My Prince

My life has been running at a break-neck speed in a helter-skelter manner for the past 6 and a half years. I met my husband in January of '04 (while I was dating someone else), and The Instigator and I started dating in June '04 (after I'd broken up with the previous boyfriend, of course, lol). By mid-August '04, we were engaged...and got pregnant (SURPRISE!). We were married in the beginning of that December. The following April, I had A. And when A was only 8 months old, we got another surprise....C was on the way in 9 months. Since C was born (in August '06), The Instigator has done a year-long tour in Korea without us, we've moved overseas and spent 3 years in Italy, and while in Italy, The Instigator went on 2 deployments to the desert. We recently moved from Italy to Germany. (As in this past Christmas season. Very recent!) So ever since I met my husband, things have been full-steam ahead! A started Kindergarten this past fall, and it's amazing the difference in having only one of the two boys at home during the day makes.

C was only 7 weeks old when The Instigator left for Korea. It was rough. I needed cuddle time, and I (conveniently) had a new baby that was absolutely okay with being constantly held and coddled and carried around. (And yes, that has totally come back to bite me in the butt since then. LOL) When A was about 8 or 9 months old, we left him with my in-laws for two weeks. (It seemed like the longest 2 weeks of my life, on top of which I had the extra pregnancy hormones! LOL) I've tried my best to make sure our boys don't have severe cases of separation anxiety. I leave them with friends or family, or take them to the CDC (= child development center = base daycare) when The Instigator is deployed and I get it for free. I never sneak away (I don't need them to freak out or have abandonment issues!), but I always tell them where I'm going, that I'll be back, and get and give hugs and kisses.

To my recollection, C has never been away from me and The Instigator overnight. It's always the one or the other of us. (Though I admit, I could easily be forgetting a time or two of family watching him for a night, since, as I've explained, my life has been so hectic, I'd not remember! LOL) Well, Misha and her boys came up to spend the weekend with us. (We had a BLAST!) And she decided (with The Instigator offering to reimburse her with a graphics card for a computer so she can play World of Warcraft on a desktop computer) that she was going to potty train C. Yes, you read that right. C was born in August of 2006, and he is/was still in pull-ups. He is not easy to work with on this. Nobody ever believes me when I explain it. They think I'm exaggerating or just not trying some trick or another. But I promise you, I've tried them all. He. Just. Doesn't. Care. He will sit in pee or poo for hours, because he didn't want to go in the toilet. And that's in pull-ups or underwear. It's not enough discomfort to motivate him to put it where it belongs. I've tried letting him run around naked, but he will, no lie, go right on the floor, both for number 1 and number 2. He. Doesn't. Care. At all. But Misha can't stand to watch me still change the butt of a 4-year-old (and really wants to play WoW for extended periods of time on a desktop computer! LOL LOL LOL), so she has taken him home with her for a week. A whooooooooooole week. I honestly didn't think I'd feel his absence this much, if at all. Granted, going from 4 boys in a house to 2 is in itself a large change in noise level. But going from 4 to 1?! It's eerily quiet. LOL

It will certainly be nice to not be pestered every waking moment with "Mama, I'm thirsty," "Mama, I'm hungry," "Mama, I'm stinky," and be able to keep a house clean during the week without little 4-year-old hands going behind me and undoing as much of it as physically possible. LOL But it will definitely be different. C is my little prince. He absolutely has my heart. (It's kind of hard for him to not have someone's heart! He's adorable!) I know that once he's done with his potty-training "boot camp" with Miss Misha, I'll be glad to have him home again. :) Until then, I think I'll revel in the silence, the cleanliness, and the crafting time that I get this week! ;)

(See? I told you he was adorable!)