Patience is Elusive...

We're so close to being back together as a family, but not quite there... It's a lot harder to have patience with it when you are so close to the end. On the plus side, I'm nearly twelve weeks and the morning sickness (why was this ever named morning sickness? For me, it gets worse as the day goes on, but I'm usually fine when I wake up) is fading away slowly. I'm looking forward to the middle trimester; it's always the best one for me.

I'm actually hoping to run again when Oliver gets back. I haven't been able to do much since we moved as the boys are past the age of strapping into a stroller - not that I even own a jogger, anymore. Sold that puppy to someone in the Bahamas! Once you have multiple kids, and have chosen homeschooling for awhile, a jogger just doesn't make sense anymore.

Oh, and in the interest of cramming this post full of baby-related stuff, I got a crib! And mattress. For fifty bucks! A friend here had a relative that was getting rid of it. It was barely used, just been in storage for a couple years. I'm thrilled; that saves us several hundred dollars. It actually looks very similar to the one I gave away before we moved, not that I would have cared much what it looked like; it's just a temporary holding pen for a couple years that pretty much no one will see but us, after all.

Finally, the homeschooling gig is slowly coming together. I've even got Oscar doing reading lessons again. I had to buy another program, but he loves it, and no longer fights me, so it was worth it. It's been interesting bouncing back and forth between them, but I'm just trying to assign Wyatt something independent while I work with Oscar.

I have also started Wyatt on a new math program. We're going to keep up with some of the other stuff, but I don't think he's being challenged enough, and I need something with a little more structure as math is a weakness for me. We did the first few pages today; it took him forever because he kept distracting himself, but I think it might work out. Crossing my fingers on that one.

I'm doing very free-wheeling spelling lessons, though. The program I initially tried was a bust; it was rule-based, and he couldn't seem to recall any of the rules it was teaching, so I gave up, did some research on how kids learned to spell, and am doing something entirely of my own device now. I think it may be working, too - he used to write scribbles whenever he was playing and needed something written for whatever reason, but now he is actually writing words, and is far less stressed about whether they are spelled right or not (which I think was a huge impediment to writing before). Which is not to say that I've taught him that spelling right isn't important - more that it's okay to be wrong, and how to find the answers when he is.

Now, I just need to figure out how to be more organized. Everything is in a single bookcase right now; it's togther, but that's about all I can say about it. It's getting too chaotic, and I need a better way to let the boys know what is expected from them each day. I've got a few ideas, but think I will wait for Oliver to return so I can go out and search for the right supplies on my own. I will get a LOT more done that way!

Halloween is over - and so is Sandy, and not having a washing machine - whew!

I am absurdly tired right now. Sort of sad since it's only 1430, and the kids were nice enough to let me sleep in a couple hours while they watched Mythbusters on Netflix. I really don't think I'm as worn out with this pregnancy as I was with Oscar, but it wipes me out halfway through the day. Just to trick-or-treat, I had to lay down for awhile in the afternoon so I could muster the energy to walk around the neighborhood with the boys.

Oh, yes, the cat's out of the bag - we're expecting again! Considering how much I hate being pregnant, and a lot of other things, I'm pretty sure this time it will be the last, but we're happy about it. Once again, I'm doing a first trimester without Oliver, but such is life for us. He should be back here in another month, just in time for me to stop puking. Clearly, he is not sad about this, haha.

Anyway, the baby's due on June 6th. I can't exactly say it was a surprise to find out I was pregnant because, well, we DO know how babies are made, but we weren't exactly trying, either. Mostly playing Russian Roulette with it because we couldn't make up our minds. Hideously romantic, I know.

I had an ultrasound and determined I am not, thankfully, carrying twins. I'd had some irrational fear that that would happen, so it's good to know we're in the clear there. I also had all the initial tests, was told I have some kind of thyroid issue, so my midwife wants to put me on meds for the pregnancy, and maybe beyond. I have to admit, I'm kind of surprised by this. I have no weird symptoms, no family history of thyroid issues, and wonder if this is all some kind of test fluke, but we'll see, I guess. I go back in a month, so I'll have a nice long chat about it then.

In other news, hurricane Sandy almost rained out Halloween. Luckily, at least for us, that didn't happen. We mostly ended up with a day stuck in the house while the streets around us flooded out. Our housing area, though, seems to be on higher ground, so nothing bad here. We didn't even lose power, unlike a lot of my relatives farther up the coast. I certainly am thankful about that one.

We did nearly have a minor tragedy, though. Oscar had some very specific ideas about the Captain America costume he wanted for Halloween. He didn't want the redesigned movie one, but wanted the old school one with "wings" on the helmet. He also didn't want the muscle ones, which I have to agree look incredibly stupid. So, I had to go to the internet. After one cancelled order because of not enough stock (that took them four days to tell me, grrr), I tried again, only to have Sandy delay it. It finally showed up on the 30th, just in time for the church's trunk or treat, that was more like a "walk around the cultural hall and get candy" event because of the cold front that swept in after the hurricane left.

 
Technically, masks were outlawed at the church event, but I let him wear it, anyway. It totally wasn't the same without it, and, um, it's not a full mask, so I didn't see the issue. The only person to complain was another kid whose parents' had clearly not allowed him to wear his (he had the movie Captain America costume, and, yeah, it was almost impossible to tell what he was since he also didn't have a shield).

So, after my Halloween rebellion, we trick-or-treated for real the next night around our neighborhood. It was cold, and half the houses we went to with lights on didn't answer the door, so we gave up after awhile, but the kids still had fun. Andros definitely wins the Halloween prize, however. That's a holiday they do far better than what we had in the States (although, I'm talking the base here, not the outside community, which really don't celebrate the holiday).

And, finally, our storage stuff actually caught up with us yesterday!! Which means I have a washer and dryer again. Well, almost. After figuring out how to hook up them up myself, something that included having to buy a new cord for the dryer and switching it out due to the newness of our house, I discovered that the vent is completely blocked by something that feels straw-like. I'm guessing it's a bird's nest, because our laundry room is upstairs, but I'm really not sure. It definitely has to go, however, before we can use the dryer. I'd prefer to not have a fire. Luckily, I can call maintenance to get rid of it, as I have no desire to tackle that particular project. Hooking up a washer and dryer was enough alpha-female behavior for one week.

Say What Again?

I had an interesting conversation with Oscar yesterday. We were having one of those "What does _____ eat?" conversations when he came out with this one: "What do criminals eat, Mommy?" I kind of looked at him funny, then tried to explain that criminals were just people who made bad choices, not an actual species. 

I have actually wondered before whether or not this is how their line of thinking went, so I wasn't entirely surprised by the question. It was, however, a confirmation that cops and robbers is a game that can be very much misunderstood by kids.

Major Life Changes

So, Virginia. Here we are. Well, most of us. Oliver is cooling his heels in Georgia, trying to finally check into his boat. I am fairly sure it's going to happen today, which is a huge relief.

We actually drove him down there so he could report on September 17, after spending a week in VA getting our housing worked out (and got lucky enough to have our stuff arrive the day we did, so they delivered it before we had to drive to GA - I was SO happy about that!). He didn't actually report to his boat, though, but a sort of transitional command that vets people and makes sure all is in order before they move on to their actual commands.

For the most part, this is no big deal. They spend a couple days running around doing paperwork and double checking everything, then that's it. Unfortunately for us, it turned out to not be so simple. From the medical records we accidentally left in VA (I had to drive back and overnight them, only to have them get temporarily lost in the Navy's mail system for almost a week), to the lack of a barracks room that Oliver had to practically beg for (something that should have been a given when he showed up because he had been ordered to move his family to another state), to the submarine physical that apparently had to be redone, to the total backup of the eye doctors there in Kingsbay because one was transferred unexpectedly...

Slowly, he's been working through the whole mess. The medical records were found, an eye appointment unexpectedly opened up, and we are no longer looking at a November time frame to get him to his boat. The physical is finally almost done, and hopefully we will get some more concrete information about when he'll be joining us here.

I have more to say, but am not ready to say it, so you'll have to wait, but our life has been so crazy lately! And it's going to get crazier. I'm still trying to figure out this whole homeschooling thing. It's been tough with the move and transitioning, plus missing husband, but I'm at least working out a math, cursive practice, spelling program, and reading time day that mostly works. I just recently worked a little science into it, and will hopefully improve on that as we get farther on and have less pressure on us. There's a library near our home, with a couple more with in a half hour that we can also use. I'm going to work out a few field trips when I have the energy for it, and we're definitely going to do some schooling this summer to make up for the last few months.

So far, I think we all like it okay. Wyatt, while missing his old school a bit, has told me he's glad to be homeschooled, so that makes me feel better about the decision. I like teaching him, although I'm sort of surprised at times at the gaps I'm finding in what he knows. I don't know if that's a warped expectation from me, or if his schooling on Andros was a little more uneven than I realized, but we're working on it.

I really want to start up the Spanish program I ordered for them, but am struggling with how to fit it in. I hope I can find a way to do that soon. So much to think about!

Anyway, I'm going to keep blogging for now. I keep thinking about quitting, but since I have gotten terrible at journaling, find Facebook a poor way to look back and see how things were in life, and now actually have something to talk about, I think I am loath to quit. So, for you three people who still read this, thanks for hanging around! It's always good to hear from you!

Reflections on the Past

I haven't been posting much on here. I think about it, then I just don't. Maybe blogging has run its course with me - I actually came close to picking up my years-long neglected paper-and-pen journal the other day. I don't know. We'll see.

Anyway, life is changing very fast right now. Or, it will be changing dramatically when the movers show up next week to start packing up our stuff. I took the boys over to the school to return the last of our books to the library there, and had a chance to say good-bye to several people there, including Wyatt's Kindergarten and first grade teacher.

After doing that, I walked home feeling reflective, and here I am, typing on the blog again.

We've spent three years in the Bahamas. It's been a life-changing experience. As I prep for this move, I'm startled by how more relaxed I am about the details. This despite what has been a constantly changing set of orders, one of which came a week ago and has us moving to a different state than we expected.

Our last move, the lack of information freaked me out, and I was so worked up about whether or not the way we were used to living would be possible here. Thinking about the contrast, I realized today that while I've moved around the US quite a bit, each move only required small adjustments in lifestyle. It wasn't too noticeable, or really required that much out of me.

Living here, though, has required us to do just about everything differently. I no longer expect things to happen instantly, no longer fret when I can't get something I was so sure we needed, and no longer agonize over uncertainty or change. I actually thought I was a pretty flexible person before moving here, but realize that really wasn't the case at all. Maybe I was flexible by American standards, but that is about it.

We're going to be homeless by the end of next week with no housing lined up due to the last minute orders change, and Oliver is going to be living in a different state than we are for several months. We don't know how we're going to manage that, financially or otherwise, but I know we'll figure it out. It may not be pretty for awhile, but stuff has a way of working itself out even if it isn't "perfect" the way it happens.

I'm going to miss this place, even as I'm very happy to be moving on. I think that's the best time to go - when you have a lot of reasons to move on, yet you know you will be sad to say good-bye to certain people and places. That's where I'm at.

I very much hope we get another chance to live overseas some day. My first taste has only made me want more.

¡Los ordenes han llegado!

We've got orders. They came at the end of last week. It was very nice to actually see them, read them....and realize this move is going to be way more complicated than we'd thought. Because nothing is ever simple here. Nothing.

I am sure we'll figure it all out, but trying to talk out the details was making my head spin the other day. We've got all the things about getting out of here to worry about, then a small storage shipment from WA to track down, a car to ship, and then the issue of only a couple months before we move again waiting for us, which definitely affects what housing we will choose.

So, I've emailed the ombudsman of the boat he's heading to, and am trying to figure out stuff on that end. Oliver will run around here and do all the paperwork, while I get the house ready to meet the movers.

Speaking of that, I went out to our shed (detached from the house) where we keep the bikes and other outside stuff this weekend. I caught sight of a mouse running around, so got pretty aggressive about cleaning stuff out and making a dumpster pile. We've had a mouse problem in the house, and trapped six mice before it seemed we'd solved the issue, so I'm not at all happy to see any mice near our trailer.

Working in the shed, I didn't find any real evidence of a mouse den, other than a plastic bag that had been shredded, but there were plenty of lizard eggs, a cockroach, and a couple of ant nests in bizarre places. I didn't do a full clean because we still have time (and the bugs will just come back and I'll need to do it again), but I did notice that a window fan, taped into its box, that we'd put out there because we have central air and don't need it, had tons of dead ants under the packing tape sealing the tape. This struck me as rather bizarre, as did the ant nest I discovered between the boards we had put on concrete blocks for a makeshift shelf out there. Another bin, with tools and things like sandpaper that we rarely use, had a lot of ants crawling in and out of it, so I'm not looking forward to cleaning that one out.

Ah, life in the tropics!

Vamos a mudarnos....¿a un hotel?

Oscar told me yesterday that he wanted to move to a hotel so he could go bowling. I looked at him curiously, and realized suddenly that he has absolutely no memories of living in the States. He had just turned two when we moved here (literally days after his birthday, we got on the plane), so Washington is just a blur. As a result, he associates things like going to a restaurant, a toy store, mini-golf, and bowling to time spent in a hotel. If we aren't in a hotel, we don't do those things because they don't exist on our island.

It's curious how you can see things through your kids' eyes in a totally different way. I am wondering how he will adjust to life in the country he was born in, but doesn't remember. I suspect it will be fine; maybe harder for me, actually, since living here requires a lifestyle change that is very profound. I've got to go back and figure out how to do things all over again. My perspective is nothing like it once was, and I mean that in a good way.

Living here has been frustrating and maddening at times, but it was so, so very good for me.

The Waiting Game...

I'm really tired of waiting. It feels like I'm stuck in limbo right now - waiting for orders to finally arrive, waiting for the move to come, waiting for my son to finally be done with school so we can start figuring out how this whole homeschooling thing is gonna work out...

Sigh.

It's going to be fine, and we're not talking about a lot of time, really, but it's tough to be sitting on the edge of so many things. There's only so much housecleaning; curriculum studying; house-staring online (since I can't exactly do anything else without a concrete date to work with) that one can do. I am having fun pitching stuff, though, and doing that reminds me that we've wasted far too much money on stuff. So, I'm not spending on much other than food right now, and I've convinced the boys to get rid of three bags of toys in exchange for two new Hero Factory guys. I'd say that was a pretty great coup there.

I'm trying to enjoy the last months we have here. It poured rain this afternoon, in a crazy, puddle-producing way that also knocked out the sketchily connected wifi tower on our street. When I went outside afterwards, I noticed a ton of snails making their way across our sidewalk, all of them headed in the same direction. (Is there some kind of snail convention I don't know about?) I called the boys outside, and we spent quite a bit of time watching them. I never realized snails could move as quickly as they did. I love stuff like that - this island is full of weird moments like that.

So, whenever I get exasperated with the waiting, I try to remind myself that there are a lot of thins I will miss. Not the least of them being Oliver home every night. That's gonna be a hard one to give up.

Okay, just kidding - it was just the latest info on the ordmod. They're coming, though. It'll be nice to finally start looking for a place to live for real. Only a few months left to go here.

Orders?

We've heard from a little birdie the orders may have arrived. Have to wait until Monday because Bupers doesn't seem to work at home (or we can't seem to get the password right - dunno which), but I believe we're looking at a September date, which means a move in four months. Still unclear where and for how long...but the end is in sight!

What's the Point, Again?

So, there's this guy I see around base sometimes. He wears a helmet when on a bike, as is required. He does not, however, buckle it under his chin -  instead, he wraps the straps around the helmet itself, where it rides precariously on top of his head.

This kind of baffles me. I mean, I know there are plenty of people who choose not to wear a helmet because it isn't "cool", and there are even more who don't seem to know how to fit it properly, but this is an outright worthless way of wearing a helmet. As soon as the guy crashes, the helmet is going to be long gone before his head  hits anything. At least if the straps were hanging loose (like way too many kids around here wear their helmets) there might be some hope of it hanging on and providing a little protection.

As a person whose been in more than one bike crash, one of them being a head collision where a helmet saved my face, literally, I'm unimpressed with the faux headgear that fulfills the rule here, but does nothing to actually fulfill the reason it exists...

Zipping My Lips...For Now

Well, it's been awhile since I last posted. Not that I've been terribly good about it lately or anything! There is a reason for this. We've got a situation brewing that has taken us by complete surprise, and depending on how it turns out, will complicate things much more than expected. I don't want to discuss it more than that, but eventually I will be able to do so. Since it's consuming my thoughts so much, though, I've had to just stay away from here as part of me just really wants to spew my guts.

Sigh.

Instead, I'm going to babble a little bit about Spanish because when I'm not thinking about the aforementioned situation, I'm thinking about Spanish. This week has been spring break for the kids, so I decided it was a good time to string together a more formal language lesson. I was taught using immersion classes in college, and found it to be fairly effective, so that's the way I'd like to teach them. I put together a lesson on colors (they already know at least half of them, so I figured it was a good way to start), and used a free printable book on Easter (¡Felizes Pascuas!) that had pictures of conejos (bunnies) and huevos (eggs) with color descriptions.

It was actually a lot of fun. I started with a color song I found on Itunes that they really loved, then played ¿Donde está ______? with some colored eggs I made out of construction paper. Oscar quickly got bored with that (and even declared, "This is boring!"), but Wyatt seemed to like it. Then we moved to the book I'd printed out. I kept my speaking to Spanish only, and that was okay with them for the most part. The book had only Spanish phrases to figure out what colors to color the pictures, and I was really impressed that Wyatt wasn't even waiting for me to read them, he was figuring out what he had to do all on his own. I really didn't think reading would be a skill he would pick up at first, since I haven't spent any time on alphabet and how each letter sounds.

Anyway, I'd say overall the lesson was a success. My head hurt after speaking only Spanish for a half hour, and I quickly realized I can't depend on myself to put together the main lessons if we're going to do immersion. I'm just not strong enough in the language. I can supplement, though, and get creative with outside resources, plus I know I can read books to them in Spanish and be okay with pronunciation. I need a spine, though, or this isn't going to happen.

Ideally, I'd enroll them in a class, but, sadly, our country has yet to really realize the value of language learning at the elementary level. I've spent a lot of time looking for something in the place we're moving, and am coming up empty.

So, I think I'm going to buy a program I've been looking at for awhile. It's called Calico Spanish, an immersion program used in schools, and they have a homeschool version. It's the most scripted one I've found, and it comes with a lot of hands on things to promote language learning in young kids. It's not cheap, but I think I've resigned myself to having to spend the most on language learning. Hopefully, we'll get lucky and find a friend who speaks Spanish so we can get some free practice in, but I can't count on that.

I think I'll wait to get it until we move, though. Instead, this summer, I'm just going to try to keep informally teaching them. We're gonna label, label, label everything in the house, and I'm using this book, Play and Learn Spanish by Ana Lomba to pick up some new phrases to use with them. It's a pretty great reference book for teaching little kids, as it goes over a lot of the things you'd say to your kids in normal life, all categorized by topic. Oscar is actually responding very well to this; he's even trying to do more than just Spanglish it with a few words here and there and is using verbs.

I don't really know what the end result of all this will be; I hope we all get comfortable using it, although I'm not expecting full fluency or true bilingualism for the boys. I just don't think I speak it well enough to make that happen, and classes are so incredibly difficult to find. My far-out-there hope is that we get stationed in Rota, but, yeah. Probably not gonna happen. So, we'll make do with what we have, and just hope for the best.

Where's the Mail?

We got back from a week long trip to Florida this weekend. As is typical when we go away, we had a pile of boxes waiting for us when I made it over to the post office on Monday. Half of them were full of food, and the other half had homeschooling stuff (mostly books). Everything was fine with all of them.

Today, though, I went to check the mail again and had a first: an envelope that was opened, resealed, and completely empty. The books missing were a couple of used science books I'd bought from someone, so it wasn't a big loss. It's crazy though - we've had three computers shipped here now (two laptops and one desktop), and every single one made it through fine. Of all the things to steal...

Mail here is decent, all things considered. Sometimes, we get packages that are clearly handled poorly. I've had containers of dishwasher powder and laundry soap beat up so badly they were spilling powder everywhere. A few other things have had dings and such, and we've gotten a few boxes that were mashed or partly open. Never had anything stolen outright, though (unless you count two boxes from Amazon that vanished, never to be seen again - no idea what happened there, although the replacements came just fine).

I did notice there was no customs form, so maybe that had something to do with it? This was a package that had been taking far too long to come, so I had already pretty much given up on it. It was weird to find the empty envelope in my mail.

And I just watched a helicopter carrying a torpedo fly by our house.

Thoughts on My Spanish

So, I've been studying my Spanish rather hard the last few weeks. Between podcasts, a grammar book, and reading Spanish language blogs, plus the kid's books I bought to use later with the boys, I'm happy to discover I haven't lost nearly as much as I thought I had. I am, however, completely baffled as to how I managed to pass two college-level Spanish literature courses in college (one of which required me to write analysis papers in Spanish). I either had some very understanding professors, or I've lost more than I thought I have.

Orders Update (Sort of), and Other Stuff

First off, I learned recently that Oliver's orders are being modified, as we expected. I'm biting my fingernails because there's the chance he will lose his boast and get something else. Hopefully, that doesn't happen because I've gotten rather excited about this particular set of orders.

However, since I have, as usual, no control over the outcome, I am not going to worry about it. I'm typically one to obsess over things, so this ability to roll with the punches is fabulous. Much as I wish this time in the Bahamas had been more about being a tourist and getting to experience local culture, I cannot overestimate how much good it has done for me in some very surprising ways.

Still, sometimes you need to escape the island life, and we're burning some leave in a condo in Orlando right now. I find it sort of amusing that Oliver has never been in danger of losing leave before, even back when he was on the submarine and it was extremely hard to find opportunities to do so. It's fairly easy to take leave here, but he doesn't do so unless we have plans to fly off-island. It seems silly to take leave when you live in the middle of everyone you work with and a ten minute walk to your office...

We actually managed to go to church today. First time in a year. It was kind of nice, although my dear, sweet four year old spent the car ride there proclaiming how he "hated church". What he actually means is he hates any situation that is new and requires him to be away from his family (needless to say, this child is thrilled by the idea of homeschooling - not only because he will be learning at home, but because his brother will no longer spend so much time away from him; he really misses Wyatt when he's at school). The last time we regularly attended church, he was not even two years old and still hated being left in the nursery. He's gone maybe three or four times over the last two and a half years, the last time being last summer.

So, I gritted my teeth and hoped for the best. Overall, they both did okay. Wyatt leaned over about twenty minutes into Sacrament Meeting and asked how much longer before it ended. I decided it wasn't a good idea to tell him we still had over forty minutes to go... Oscar went to Primary, and I didn't have to sit with him. He wouldn't sit with his class, though, but was sitting with his brother when I left. About ten minutes later, someone brought him to me in my class because he'd been crying inconsolably. He took one look at me, asked for his little stuffed bear, which I had in my bag, then went back to class when I handed it to him. He had no more issues, other than a bathroom break I helped  him with. Maybe moving back and attending church regularly won't be totally miserable at first. I'm crossing my fingers on that one.