TD-Y??

TDY or Temporary Duty is a travel assignment at any location other than a person's home of station that lasts longer than 2 days and usually less than 2 months. Next to deployments, TDY's are a common reason for our loved ones to be away. By the time Myles was born Dean had been in the Air Force for about a year and a half with zero TDY's or deployments. This is pretty uncommon but we attributed this to the fact that he spent much of his first year in various training courses. We still knew however that his time was yet to come and only hoped that it would be short! No one wants to spend time away from their loved ones and  I will be the first to say that I would much rather see Dean go on 5 TDY's if it meant he didn't get deployed. However, it doesn't make the situation suck any less. The first TDY Dean went on was when Myles was a ripe two weeks old and mommy (ME!) was frazzled, sleep deprived, and stressed to the max. Luckily Wichita was hit by an awful snow storm which cut Dean's trip from a week long assignment to only 3 days. Being that I nurse Myles I was used to not getting much of a break even when Dean was home because of his feeding schedule (is there anything else newborns do!?) so the first trip really flew by and wasn't nearly as scary as I imagined. The second trip however, was a challenge. It really gave me an inside view of how hard our life would/will be if/when Dean gets deployed. He was gone 14 days this time and although my mom did come to help out for a few days it was still an adjustment to get myself and Myles ready and get to work in the morning and then pick him up and get him ready for bed every night. Did I mention this trip was conveniently scheduled my first week of school? So go ahead and add homework and studying to that schedule too:( Yep. That really happened. I should also add that normally Dean gets Myles ready in the morning (makes bottles, gets his diaper bag ready, takes him to daycare) because I go in to work at 6am and daycare doesn't open until 6:30. Luckily my boss is AWESOME (all caps!) and allowed me to come in late keeping me from having to do all of that annoying FMLA paperwork and missing work.

Myles and Dean FaceTiming. Myles was showing daddy his new stunna shades:)

 Let me just say that single moms are HEROES!!! I played a single mom one time (this time actually:)) and it was not something I want to do again! Thankfully the geniuses at Apple invented FaceTime and Myles and I were able to chat with our long lost patriarch each night before bed. It definitely wasn't the same as having him home but I think back to when my dad went TDY or even when he was deployed in the Gulf War and wonder how different things would have been if we could have seen his face every day? If we wanted to see a video of my dad when he was deployed we had to wait for it in the mail. There was no email, no picture messages, no VIDEO messages, and most certainly no Skype or FaceTime. As hard as it is to be a military spouse and see my husband leave, I know that we are so fortunate to have the technology we do now that enables us to keep in contact.