You’re probably wondering why you haven’t heard from me in nearly a year. Why, I’m sure you ponder at least daily, has there been nothing but radio silence from Emma since her twins were born? You all know I am swimming in free time and mental energy–so what’s my excuse?

Well, friends, there’s an explanation for the social media radio silence, and I think the title says it all.

Less than two weeks after our twins made their whirlwind debit in our bathroom, just as were settling into the calm bliss that is life with five under five, including two newborns, my husband got word. The deployment we had been waiting for. It was time.

We had known about this deployment for nearly a year. Two days before we found out another tiny human was joining the mix, my husband’s boss called with the news. Not long after, days before learning the tiny human was, in fact, two tiny humans, we were told the deployment would be nine months and he’d probably leave in November. So we prayed and prayed and God allowed my husband an extra four months at home. What a precious four months.

Three days shy of the twins second month. Another quiet drive to departures, fighting off tears, grabbing his hand a little too tightly and wishing for the goodbye to be over so we could start looking forward to the hello.

I watched his broad shoulders disappear through the automatic glass doors. One half of my heart gone for a year, the other half crammed in five car seats in the back. The waves of loneliness felt crushing.

So I did what any sane, lonely wife would do and drove immediately to Home Goods to drown my sorrows in pretty things. In case you are wondering, this is an effective means of escapism, albeit only a (very) temporary one.

Never have I felt the physiological effects of missing someone like I experienced those first few days. I was wading through mud, I couldn’t think, and I constantly felt as if I was going to puke. Two days in, it was better, and by the end of the week my heart weighed heavy but everything else was okay.

Today, ten months in, the same heaviness weighs on my heart; I feel it, even as I write.

This isn’t our first deployment. Before he began deploying, he was in the field. Constantly. Gone for ten days, home for three, gone for a week, home for a week, gone for two months, the cycle continues. The other day I did the math and he’s been gone nearly half of our eight years of marriage; the longest he’s been home consecutively is thirteen months.

Sounds a bit depressing when I type it out.

Truly, it hasn’t felt as bad as it sounds.

We’re surviving. We’re more than surviving, too.

What’s it like spending a year at home alone with five precious, feral little souls?

All the pillows are always on the floor. Always. It doesn’t matter that we have designated fort pillows and designated do-not-touch-these-they-stay-on-the-sofa pillows, they are perpetually all on the floor.

There’s always at minimum one child in my arms, typically 2-3.

Road trips consist exclusively of conversations about what happens if you fall through ice (but Mom, what if you have a flamethrower?), please stop saying the word butthole, and a couple hundred math questions. In case you are wondering, a billion multiplied by a billion is a quintillion.

Whenever I’m sad there’s always a sweet little four year old voice to pop up and screech I LOVE YOU MOM and then give me a wild eyed grin.

A big kid is always sitting on a small kid.

Someone always stinks.

But all these are just normal parts of parenting. What’s it like doing this alone?

It’s demoing walls and hanging doors and nailing tongue and groove hardwood floors down while the older three sword fight with flooring remnants and the younger two try to eat the wire connectors they somehow keep finding on the floor.

It’s standing at the sink alone, in silence, scrubbing out sticky hot chocolate cups at 9:46pm after an evening out seeing Christmas lights with five kids in the cold.

It’s sore arms after shoveling 7 inches of snow off a 200ft driveway and then spending the rest of the evening with two one year olds in one arm and a various assortment of cooking utensils, wet wipes, and water bottles in the other. Then after two hours in the kitchen, it’s a half hour of bedtime routines, and then an hour of nursing twins and settling them to sleep and then collapsing.

It’s late night video calls with my husband, inhaling ice cream and tea and laughing and putting the six year old back to bed 18 times. Sometimes it’s just sitting in the quiet, together even though we’re not.

It’s the same as normal parenting but instead of it never stopping it really, truly, never ever stops.

And it’s okay.

Parenting doesn’t stop. My calling is my kids. This is just a season.

Does that make it any easier? I don’t know. In my sane moments when I’m sitting by myself during nap time reflecting on 10 months of parenting solo, absolutely. There is no way for me to write out how much I adore these kids.

In the moments where I’m scraping banana puke out of a car seat while my sick toddler screams inside and my twin babies scream outside and my six year old is chasing around my four year old who is also screaming because said six year old is, you guessed it, screaming about wanting to crush her, I also want to scream.

In those moments, knowing this is just a season does not bring me happy thoughts about how one day I’ll miss this because “these are the good ol’ days.”

Of course parenting doesn’t stop. This is little comfort in the chaos when I really need a break.

My calling is my kids.

I love this, do not misunderstand. This is truth. This is the most important work of all.

But the banana puke is still awful. Scrubbing poop stains off the brand new merino wool sleep sack I literally got yesterday is still a major bummer. Waking up to find my bed covered in puked up beans because I bedshare with my twins is less fun than it sounds. Yes, I’ve seen a lot of puke the last two days and I’m still a bit salty over it.

How to survive a year long deployment with five kids six and under, step 1:

Don’t internalize the struggle.

Do not shove it all inside.

You do not have to act like everything is fine all. the. time.

If everything is fine, this isn’t for you. Maybe everything is mostly fine; that’s how it is over here. But some moments are really un-fine and shoving it deep, deep down inside and letting is fester and grow until eventually you yell at your kids to go to bed at 6pm because you love them but you’re about to toss them out the window so they should please obey before their mother gets very angry is not helpful, and this example has certainly never occurred at this house before.

These moments also happen without the festering, but when there’s no one to help relieve any of the burden during dinner when three kids are complaining about not liking the food and other two are throwing mushed up pasta at the walls, and it’s like groundhog day because this happened the last eight nights too, it’s okay to go hide in the bathroom and eat some special chocolate. Call your mom. Text your husband and tell him his kids are feral. Sometimes I shove it down until bedtime and then pull it back up via writing or talking to my husband or texting another mom friend also in the trenches.

If you never pull it back up, it will weigh heavier and heavier until you spend your days slogging through discontent and burn out.

You don’t have to tell everyone it’s hard. I’m a verbal processor and I tend to make lists of all the hard things and instead of it coming off like I just need to share this so it doesn’t get shoved down, it often comes off as I complain a whole lot.

If this is you as well, helping your husband (usually the other side of the verbal processing) understand that you’re processing and also being intentional about sharing, not constantly complaining, is really helpful. Be aware the listener of this verbal processing can also get burnt out on all the negative things you have to share. Don’t stop sharing, but also share more good things.

So, since we’re sharing more good things, here are some of mine:

The twins’ first birthday is Sunday. I’ve spent this year surrounded by people who love them, who have held them and rocked them and shown them that they are so very precious.

My very littlest baby isn’t feeling good and is content snuggling against me while I type this.

The past few days we’ve spent hours outside having snowball fights and building snowmen.

The twins started sleeping (mostly) through the night and it has replenished my mental energy enough that I can write again.

My six year old has devised a plan to to rid the world of bad guys by tricking them into thinking he’s also a bad guy so they’ll listen to him and then he’ll tell them all that Jesus is real. Still working out the kinks but it’s a solid start.

If you find yourself in a similar situation, carrying the weight of the parenting burdens on your own, stay tuned for part 2 because I do have other specific, practical tips that are not completely vague and open ended like my above advice.

This is only a season, and one day these will be the good ol’ days, and it’s okay if none of that is any comfort whatsoever.

Just know you’re not in the trenches alone.

One more good thing:

At this time in exactly two months…

…my husband will be home.

HOME!!!

For good? Surely not. But this year long deployment–we are going to survive it. More than just survive it, we’re going to keep rocking it. Except for on the banana puke days where there’s mushed up pasta covering my walls and I am definitely not rocking it. We will get through those days, too.

Two more months!