Not So Good At This

There was a time a long while ago when I thought I kinda had this Navy wife thing down. That time has come to a crashing stop. We're just one week into three weeks apart. The last few days have been hard, hard and hard. We've done separation before- a lot of it, actually. Our entire engagement was spent on separate coasts of this country. We went through a 6 month deployment, many "underways" and an international missions trip during that time. Talk about stressful! We moved to another country and Phil still left, sometimes for weeks at a time, which left me in a foreign country with a newborn who cried... a lot! Then we moved to the coldest place I have ever known where his schedule changed on a whim. Somehow this time it is different yet again. Nowdays the time we're required to spend apart doesn't feel quite so romantic. It's hard on me, losing my one best friend and having to take the healm for our household, hard on Phil who now has to balance a full and very draining schedule with communication back home, and probably hardest on the boys. They have no idea why Daddy has to be away for so long and probably won't understand it until they're much older. They act out and get frustrated easily. They talk about him all the time and probably miss him much more then they say. It's been a hard week on all of us. Phil has had to spend a lot of time outside in this cold weather, even spending the night outside one night. He's not feeling well and has a whole week ahead of him still. I think the boys have a bit of cabin fever since we've been inside more with it being so cold outside and are taking it out on me, of course. Hopefully this week will bring about some warmer weather and some more peace in our little family.