Navigating new motherhood one cold cup of coffee at a time
I'm going to draw attention to something that most of us would never want attention to in the first place because 1) It's doing what we have to do just like anyone else in this world, and 2) Single parenting is generally, probably, harder and we hate to even imply that we're comparing. So, full… Continue reading Solo parenting in the military is underrated
My husband and I moved here with one dog, a baby bump and no support system, and are leaving here with two dogs, two kids under three, and a village of hand-selected family. We have not, however, had a babysitter for the popular “first night out kid-free” milestone yet. And this has been by choice… Continue reading When home is exactly the break that you need
I'm proud that I followed through with many of my resolutions for 2017 – well, most of them. My biggest goal was to minimize the clutter in my life, which has transformed our home. It has helped me cut down on wants vs. needs, find a style that I actually like – both in my… Continue reading I failed last year’s resolution and uncovered something better
Our first duty station was Hawaii, and I gained so much from our time there. I was ambitious, young and impressionable. I was starting my career, pursuing this thing called love; I couldn't have been in a better place for this chapter, where the community leads with Aloha – a powerful outlook that set me… Continue reading What I didn’t know when I married the military
I officially hit the third trimester of this second pregnancy. It's surreal that we will meet our daughter in a few short months. Last pregnancy, there was this constant looming and enormous news that we were going to become parents, and it made us one giant ball of nerves. Now that our days are already consumed… Continue reading Third trimester turbulence
When we got pregnant, my first thought was a blur of joy and shock. My second thought was to count through the nine months it would take to grow you to see if daddy would be home for your birth. If we were staying in Hawaii, he would have deployed for a fourth time. Lucky us, we had… Continue reading A letter to our military child
*Photo by Just B Photo* Nov. 21: What is the one thing you wish people better understood about something in your life? One of the biggest misunderstandings people have about me is my happiness. I am an optimistic person, and I do have a generally happy-go-lucky personality. I firmly believe that this positive outlook is… Continue reading I am happy, but that doesn’t make me superhuman
I started this blog when I learned that my husband and I were expecting, just two months before our cross-country move. This marked the start of an exciting journey, but also a tough goodbye as I left 3.5 years of hard work behind me, saying goodbye to a career I had tirelessly advanced in a community I adored. But… Continue reading Conquered: My biggest fears about being a stay-at-home mom
I don't really think of myself as a military spouse. I think of myself as a wife - perhaps because I don't know any other life. To me, marriage has always been and will always be marked by dreaded bouts of distance followed by highly emotional homecomings, too many acronyms to be considered English, a transient… Continue reading What being a military spouse is really like
One of the most unsuspecting challenges of pregnancy thus far has been its impact on my marriage. I had this vision that my husband would be overjoyed at the news and would seamlessly step into the unknowns of parenthood with me day by day, hand in hand. Things didn’t unfold quite so beautifully: “Sean, I think we got… Continue reading What pregnancy has done to my marriage
