Oh boy what a week!

R left on Tuesday and the kids and I are sad :(

We do, at least, get to talk to him by phone and email. He'll be back....one day, so keep us in your thoughts and prayers. S and I drove R to the airport on Tuesday. T went to an extra day of preschool because we thought it would just be easier. Goodbyes are never easy and I want to make the transition as smooth as possible for the kids. So we took a new route someone told us was better - good scenery, shorter time and less mileage. Uh huh. I have to say that it could actually have been faster, but throw in detours and inevitably getting behind the one person in Germany that drives slower than I do, and well... we were sweating R making his flight for a little while there. We make it to the airport and spend another fifteen minutes or so trying to find parking, then make the mad dash (as mad and and dash-able as it could be with a baby, two huge duffel bags, and assorted other related gear) to the check in counter where S decides to fill her diaper with a rather fragrant and noticeable well, you get the idea. So I leave R with his bags and head to the nearest restroom, which thankfully has a really nice baby changing station. Meeting back up with R, he realizes that he's left something in the car, so we actually do get to dash this time back to the car and get it. At which point it makes no sense for us to walk him back in because his flight is going to be boarding by the time he gets through security and makes it to the gate. So we say a swift and sad goodbye and head our separate ways. Sniff.



S and I make it back home with no problems, pick up T from school and carry on. Day one - done!



Day two - grrrrrrrr. Get T off to school, wash all the road muck off of the car from the trip, check the mail, get groceries, run errands, pick T back up from school, get the kids settled in for a nap and I see there's no internet connection. Phooey. So I call TKS, our phone, internet, and cable company. They tell me they'll have someone fix it today. Today comes and goes. No internet. The kids are missing R. I am too. Without distractions (note to self - distractions = bad sleeping conditions) I do get a good night's sleep until T comes in my room at 3ish. He doesn't go back to sleep until close to five. S wakes up at 6:30, so I wake T up at 7. I feel we should all suffer together as a family. ha!!!


Day three - call TKS first thing. They'll have someone out to fix it today by 12. Yay! I have a deadline to meet that requires online access, so I'm getting a little nervous. I start trying to formulate a backup plan. I realize I'm totally not a hacker as I can see five or six different wireless networks but have no idea how to connect to them or even who these people are to ask if I can borrow a connection until they fix mine. When no one comes by 12:30, I call TKS again. They put me on hold for over 15 minutes and then say they'll call me back with some answers. Suuuure. Then they ask if I have a cell phone. I do but it's in the car for emergencies only, so I say no. Plus, I don't know what the number is - it's taped on the back of the phone. At 3:15, no call, no internet and the kids and I have been stuck here alllllll day waiting on non existent help. I call TKS back (now's a good time to mention I'm charged for every single call to them) and they swear they left me a message. I strongly disagree. Back and forth we go until the TKS agent looks at the display on her phone and realizes that the number I'm calling from is not my home number. 45 minutes later it's official, wires have been switched. So all my calls are now going to an apartment in the C stairwell and their calls, if they got any, would be coming to me. Since this is the phone company's error, they tell me, someone will come and fix it today. Do they? Nope. So after dinner, the kids and I pack up my laptop and sit in the car outside of the library so I can try to log on the wireless network there. I don't dare take them in and try to be doing something else. I get 20 minutes of very slow online time, not long enough to accomplish anything, and then the library closes and they turn off access to the wireless network. Oy. In desperation, I drive around base looking for an unsecured network to tap. I don't find one. Defeated, the kids and I head home after waiting in line 15 minutes at Burger King for a coke. I call our friend Sam and beg to use her internet connection the next day, she says sure. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!! On our way up the stairs, our neighbors were going in to their apartment so I took a chance and explained our problem and asked if they'd let me connect to their network for a couple hours. They said no. I totally feel like a junkie.



Day 4 - T wakes up at 2 am with a runny nose. I get him some tylenol and finally get him back to sleep around 4. S is up at 6:30 again, so I get her fed and changed and dressed and spend 30 minutes trying to wake up T. Deciding to work with the situation, I get him changed and dressed, trim his nails and trim the hair around his ears. He sleeps through all of it. What wakes him up? Sara touches his Thomas the train that he got for Christmas. Hey - whatever works. Off to school with T, come back to wait for the TKS guy, think about that and call TKS to confirm there is still a TKS guy coming - and there is. So they say. In a conversation that does not inspire confidence in their services (not that I had any anyway) the agent is shocked that the line wasn't fixed last night. Me, not so much. I don't even want to think about how messed up the phone bill is going to be over this.



Much to my surprise, the TKS guy comes for his 12-2 appointment, even if he does come at 11:10. Hey, I'm not complaining. By now I'm in sweaty, heart palpitation withdrawal. What if Britney had another meltdown? What happened on Grey's Anatomy? AAhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Seriously, I need help. To my irritation, he fixes it in ten minutes. TEN FREAKIN minutes. Breathe....just breathe. I thank him profusely in German, hoping my accent sounds as bad to him as it does to me. Oddly enough, I start to thank in him French. I seriously need to uncross some wires in my own head apparently. I talk to R, tell him the latest, he's proud of me for how I handled it - which I guess means he either expected my head to blow off or for me to have a complete mental breakdown. heh. This time last year, that honestly would have happened.


So, I go pick up T from school, go check the mail, settle the kids in for a nap and ahhhhh..............Internet. Life is good. Then I get a phone call that the bed we ordered for T in November is here and when can I come and get it? Wow..they only give me three days to pick it up, so I tell them I'll come and get it tomorrow. This should be interesting. I really, really miss R. We used our digital camera to record him reading stories for the kids and T watches it a minimum of 20 times in a row.

Day 5 - Everyone, myself included, slept in their own beds all night long. (Doing the well rested dance). The kids and I are out and about by 10:30 am. We go to pick out sheets for T's bed hoping this will get him really jazzed about sleeping in his own room instead of resisting bedtime. Yeah, yeah, I know, I KNOW. No great surprise, he picks out sheets from the movie Cars. Go to pay for and pick up the bed, and it turns out that instead of a mattress and box spring, there are two box springs. After a lengthy conversation with the AAFES manager, they strap the box spring to the top of the car (apparently they aren't supposed to do that) I think they gave in because T was just going nuts. In the BX, I ended up having to make him ride in the cart because he was running and then doing a baseball slide in front of other people's carts. One on had, I find it hilarious and I'm seriously signing him up for baseball as soon as I can. As a parent, I'm appalled and embarrassed. Then I end up taking away his trains and tracks for the rest of the day because he kept smacking Sara upside the head. Oh.. the flashbacks from my own childhood. Deep sigh.
So, rails loaded and box springs strapped on, we drive the .28 or so miles to the apartment. Several of our stairwell cohabitants see me untie the box springs, and try to figure out how to get kids and box spring up three flights of stairs. Did I mention that it's raining? Fabulous. I end up leaving the kids strapped in their car seats and lugging up the box spring as fast as I can. Neither child was impressed with that option. Don't really blame them. I'm really looking forward to doing this all over again when the mattress comes in.

As I go get the kids and bed rails, I resist the urge to do the whole cough*asshole*cough thing towards our observers. It's kinda juvenile, they wouldn't care, and it would set a bad example. I'd write down what I was really thinking, but Mom would come all the way over here to wash my mouth out with soap. When R was in the Army, those guys held open doors for you at the gas station and were quick to offer to assist you even if you didn't look like you needed help. The Air Force, from my experience so far, would walk right by you if you were on fire and two inches from reaching a fire extinguisher. The first month we were here, we had no vehicle. T and I would go to the commissary during the day, load up his stroller and then I'll pull him and his stroller up the two flights of stairs to our apartment. One day, the guy that lived below us was coming in as I was struggling to pull the stroller up the stairs. He literally stepped over us to get to his apartment. Two weeks later his car died, and I smirked about that for a looooong time.

Moving on...so I get the rails put together and the box spring on it. T is SO happy. Since he doesn't have a mattress, I take the foam topper off our bed and put it on top of the box spring. It's not an exact fit, but it works. But T can not stand for the sheets to be on the bed for some reason, so after the third time I replace them (who's the trained monkey in this scenario), I double over the foam topper, wrap it in the fitted sheet, then put the flat sheet over the box spring and under the foam topper to make it much harder to remove. It worked because as of bedtime, everything was still in place.

After an interesting evening that included T pouring his apple juice on the floor three times, I feel like I might just make it through this deployment with my sanity intact because instead of yelling, which is my first impulse, I made him clean up the floor. After the third time, he got the bonus plan of washing the dishes, losing his trains all day tomorrow and the thing which REALLY works, moving up his bedtime by 5 minutes per incident. On the flip side, when he behaves well, he can delay his bedtime by up to 15 minutes. But, boy, do we miss R. :( Onto day six!