddy is gone.  I told him that it's ok too if he gets sad because Daddy's gone and misses him.  Little Porter...with his carefree attitude just tells me, "do I have to?" And I told him he didn't have to cry if he didn't feel like it.  He then says, "Mom, I'm just waiting. I'm just waiting." To this four and a half year old, time doesn't matter to him....which I'm sure is the culmination of 'Daddy will be home after dinner' to 'Daddy's working late and won't see you until tomorrow' to 'Daddy's in California for a couple of months' and 'Daddy's missing Christmas and your birthday this year'.  He knows his Daddy is gone, but he's become an expert on waiting.  I learn so much from him and the stuff that comes out of his mouth sometimes.  He simply..amazes me :)

This first week has gone by so fast!  We've been bombarded with phone calls, text messages, playdates, dinners and doctor's appointments.  There's not a day goes by that we aren't meeting friends at the playground or meeting people for lunch/dinner get togethers.  That's one thing that I LOVE about the military is that all of the spouses rally around each other during these times of separation.  All of my girlfriends have deployed spouses right now and two friends just got their 'homecoming' 2 days before Stephen left.  We all understand what each other is going through and we make sure that we're carrying each other through these days, weeks and months together.  

As for Stephen, I think I've pretty much said everything I know in the email prior to this first post.  He has officially left North America as of yesterday and is in-transit to his final destination as we speak.  Not sure when he will arrive there but my guess is that he will be there before Monday (weather permitting :)  I will post any info that he passes to me on this blog and keep y'all informed on his general well-being and information that I am allowed to pass.  All I do know is that the 'uppers' in his squadron have said that this deployment has already shaped up to be NOTHING like a normal deployment from the free beer to Spa hotel stay and amazing scenery.  I'm anxious to find out any information about what's actually going on over there besides having amazing food and seeing beautiful places on his liberty.  

Until the next post, I hope y'all take care and spend lots of time with each other :)  I'm so thankful that we live so close to Charleston that we can come home to visit when we want and y'all can come visit during a weekend!  The drive is equivalent to Clemson, so if you can drive to Clemson...you better be making a drive north to a free place to stay in Jacksonville! :) Keep Stephen's travels and safety in your prayers as I'm sure you're already doing and keep our general well-being and attitudes in your prayers too.  We love each of y'all and look forward to coming down to Charleston sometime in the near future.

Love always....Amanda