The PCS Files: Limbo

The day after the movers packed our house, loaded our things in wooden crates, and drove away with everything, we headed to middle TN to visit family for roughly a month before we fly to Japan. We have planned to spend a week with my husband's family, a week with my mother, a week with my father, and then back to my in-law's home for the last week that we're in the States. Unfortunately, my husband has had to travel back to our previous home for those two weeks that we're visiting my family because he has to check out of his command and take a Surface Warfare Training course in preparation of his overseas tour.

 

So, we've been out of our home and on the road for a little over a week and though my girls are doing pretty well, I think Thing 2 is already getting a little out-of-whack. She's going back to some previous behaviors that we had worked hard to get rid of (screaming, yelling, talking in her demon-voice, hitting) and I can't help but think that it just might be all the transition she's going through. We're moving somewhere different every week, she doesn't have all the familiar toys that keep her occupied for hours, our family is excited to treat the girls so their diets aren't exactly the same as usual, and our days have been action-packed with lots of visits to friends'/family and fun activities like swimming. I really hate that her behavior is going downhill - especially around family that we never get to see. I've heard a lot of comments about how Thing 2 is so much different than our first or how Thing 2 is such a handful, and I hate it for her. It's so easy to start thinking of a child a certain way and without even realizing it, you begin expecting bad behavior from the child. In a way, you are asking for it.

 

We still have 2.5 weeks until we fly to Japan and we'll probably have around a month in a hotel before we find a house. I'm almost craving our old routine back - our own house, our own toys, our own schedule... our own way of doing things. Maybe I just need to try to bring some routine into this time we're spending with our family. And what other choices do I have really? I just have to remind myself that this time will go by more quickly than I think. I have to take a few deep breaths now and then and just hug on my girls when they're having a hard time. Transitions can be rough. But they are just that too - transitions. We'll get back to our own sense of normal before we know it.

 

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