I’m not sure if it has exploded recently or if I’m only just now paying attention to it because of Ell, but there seems to be no shortage of articles/ blogs/ posts/ books about how hilariously hard it is to have a toddler. (Scary Mommy anyone?) I’m constantly reading about the 40 simple steps to get a toddler into a car (ok, that one was actually really funny…) or how kids take up all your time and your space and your waking hours (and your will to live.)
It seems like the entirety of the interwebs* is obsessed with trying to make light of how really just effing challenging it is to raise a kid. I myself read pretty much all of them as they come across my news feed (it’s a bit of a sickness, really.) Oh, what does the Honest Toddler have to say today about how (tongue-in-cheek) crappy a mommy I am? Oh what does the Huff Post say about what it takes to be a good working mom? (In a related story, Huffington Post...I feel like your content has taken a bit of a left turn recently. But, whatever, I digress.)
*By “entirety of the interwebs” I mean other than the cat videos…and, you know, porn.
You’ve probably read the lists—the 50 things to say to your daughter—the 20 ways to bolster your kid’s self-esteem- the 15 most important life lessons you can possibly teach your kid…followed up by an expose on how we can’t ever say the right things to our daughters, bolster your kid’s self-esteem or help to teach important life lessons. It’s really quite exhausting, honestly.
Yes. Being a parent is hard. Being a single-parent is harder. Being a single-parent during a deployment sucks.
We all knew that the hardest part of this deployment was going to be the Ellie piece. This isn’t J’s first rodeo. And even the two of us have endured a deployment or two working the long distance relationship angle. No, this one was going to be about our two year old and we knew it going in.
One of the reasons we did this deployment now was because Eleanore was little and we hoped, believed, that it would be less of an issue for her. She wouldn’t really know what was going on—too young to truly understand what was happening. Saying things like “daddy will be home soon” and “daddy’s at work right now” could be vague statements to a toddler who didn’t have a frame of reference for what those phrases really meant or how I was definitely stretching those definitions to the outer limits of truthfulness.
Well, I’m here to tell you friends, my daughter may only be two, and she may not completely understand the whys, and the hows, and the how longs, but she most decidedly knows that daddy is gone. And it is affecting her.
And as she gets older, even in just the 3 months J’s been gone, she’s learning to better articulate that understanding of his distance (much to my daily devastation.) Like in the mornings, when she crawls into my bed, looks into my eyes and says “I miss him.” (I know who him is.) And when she colors pictures and puts cups of imaginary coffee next to his picture in the living room to “give to daddy.” Or when she uses anything in the house that could be imagined into a phone to “talk to daddy” for several minutes at a time, typically mocking mommy (“ok, hon, I love you. Gotta go!”) Or when she thinks I’m not looking and she hugs my laptop, because that’s where daddy lives right now.
The piece de resistance of course was when my girlfriend and I were shopping a couple of weekends ago and she sidled up to a mannequin dressed much like her father (cargo shorts and a t-shirt) and stood there quietly holding its hand until we had to go to the car, and then screamed at full volume for the whole store to hear “NO! Don’t make me leave Daddy!!!”
(Yeah, that sound you hear right now is your heart breaking into a hundred million pieces. I made it to the car before melting into a puddle of blathering tears.)
It’s hard to be a parent. Harder still to be a single parent. Being a single parent during a deployment sucks.
A week or so ago, a dear friend of mine in an attempt to give me a laugh and a little humor sent me a link to one of those Huff Post parenting articles. I don’t remember exactly the scenario presented in the article, but the underlying idea of it all was that toddlers are ridiculous and exhausting and, well, good on ya mom, because raising a family is really hard.
Much to my surprise, I fell apart when I read it. It was supposed to be a hilarious parody of life with a child, and here I was crying into the sleeve of my oversized sweatshirt (you know the one…that one that definitely needs to be in a laundry at all times, and yet somehow never makes it to the laundry room.) I felt so completely silly for doing so, but something about it just touched me—first that the universe acknowledged what I was doing was hard, but even more so, that someone close to me did as well.
It was a cathartic cry. And caused me pause for reflection.
It occurred to me that I have been focusing a lot (even if only internally) on how hard all this is, and on being so scared that on some level all of this was damaging Ellie is some strange way. “What am I putting this kid through?” “Is she ok?” “How badly am I screwing this kid up for life?”
Lately though, I’m starting to feel like that’s not what’s happening at all. I’m enjoying the astonishing growth of my child as she matures and learns (and realizes things.) And even in all the heartbreaking moments, I love to see how compassionate my child is becoming. Yes, she is fully aware that daddy is not here. And yes, she misses him so much. But she leaves him gifts. She asks me to take pictures to send to him. She colors him things. She desires talking to him every day (even if it’s via banana phone.)
She loves him. She really does. She’s two, and she gets what it means to love. And she’s kind. And has found ways to show him that kindness and love, even when he isn’t here. How incredible is that?
It makes me feel like all the hard work is worth it. That in some crazy-ass unanticipated way it’s paying off. That somewhere in the crappiness of the poo-storm that is single-momming a toddler with a husband in a far-off war zone (and it is in fact a crappy poo-storm) that maybe I’m doing something right. And that we’re not just getting by. We’re more than ok. She’s learning, she’s growing and in the end she’ll be better and stronger and more loving for this whole experience.
Maybe I will be too.
And in the meantime, Huff Post, keep ‘em coming. Scary Mommy, sing your truth (I’ll sing along.) And Honest Toddler, I dare you to call me out on being a bad mommy. My kid has a banana phone. How about that.
It seems like the entirety of the interwebs* is obsessed with trying to make light of how really just effing challenging it is to raise a kid. I myself read pretty much all of them as they come across my news feed (it’s a bit of a sickness, really.) Oh, what does the Honest Toddler have to say today about how (tongue-in-cheek) crappy a mommy I am? Oh what does the Huff Post say about what it takes to be a good working mom? (In a related story, Huffington Post...I feel like your content has taken a bit of a left turn recently. But, whatever, I digress.)
*By “entirety of the interwebs” I mean other than the cat videos…and, you know, porn.
You’ve probably read the lists—the 50 things to say to your daughter—the 20 ways to bolster your kid’s self-esteem- the 15 most important life lessons you can possibly teach your kid…followed up by an expose on how we can’t ever say the right things to our daughters, bolster your kid’s self-esteem or help to teach important life lessons. It’s really quite exhausting, honestly.
Yes. Being a parent is hard. Being a single-parent is harder. Being a single-parent during a deployment sucks.
We all knew that the hardest part of this deployment was going to be the Ellie piece. This isn’t J’s first rodeo. And even the two of us have endured a deployment or two working the long distance relationship angle. No, this one was going to be about our two year old and we knew it going in.
One of the reasons we did this deployment now was because Eleanore was little and we hoped, believed, that it would be less of an issue for her. She wouldn’t really know what was going on—too young to truly understand what was happening. Saying things like “daddy will be home soon” and “daddy’s at work right now” could be vague statements to a toddler who didn’t have a frame of reference for what those phrases really meant or how I was definitely stretching those definitions to the outer limits of truthfulness.
Well, I’m here to tell you friends, my daughter may only be two, and she may not completely understand the whys, and the hows, and the how longs, but she most decidedly knows that daddy is gone. And it is affecting her.
And as she gets older, even in just the 3 months J’s been gone, she’s learning to better articulate that understanding of his distance (much to my daily devastation.) Like in the mornings, when she crawls into my bed, looks into my eyes and says “I miss him.” (I know who him is.) And when she colors pictures and puts cups of imaginary coffee next to his picture in the living room to “give to daddy.” Or when she uses anything in the house that could be imagined into a phone to “talk to daddy” for several minutes at a time, typically mocking mommy (“ok, hon, I love you. Gotta go!”) Or when she thinks I’m not looking and she hugs my laptop, because that’s where daddy lives right now.
The piece de resistance of course was when my girlfriend and I were shopping a couple of weekends ago and she sidled up to a mannequin dressed much like her father (cargo shorts and a t-shirt) and stood there quietly holding its hand until we had to go to the car, and then screamed at full volume for the whole store to hear “NO! Don’t make me leave Daddy!!!”
(Yeah, that sound you hear right now is your heart breaking into a hundred million pieces. I made it to the car before melting into a puddle of blathering tears.)
It’s hard to be a parent. Harder still to be a single parent. Being a single parent during a deployment sucks.
A week or so ago, a dear friend of mine in an attempt to give me a laugh and a little humor sent me a link to one of those Huff Post parenting articles. I don’t remember exactly the scenario presented in the article, but the underlying idea of it all was that toddlers are ridiculous and exhausting and, well, good on ya mom, because raising a family is really hard.
Much to my surprise, I fell apart when I read it. It was supposed to be a hilarious parody of life with a child, and here I was crying into the sleeve of my oversized sweatshirt (you know the one…that one that definitely needs to be in a laundry at all times, and yet somehow never makes it to the laundry room.) I felt so completely silly for doing so, but something about it just touched me—first that the universe acknowledged what I was doing was hard, but even more so, that someone close to me did as well.
It was a cathartic cry. And caused me pause for reflection.
It occurred to me that I have been focusing a lot (even if only internally) on how hard all this is, and on being so scared that on some level all of this was damaging Ellie is some strange way. “What am I putting this kid through?” “Is she ok?” “How badly am I screwing this kid up for life?”
Lately though, I’m starting to feel like that’s not what’s happening at all. I’m enjoying the astonishing growth of my child as she matures and learns (and realizes things.) And even in all the heartbreaking moments, I love to see how compassionate my child is becoming. Yes, she is fully aware that daddy is not here. And yes, she misses him so much. But she leaves him gifts. She asks me to take pictures to send to him. She colors him things. She desires talking to him every day (even if it’s via banana phone.)
She loves him. She really does. She’s two, and she gets what it means to love. And she’s kind. And has found ways to show him that kindness and love, even when he isn’t here. How incredible is that?
It makes me feel like all the hard work is worth it. That in some crazy-ass unanticipated way it’s paying off. That somewhere in the crappiness of the poo-storm that is single-momming a toddler with a husband in a far-off war zone (and it is in fact a crappy poo-storm) that maybe I’m doing something right. And that we’re not just getting by. We’re more than ok. She’s learning, she’s growing and in the end she’ll be better and stronger and more loving for this whole experience.
Maybe I will be too.
And in the meantime, Huff Post, keep ‘em coming. Scary Mommy, sing your truth (I’ll sing along.) And Honest Toddler, I dare you to call me out on being a bad mommy. My kid has a banana phone. How about that.
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