I know a lot of you deal with this on a regular basis, especially you armed forces-wives and so on, so i need advice - DaD has been selected to go to Taiwan for high end Kung Fu stuff, i never stood a chance, as i haven't trained since i had the baby, so i was never going to be invited (But my skillz are still l33t, thanks for asking) and originally we were all going to go, but having thought it out, i decided to stay here with Beenie. I don't think she'd appreciate the trip at 14 months, i'd just be the mother+baby that is really unpopular on the plane. And i can think of a hundred better uses of the money, not to mention that we'd be mostly alone and in a hotel room for the majority of the trip... etc etc.

Anyway, since we're not going, how do i help her cope with DaD not being around for a week and i half? Neither of us are used to this idea, usually he's here every evening and all weekend. At the time we're talking about, she'll be about 14 months old. Will there be many tears? (I know I'M gonna cry, but what about Beenie?)

If it's anything like around here, Smudge just occasionally wanders from room to room asking "mama?" or "dada?" depending on who's out of town.

And then he gets distracted by playing hockey or coloring.

So he misses us, but not in a crying, emotional kind of way. Mostly his sadness comes out in the fact that his sleep kind of goes to hell.

D is mainly confused if a parent isn't around on schedule - but whichever parent IS present with him gets pretty tired if not relieved by the other at regular intervals - do you have family or good friends you could go visit for the weekend who could take a little of the Beenie-watching off your hands for a few hours? If faced with a full 10 days of L-lessness, I think I'd want to get as many other adults involved as possible. Good luck! (and congratulations to DaD.)

GirlWho did fine when DaddyWho was gone. I tried to plan special outings, more for me than her. I usually thought I would miss him terribly, and I did miss him, but the time she and I had together was usually pretty special.

When she was 18 months old, he left for nearly a year. Several months after he left, she started asking for "birthday cake" one evening. No one had a birthday anytime soon, and it was around 7 pm. I loaded her in the car and took her to my favorite bakery/bistro. At night, it's fairly swanky, with just a few tables left in the bakery area. We got one of those and shared a piece of cake of her choosing. She even tried to sing "Happy Birthday." It's one of my absolute favorite memories, and it's all mine.

Hubby goes away for a week or two about every two months. Ebay's been fine with it, and shows no ill effects when he returns. Big O had an issue when she ws 18 months old and we moved from West Coast to East Coast. She and i flew, but Hubby drove so he could stop along the way and attend a conference. He was absent for a week and a half. When he arrived, Big O wouldn't talk to him, look at him, and acted scared for a few days. Then one day she suddenly got very clingy and wouldn't leave his side. After a week things had returned to normal. I think it was just teh complete upheaval of her life. A regular business trip shouldn't cause anything more than missing Daddy. Make nightly phone calls so she can hear Daddy's voice.

At fourteen months, she may not notice it too much. A baby's concept of time is fairly fluid. AlphaGeek was gone for approximately 75% of Little B's first year, but B didn't really notice, one way or the other. He would be a bit fussy the first day AG would be gone, but he always seemed pretty content just hanging with me.

With AG's upcoming travel schedule, it sucks more than when they were babies...as soon as he leaves they look out the window and then look at me and ask "when will papa be back?"

Having no experience, but I'll ask the crowd anyway. How do webcams work? Is it too confusing for the tot? Or is it fun for both parent and kid?

I've talked to my niece a lot on the webcam, since she was around 18 months and she enjoys it. But, the situation there is that I'm someone who is fun to see, not someone she is missing.

I have friends who used webcams during deployments and really liked it. Sometimes the absent parent would have copies of books that the kids were reading at home and they would read them over the webcams. I don't think they can use the webcams anymore because of security concerns, but they have Virtual Teleconference available at the family centers on bases so the families can see their loved ones. It seems to especially help the littler ones who might forget what a parent looks/sounds like and be frightened of them when they return after a very long absence.

We do the webcam thing - we got them for our parents when we moved, so they could still see the kids. Flying back is just too expensive. They aren't hard to set up, and Skype is awesome.

The kids love being able to see their grandparents, cousins and friends. It really helps keep them in touch.

My husband left for 9 days to Germany when Ri was about the same exact age. She didn't even seem to notice. She asked about him a couple of times, but mostly we were busy. I think she lost track of the days and probably just thought he was at work a lot more than usual. She was really excited when he got home, though!

Now that they are older, we make business trips something for them to not get to down about by doing special things while he's gone. Like they get donuts for breakfast (something we rarely ever do). Or we eat out for dinner, rent movies and have a sleepover night together.

Kid A did not notice when his dad left town until he was 3 and a half. He was perfectly happy to have Mama all to himself.

PF travels regularly for work and its always been harder on me than the boys - no break from the "mommy mommy mommy" AND the person I normally complain to out of reach. I rent movies that PF wouldn't enjoy, eat ice cream for dinner and otherwise spoil myself.

The hardest thing is to get a regular night sleep since I don't like to go to bed alone and PF complains if I let the boyfriends sleep over. (Hey sweetie - how's Seattle?)

Thanks for the congratualations muttermutter (cool name too!).

BoL forgot to mention that WE (Her and I) Haven't spent a night apart since we got together.

One advantage is that through a bizarre set of circumstances inherited from Union-Strong days, I actually get paid 17% more when I take leave. The logic is I can't work overtime while I'm on leave (which I can't do normally anyway).

Thanks for the advice everyone.

Do kids really forget a parent if they go away? And how long does that usually have to be?

Beanie wont forget you. If Bol keeps her busy the time will fly by. Don't dwell on Daddy not being there either and make one phone call a day. More than that and it'll only highlight that DaD's not there.

I definitely second doing special things with the kid. Mo was 2 when Sailor spent his first summer away (summer stock not Navy) and we managed. Occassionally he'd ask "Where's Daddy?" and I'd reply "He's in Ohio doing A,B,and C. This is what we're going to do today..." That helped a lot. Also a scheduled phone time which usually fell just before bed time. I doubt we'll be able to get a phone call at the same time every day once he's deployed but we'll figure something out.

We've got web cams to talk with my folks and it works for about ten minutes for Mo and five for Max. They are just too young to have that kind of patience. When talking on the phone they tend to walk around the house too. Sitting still must be a pain for them.

oooh special activities... i'ma let my mind wander about that concept for a while... i'm seeing trips to my sister's, long drives in the country (so she can sleep, and i can listen to the radio), junk phood (me), hours of TV (her), trips to Sovereign Hill and the Fairy Park and the Dinosaur Park etc etc.... random mealtimes...

does routine play a large part? Like, should i be more vigilant about routine, to help her get through it, or should i ditch it entirely, in a sort of "misdirection" technique, to distract her from DaD's absence?

BoL - the misdirection can work great, as long as she still gets her naps in. Disrupting a routine only works well with babies that are pretty relaxed about their routine in the first place.

And how cute are you and DaD having never spent a night apart?!!

DaD - Beenie won't forget you - she merely has a poor concept of time as a continuum, and so if she had coherent thought processes, it might sound a little like, 'gee, daddy's been gone a while. Ooooh, cat biscuits!'

LMAO ninjama, you've sooo been paying attention.

We haven't spent a night apart cos... well, i dunno. His landlady went mental the first time DaD and I kissed, he got kicked outta his home, i felt bad and let him move in... the rest is history. We've done everythign together... spent every minute we could together...

When Beenie was born, we had private cover, so i got a large room to myself, and it had optional dad-inclusion, which meant a mattress on the floor and some cereal in the morning for the proud father. (What man in the world lives on 1 small serve of cereal?? i was ordering double egg and bacon muffins and museli with yogurts for him, while in recovery, or he would have starved.) Every night when the midwives and nurses went to "sleep" at 11pm, we were taking my mattress off the bed, and putting it on the floor next to his, and putting baby between us. And at 6am when the cleaners came through, we'd right everything again, before the 7am breakfast drop. So nobody knew. It was kinda fun, if a little stupid. :)

Awww BoL...that's so sweet! And I see you've made Lvl 8! What momentous parenting thing pushed you over? ; )

I think it's a level per month. I was wondering that myself the other day.

it wasn't one thing this time, but a culmination. Partly it was when Beenie learned to crawl (half or quarter point), a quarter point when we childproofed the house (we haven't yet finished that task, maybe it ups again, once we've done more of it) and another quarter for joining a playgroup and going regularly. Then i gave myself a bonus point for taking Beenie to a cafe by myself. Which was freakingly difficult. And i had to sit in the middle and i felt VERY judged. (I let her put a toy in her mouth after it fell under the table. - Shock horror. I sort of figure that under a table has limited traffic, they clean their floors daily in that place, which is way more often than i do mine, and since she's licked the bottom of my shoe i can't really rein her in on much else... as far as i see, she's building her immune system. But i heard some fat bimbo behind me say "that's disgusting", and wanted to punch her. Except i have no way of knowing for sure if she was really talking about us.)

It wasn't any one big thing, just a series of smallish things.

Lemme see if i can remember the other points...
pregnancy - 1pt
1 pt for each 12 hour block of labour - 2 pts
First month of sleepless nights - 1 pt
establishing breastfeeding - 1pt
first solid foods - 1pt
1 trip to the emergency room (over nothing, as it turns out) - pt.

There ya have it. I'm assuming the next one will be "dealing with insane obsessive relatives at first birthday without screaming once." Assuming no crap goes down before then.

PS Playgroup is actually quite fun, way nicer people than mother's group, and far more yell-y and organic. Kids everywhere, running through everything etc., the mums all seem like good people, a varied bunch of mums, which is good. Mother's group just seemed like a dozen clones and me at the edge, wondering where all the real people were.

Wow, Bol, that's way confusing. I just take stock at the end of the day: Is everyone here? Is anyone bleeding? Been fed? Marginally happy? Outstanding. :)

lol, that's a decent system too. i made it all the way to bedtime unscathed last night, at which point beenie shoved a sudden finger so hard into my nose that it bled for five minutes. wish there were laws about parental abuse :(