The 4 year old tantrum!!!

I've read a ton of stuff saying that when one parents leaves for an extended period of time that children will find various ways to let you know they're upset about it.  I think my child has decided to show me this by throwing tantrums about everything!  I could be wrong it could just be the age, but I don't see other 4 year olds acting crazy in store like mine seems to.  The last few days in our household has been HELL.  Jaden has been becoming a little bit more bratty everyday since BJ left. For the most part I thought I had it under control.  I will now ammend that though and say I have lost all control.  Buggy has will scream and cry anytime she is told NO.  We aren't just talking crying on the floor for a few min. We are talking ear shattering, dropping to the floor flopping around, going into convulsion fit throwing.  I've become that mother in the store who has the child who touches everything, runs around like a crazy person and will scream and throw fits no matter where we are and who's around.  I feel like I failed somewhere. This is my fault she didn't do this when BJ was around.  She wouldn't dream of acting like that in front of Daddy.  So my first train of thought is to talk to my husband about it and see what he says.  BIG mistake HUGE!!!!  I get a lecture about how I'm to soft and I don't intimidate her like he does so she runs me over.  Ok while some of this might be a little true I don't want my child to be scared of me.  I'm not going to spank her every two seconds and scream at her.  How do you think she learned to scream and yell  in the first place.  Clearly that doesn't work for either of us.  It took me a while, but I finally came up with a plan I think will work.  We talked and I explained to her that she can't get upset every time she is told NO.  I let her know that I understand why she is upset, but screaming isn't doing any good.  Obviously this isn't the master plan as talking to a 4 year old and trying to reason with her is silly. Now here is the master plan.  Everytime she is told no and she has a bad reaction and begins to cry and throw a fit we take one of her Favorite toys and put it in the special bin.  That toy stays in until I feel she has earned it back.  I figured by the time we were done with the first day she wouldn't have any good toys left lol.  We started yesterday and I have to say it seems to be working.  She had 3 toys taken yesterday, but we had far less fit throwing.  The minute she realized a toy was gone she stopped crying.  She also was grounded from the TV yesterday.  We don't watch a ton of TV, but she does enjoy a show while eating breakfast and right before bed.  She was not happy she couldn't have that last night.  The store is a whole other story.  She was running everywhere yesterday to the point were I finally gave up and told her because of her actions we were leaving.  We got to the car and she was clearly upset, but not freaking out.  I told her she would not be going back to the store with anyone until she learned to behave like a nice girl.  I plan to stick to that for a while until the tantrums are few and far betweeen.  I am praying this will work because I don't want her to think crying will get her what she wants.  I also hope it teaches her to appreciate a little bit more the things she does have.  Wish me luck!

Virginia 3 times in 6 weeks?

Yesterday was a good day for the Little family.  BJ has been working so hard to be the best soldier he can for the purpose of ranking up.  When he went into the Army he should have gone in at E3 or Private First Class (PFC), but the recuiter didn't do all the things he promised him he would (no suprise there) and he only when in at E2 or PV2.  His goal by the end of AIT was to move up to PFC. Well as of April 11th that goal was realized!  On top of the fact that he was for the second time assigned as squad leader this time recieving 5 promotion points because of it.  I can't tell you how proud of him we are.  He really is exceling! The other piece of good news is he has now phased up to 5+. This means he gets his weekend totally free. He can leave Friday night at 1800 and doesn't have to be back on post until Sunday at 2145.  Normally you have to be there 12 weeks before you can even try for phase 5+. One of his SRGT's was in his room the other night and was so impressed with his locker, bed, etc he told him he was going to allow him to try for it this week.  He's got guys coming to him for help getting squared away.  Is my bragging annoying yet?  :)  I'm over the moon proud of my husband.  He had a lot of people telling him he'd never do anything or be anything. Every step is just proving them wrong. So now the dilema.  BJ and I had decided the kids and I wouldn't come down to see him again until graduation, but when he got phase 5+ the first thing he said was are you going to come down this weekend.  I really really really want to, but it costs a small fortune and the kids and I are going to Florida next week so now we are talking tons of traveling and money spending that we really truely don't need to do.  How do you make the decision?  I'm trying to stick with not seeing him until graduation, but its so hard.  I know he would be so happy to see us, but then we use another 500 dollars in savings to do it.   I'm so back and forth about it. One minute I'm thinking lets just do it and figure everything out later and then I'm like no we need to save.  I don't know. I guess we'll see what happens

First Duty Station Projected!

We finally have a post!  Well techincally nothing is set in stone until he has physical paper orders, but as of right now we are going to Fort Drum.  I'm very excited at the prospect of moving to where we will be at least for a little bit. There are of course a few concerns,  Fort Drum is in upstate New York on the Canadian Border, near lake Ontario.  Sounds great right.  Can you say snow pretty much from end of September till end of April. We aren't talking a few inches we are talking FEET.  The temp can easily drop down to 30 below zero.  This is scary for those of us not good at driving in the snow. On top of the fact that our power bill will probably be a bazillion dollars a month. We are hoping for on post housing, but the wait list is large. The other problem is there are wait lists for the apartments near post as well.  It sucks cause if you want to buy a house they are a great price, but if you want to rent the price is super high cause they know that people would rather rent than buy.  Now the plus sides. We are like 3 hours from Toronto, Ottowa, and some other cool places.  We will be only 6 hours from New York city, Boston, and Philadelphia and the summers are a lot like Seattle as they don't usually go over 80 degrees!  So as with any place there is good and bad. Jaden will be in heavan because she loves the snow. We figure we can take the kids little swimming pool tie some rope on it and use it as a family sled lol.  Let the adventure begin!

Yes I suck at blogging so sue me!

So its been what like 2 months since my last blog. I have no excuse I just plane suck.  I do good for a few days then I'm gone for months.  The hubs is still in AIT at Ft. Eustis. He has two months left (an eternity in my eyes) and then hopefully we will be moving somewhere together. I say hopefully only because as of right now the only opening for his MOS is Korea!  My heart dropped when I found this out.  Korea could be no Hubs for a year.  We have to get command sponsored to go over with him, which in Korea is not an easy task.  Most of it is done by rank which will make it that much more difficult considering he is only a Private. The other problem we have is that Buggy is only 1 year away from being in Kindergarten so they would have to find a spot for her in school unless we decide to home school. 

I have wanted to home school for quite sometime now, but the Hubs has been very against it. He of course goes straight to the socialization issue.  Clearly that is any ones main concern, but I read a great blog today Homeschool Menagerie that really helped me to see that home school is not the death of socialization. I think my favorite point made was when she said that you don't see a lot of home school kids who can't socialize, but you do see a lot of public school kids who can't.  I couldn't agree more. My husbands sadly suffers from this problem. He was never taught how. He is extremely shy and socially awkward until he gets to know someone and he went to regular school.  So with socialization out of the way whats left?  Nothing. I am perfectly capable of doing the research, finding good lesson plans, and deciding what I want my child to learn and when.  I teach her every day.  Now my mission is to arm myself with as much information as possible so my husband has no reason to say no.  My number one attack will of course be us being split up for 1 to 2 years over them not being able to find Buggy a school to attend.  We have already spent almost 6 month apart for the training.

On a happier note the kids and I have now been up to Virginia 2 times to see BJ.  The first time we went we got a whole 4 days with him.  We went up to DC and hung out there for 3 days. We got to go to the Smithsonian national zoo and walked around a bit. We also spent a crazy amount of time in our hotel room just being a family again. It was so awesome. Then last weekend Boo Boo turned 1. We hadn't planned on a trip to Virginia, but BJ's company won some type of competition thing and he got a off post pass for the weekend. So Saturday morning at 6am I loaded the birthday boy and buggy up and we drove 9 hours to Virginia.  This time we stayed in Newport News and again spent most of our time in the hotel room being a family, but daddy got to spend his boy's first birthday with him!  He had to go back late Sunday night and this was the hardest good bye to date.  Buggy even cried. I thankfully held it together till he was out of sight, but even he is really feeling the weight of this separation.  So for now we are praying for no orders to be cut until right before graduation.  Hopefully we get to stay in the US and then I'll really have to come up with good information about home school.

I'll try not to make my next post two months from now :)