The other day I was explaining to my wife Danielle on the phone that Sean (our 17-month-old) and I had discovered two new monsters in our presence. One was the Washcloth Monster, who feeds on the crumbs little boys leave behind, and the other was the Hand Wipe Monster, his cousin, who follows us around town and feeds on little boys’ sticky paws.

Danielle said I needed more adult relationships, ASAP.

In the May issue of Military Spouse Magazine, I wrote about trying to build up a sense of community, but I’ve been having a hard time actually making it happen.

The first thing that stymied my involvement in the spouses’ club here was Sean’s nap schedule. I signed up to join the playgroup, which is well-organized and meets at local parks and playgrounds, but most of the kids are a little older than Sean and have one midday nap. So the get-togethers (I stubbornly refuse to call them “playdates”) are scheduled for mid-morning, right when Sean goes down for his first of two daily naps.

Then, just as Sean was transitioning to one midday nap himself, he got sick. It was probably the swine flu, though we didn’t have to take him to the doc. He only ran a fever for a day, and then his symptoms became cold-like: coughing, runny nose—nothing really to worry about. But being sick meant more sleep, and he’s been back to two naps a day for the last three weeks.

We’ve also been trying to organize a trip down to Virginia to see Danielle and visit friends, but car trouble has thrown a wrench into our schedule. Making matters even more complicated is that the car is in Connecticut. It broke down on Danielle on the drive home over Memorial Day weekend. Not knowing when I’ll have to go pick it up or when we’ll finally be able to take our trip has made me reluctant to commit to any other spouse club events.

That all leaves Sean and me in a kind of limbo, and it leaves me with only small-talk social opportunities with the waitresses at the diner or with casual acquaintances at the coffee shop.

When we do make it to the playground, I find myself hovering within 15 feet of Sean, watching the other parents—mostly moms—from a distance. I feel a strange reluctance to engage them in conversation, partly because it’s awkward being the only dad at the playground (the other dads I see are invariably accompanied by their wives), and partly because I don’t want Sean to start eating grass or wood mulch.

So, for the time being, my primary social companion is a toddler, and our conversations are mostly one-sided. If it weren’t for the Internet and the telephone, I’d really be in trouble.

* Temporary Assigned Duty

Danielle called last night, and the homesickness had finally gotten to her. For the first time since her shore tour began almost 3 years ago, she’s on TAD 8 hours away, training for her next assignment.

This is also the first time since our son was born 17 months ago that she’s been away from Sean for more than a few hours. I think that’s probably the hardest part. We know what it’s like to be separated from each other, but not getting to see her little boy is an altogether different emotional experience.

So when she called last night, we decided it was time to experiment with Skype, a program that allows you to make phone calls (and, more importantly video calls) over the Internet. For free.

Before we left, we installed the free Skype software on her laptop, which has a built-in webcam. I bought a camera for our home computer and installed the same software, and we had everything we needed to get started.

I was amazed at how easy it was to get it up and running. I added Danielle as a contact and seconds later got a pop-up saying I had received a video call from her. With one click, I was looking at her face on my computer screen in real time and hearing her voice over the speakers and she was looking at and hearing me.

It instantly lifted our spirits. Sean was already in bed so we made a plan to make another call this afternoon.

That would be the real test. How would our toddler react to seeing his mom on the computer? He had obviously noticed her absence—he’s been unusually clingy—and I wondered if he would like seeing his mom via video or if he would get upset.

The results were mixed. Sean didn’t really seem to understand that he could interact with Danielle, but he also seemed to like seeing her face and hearing her voice. The hardest part was getting him to sit still and stay within the viewing angle of the camera.

All-in-all, I’d say it was a success. Danielle got to see our little one’s smile, and he got to see hers. With a little coaxing, I even got him to say “Bye-bye,” before she had to sign off and head back to the classroom to study.

With a little practice, I think Skype will be a great tool to help us get through this separation. For tomorrow’s call, I’m going to reposition the speakers so it sounds more like her voice is coming from her face on the monitor. Maybe that will make it a little more life-like.

Technology will never fully replace face-to-face human interaction, but maybe it’s the next best thing.

My wife is stressing about being away from Sean and me this summer for training, but last weekend, I was the one who was on my own.

If you’re like me, you crave alone time: time with a book, time to make a dent in your project list, time to sleep in. I got a big dose of it when Danielle took Sean to visit her mom in Michigan for four days.

I had a stack of reading to do and some handyman tasks, and I was excited—right up until we got to the airport. That’s when my stomach sank right into my left shoe. Seeing the two of them standing in the line for the security check without me was just plain weird.

That afternoon after they left I tried to go to a few of my favorite places (the bookstore, Starbucks), but I just couldn’t get comfortable. I finally wound up watching an action movie starring Jason Statham while eating a pepperoni pizza and drinking a couple of beers. What a guy-like way to spend an evening, huh?

The next morning I woke up at 7:30—then fell back asleep until 9:00. I haven’t slept that much in a year and a half. The rest of the day went well, too. I got a lot of work done, and a lot of relaxing, but at the end of the day I was ready for my family to come back, and I still had two more days to go.

What I got was just a small taste of what it’s like to be away from your spouse and children, and it helped me understand just a little bit what it’s going to be like for Danielle when she has to say goodbye for several weeks at a time, or longer.

Maybe it’s cliche to say this, but we get so used to our lives being a certain way that we take them for granted. Life—especially military life—has a way of shaking things up for all of us, now and then, and showing us how things could be different.

And maybe that’s not a bad thing.

About a year ago, my wife and I decided we only needed one car. We live in town, making it possible to walk most everywhere, and until recently we were both working from home.

We also had a new baby and wanted a larger vehicle for those times when we wanted to travel. Our economy cars had enough room in the trunk for a stroller and not much else.

So we traded our two little cars in for one larger car. We love it, and it does exactly what we need it to do.

But what am I going to do when Danielle takes it to Virginia with her for seven weeks this summer?

I started by thinking about places I will want to go that are not within walking distance. These include the base, the book store, Simmons Farm, where we buy meat and veggies, and Sweet Berry Farm, where we pick fruit for preserving.

I clicked over to Google Maps to see just how difficult it would be to get to these destinations. I was happy to see that they’re all within a five-mile radius, and that all but Sweet Berry Farm are on a bus route. With a little bit of effort, I should be able to wake up my long-dormant bike-riding muscles and make the trek out to the strawberry fields come June.

It certainly helps that it’s going to be summer, but this little thought experiment really has me wondering why more single-income families don’t adopt the one-car lifestyle.

Prior to 1990, two-car households were in the minority, according to the Department of Transportation, and in 2000, 1/3 of US households had only one car. According to AAA, you can save an average of $8,121 a year by not having a second car, and the only cost is a loss of some convenience.

It’s been pretty easy this last year having just the one vehicle. It will get trickier when our shore tour is over and Danielle has to get to the base every morning.

But that brings up another reason to have only one car: deployments. When your spouse is deployed, what happens to his ride? It sits there. Costing money.

Are there any readers out there who’ve made the switch from two cars to one, or who have always gotten by with just one (or less)? I’d love to see your comments.

Sarah Smiley’s commentary about Lisa Pagan, the Army mother of two who was called back into active duty from the Individual Ready Reserve, got me thinking about commitment.

What struck me about Ms. Pagan’s story was the disparity of peoples’ reactions to it. Some saw it as a story about a good mother doing what she had to do. Some saw it as evidence of a compassionless US military that didn’t care about its service members. Still others railed against Ms. Pagan’s lack of commitment.

One day this past winter, I got to talking to a former Marine wife, and I was telling her about Danielle’s year off to get her MBA. She was impressed that the Navy would offer such a great benefit, but then, I told her, Danielle would have to go back to a ship. The woman observed that it would be really hard for my wife to say goodbye to our son whenever the ship deployed. Then she said something that shocked me:

“I hear it’s pretty easy for women in the Navy to get pregnant and then get discharged,” she said. “‘So long, thanks for the Master’s degree!’ “

Well, first of all, it’s not that easy. True, she wouldn’t be able to deploy with the ship, but she also wouldn’t automatically be discharged. They’d find a job for her to do in a shore-based unit.

And second of all, seriously? You think it would be a good idea for her to sign a contract that says she’s committed to serving for six more years, take the country’s money, take the free education, take the year off, and then try to game the system and bail on the whole agreement because it’s suddenly inconvenient?

What surprised me most about her comments was that she was a former military spouse, someone who should have understood “commitment.”

It’s hard for me to say whether Lisa Pagan honored her own commitment. Some would say that getting the media involved was less than honorable, and there’s a part of me that thinks she probably could have found childcare if she’d really wanted to. But we also don’t know the whole story.

Whether or not it was a media stunt, at least she reported for duty, unlike some others. Consider, for example, the 1,000 soldiers who have simply failed to report. Or consider the woman in the library, who suggested getting pregnant as a means to getting out of the Navy.

What I do know is that our military’s greatness—indeed, our country’s greatness—depends on those who are willing to commit to something bigger than themselves, and I am proud to be a part of that.

We go to Starbucks—a lot. When I took one of their online surveys recently, one of the questions was, “How many times in the last month have you visited this Starbucks location?” My answer: 25. Sure, I was estimating. It might have been 24 or 26.

Now, that may seem excessive, not to mention expensive, but I only (usually) order regular drip coffee. And also, I have a Starbucks Gold Card that gives me 10 percent off all my purchases. Of course, the card costs $25 for the year, so I’m basically obligated to spend $250 a year at Starbucks to justify it, but I’ll spend that anyway, so why not get the card?

(I have a similar card for Barnes & Noble. At the end of the year they tell you how much you’ve saved with the membership, and it’s always shocking to multiply that number—last year it was $125—by 10 and realize you spent over $1,000 on books.)

If a cup of coffee costs me $1.80 and I go there 25 times a month, and a pound of coffee for home costs $9.00, which I buy about twice a month, I’ll pay for the membership and start saving money in…four months. And since Danielle usually accompanies me, it’s actually even sooner than that.

There was a time when I wouldn’t have darkened the door of a Starbucks. I grew up in Michigan, where there’s a vibrant coffee house culture. There are a lot of independent cafes that serve excellent coffee and provide a nice atmosphere for catching up with friends or just reading a book. I would support the indie coffee shop over the corporate monster that is Starbucks every time.

When we lived in Norfolk, I found a coffee shop I loved because it was a community gathering place, but that was also a problem. I couldn’t go in there without getting into a conversation with one of the other regulars, and that made it hard to get any work done, and I loved writing in coffee shops.

So I started going to the neighborhood Starbucks, where I could be anonymous, and that’s when I fell in love. I discovered the Anniversary Blend that appears every fall, and then the Christmas Blend, which follows closely thereafter. I realized how wonderful it was to always know I could find a good cup of coffee wherever I was traveling, as long as there was a Starbucks in town. During the two weeks Danielle and I spent in the UK in 2006, the only good coffee we drank was at the London Starbucks outlets.

If the ubiquity of Starbucks stores means I can get a good cup o’ joe almost anywhere in the world, I’m a convert. Yay American cultural hegemony!

The Year of Bliss is almost over.

Danielle and I spent 2008 working from home, co-parenting our infant son, co-cooking, co-cleaning, co-grocery-shopping, co-everything-ing. She was on educational leave from the Navy, and I had left the nine-to-five world for the freelancing-in-my-pajamas world, and it was awesome.

We managed to stretch the Year of Bliss into Fifteen Months of Bliss, but she’s going back to the office just in time for spring cleaning, and that means I’ve got a lot of work to do.

Which means I need a system.

The System

My first impulse was to get a notebook that I could use to write up to do lists, housekeeping routines, recipe ideas, menu plans, shopping lists, etc., but a notebook didn’t seem to be as flexible/durable as I needed it to be. Then I had another idea: index cards.

With a bunch of index cards and a binder clip, you have all the good things you’d get from a notebook with the added ability to rearrange the cards, remove cards you don’t need, create a weekly dinner plan you can post on the refrigerator, etc.

The idea came to me from a solution to a problem in another area in my life: research. Often when I’m reading, I’ll spot a good quote or idea I want to remember, so I grabbed a pack of 3X5 index cards I’ve had since I abandoned grad school. Then I grabbed a binder clip to hold them together, and I was set.

Sources

I probably owe the idea for the index cards to Merlin Mann’s Hipster PDA. Merlin got sick of using his fancy Palm PDA, so he replaced it with a stack of index cards. Sometimes low-tech solutions are the best way to go.

Another great resource I’ve been using is Cheryl Mendelson’s book Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House. She covers every aspect of keeping house in exhaustive detail without making you feel like a schlub if you don’t do everything exactly the way she suggests. It’s a reference book you can use to tailor your own routine.

Results

So far the biggest difference I’ve noticed is with my cooking habits. I used to ask Danielle every afternoon, “Have you thought about dinner at all?” Now I don’t have to ask: there’s a plan posted on the fridge.

Hopefully this system will also help me keep the laundry monster from growing too tall, keep the dust bunnies at bay, and keep the baby’s toys from taking over.

And maybe—just maybe—it’ll also help keep me sane.

Those of you with kids will know what I mean when I say I LOVE nap time. If you’re lucky enough to get your infant onto some kind of schedule, chances are you’re getting three to four hours of quiet every day while your little one recharges (unless you have older kids, too).

Oh, how we’ve come to treasure Sean’s two daily naps. In the morning, we either clean house or catch up on our TV programs on Hulu.com. In the afternoons, Danielle studies while I read or do some writing. It’s fantastic.

When it works.

Lately, Sean, who’s now a couple months into toddlerhood, has been fighting the afternoon nap. He lays in his crib, making little noises, kicking the sides. He gradually gets more worked up until he’s standing up crying and throwing his blanket out of the crib, which makes him cry more, until, finally, he’s worked himself up into such a state of agitation that the probability of a nap approaches zero.

It’s normal for kids to lose a nap at this age, but it’s usually the morning nap that disappears first. That makes me wonder if he’s really ready to go to one daily nap or if he’s just asserting his will.

Of course, this might all be a lot of wishful thinking on my part. I like the schedule the way it is so much that I really just don’t want to deal with changing it. If he only naps once a day, something’s gotta give. I’ll kind of have to use that nap to do laundry, Swiffer the floors, or write a blog post.

But what about my morning infusion of TV? I guess I’ll have to do what the rest of the adult world does: watch TV at night.

Something about being on shore tour has made Danielle and me more anti-social than usual. We don’t go to church. I’m not a member of the spouses’ club. We don’t know most of our neighbors.

To make matters worse, we live on an island, and, like true islanders, we hate leaving it. We just want to stay close to home and spend as much time together with our little one as possible.

People in general are less involved in their communities than they were a couple generations ago, and there have been a lot of explanations for that trend, including the advent of the Internet (specifically the Web), and the fact that people relocate so frequently. These are both major influences on the lives of military families.

I spend much of every day in front of a computer: reading, writing, blogging, Twittering, e-mailing, Facebooking, etc. That’s how I stay in touch with friends, and that’s true for most people I know. Between the Web and mobile phones, it almost doesn’t matter where you live.

As an added bonus, I don’t have to leave my burrow to stay in touch this way.

Last week, I met with three board members of the Newport Officers’ Spouses’ Club to do an interview for MSM. We got together mainly to chat about their charitable programs, but we also talked about club membership and the difficulties they had in reaching out to spouses. Evidently, I’m not the only spouse on a shore tour who doesn’t feel the need to be part of the spouses’ club. For some spouses it’s about community and socializing. For others, it’s about support during a deployment.

I didn’t even know there was a spouses’ club in Newport until I found a web page for their scholarship program. Even then, I didn’t contact them to get involved. I was too busy (in a good way) with my family.

Now that Sean’s a little older and Danielle is wrapping up her master’s degree, though, I think it’s time to get involved again. Maybe I’ll take Sean to the spouses’ club play group.

I didn’t even notice it when it happened, but at some point during the last few months, my son Sean made a major developmental leap.

As anyone with kids knows, it’s hard not to feel manipulated by infants. For his first 3 months, Sean would barely tolerate being anywhere but in my or his mom’s arms. The stroller was alright, as was the car seat; laying him in his crib or (gasp) on a blanket on the floor was not OK.

Babies’ constant neediness is hard on parents who are exhausted and hungry for ‘me-time.’ I’ve had to remind myself countless times since Sean was born that his helplessness is not intentional, that he’s not doing this on purpose—it’s in his nature to be this way.

But at some point during the 2 or 3 months leading up to his first birthday he seems to have become self-aware, kind of like the Skynet computer system from the Terminator movie franchise that tries to wipe out the entire human race.

He has learned, for example,

• that if he makes enough noise in the middle of the night, he gets ‘Mom-time’ and a snack;
• that it’s fun to test his parents’ patience by trying to pry off outlet covers;
• that it’s fun to eat cat food, even though it disgusts Mom and Dad

.

You can see it in the smile on his face as he crawls at full speed toward the cats’ water fountain (yes, our cats have a water fountain; I don’t even want to think about what this says about what kind of parents we’re going to be for our human offspring). You can see it in the way he holds his hand out toward the forbidden object, as if to say, ‘What’re you gonna do about it?’

And so it’s convenient that this is also the time we have chosen to wean Sean from breastfeeding. While we fight to establish boundaries and break the habit of multiple nighttime feedings, we can also work on making him less dependent on his mom for food.

I’ve been jokingly announcing to him that a new administration is taking power. We will no longer be living under what Joseph Epstein calls a kindergarchy.

The new rulers are Sean’s ‘Parentsidents.’