Homecoming Part 1 is the anticipation of homecoming. Now we have more than a month before D returns, so it is a little early to get too excited. This is the plan:
D will arrive home on a Thursday (a day that both boys have school). I will have just enough time to get to the airport, pick up our soldier, and rush back to drop him at home, before I go pick up the boys from their schools. The boys will walk in the house and....surprise! Daddy is home! Hugs, kisses, and much story-telling will follow. Then we will do homework, have dinner, and seamlessly resume our duel-parent roles.
HA. HA. HA. Here is what I am expecting:
D will arrive on Friday at 2:00 pm, because of airport delays. Only L has school on Friday and picking D up at the airport at that time on a Friday = nightmare traffic. As such we would not get back to the school in time to pick up L. So I will have to make my husband wait at the airport for several hours and since it is late, we won't park and go inside and we won’t have a local news-worthy reunion. We will skip homework that evening and get drive-thru for dinner. D will walk in the house weary and surprise!!... the boys are fighting over an invisible leopard (they've done this before).
The only thing I am not worried about is resuming our lives with Daddy home. D has been gone like this before, and for longer stretches of time. It wasn’t always easy adding Daddy back into our routines. I’ve been doing it my way for all this time and now our system gets shaken up. D and I have learned some strategies for making the transition easier on everyone. I learned that though he is willing, he may not be able to jump right in and be Daddy; he needs a period of observation. When he is ready, I learned to let him find his own ways to make things work. D learned to ask for help before he gets overwhelmed.
Sounds easy enough, right? It’s not, of course. It won’t be seamless and there will probably be some arguments along the way. As children grow and change so do parents, I always remind myself that I’ve had the benefit of growing with them, so I don’t notice the change. D is going to be dropped in a house with children that changed, and a wife/mother that changed. We can’t immediately expect him to know all the nuances of our lives. I remember to be patient with D and myself.
and there is more than one right way to load the dishwasher........
Stay tuned for Homecoming Part 2: The Reality
1 comment:
I feel like this every year after harvest. Even if it's only 2 months long, there is so much my husband misses working his incredibly long hours.
And whether he's been gone or not we STILL have the dishwasher argument! LOL
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