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Last weekend we got coffee and went down to the river for a walk and some puddle stomping even though it was raining on and off all day.  I didn’t want to say here while he was gone, but G just got back from traveling for work for 5 weeks and we are so glad to have him home. Being the sole parent for 5 weeks was hard.  I didn’t expect it to be easy, but man I am exhausted. I have a whole new respect for single parents and for military families who had long deployments with little kids, which we haven’t had to deal with yet.

K did pretty well with it, but it definitely didn’t breeze by her.  He left at 4:30 am so we were still sleeping, but she knew something was up and that morning when he wasn’t around she brought me his shirt from the folded laundry and waved it at me asking “dada? dada?”  A few days later, when we got home for work/daycare she dug though her books and brought me one, sat down in my lap to read but push my hands away as soon as I opened to the first page to start and skipped to the last page with a family of birds.  When we read this book, she usually points to each bird and I say “mama bird, daddy bird, baby birds” as she points.  She pointed emphatically to the daddy bird, then stood up off my lap, turned to me, stomped her foot and held her hands up open on either side of her to demand “where is my daddy?”

I did talk to her a lot about how he was on a trip, like being at work, just for longer than usual.  We also did skype and talked on the phone, but for an 18 month old to a large degree there is “there” and “not there” so those things were minimal to her. She’s very happy to have everyone home again now (as are we).