Dear Army, We need to talk about Christmas...

Thing 1 came home in almost tears today because, and I quote, "ALL of my friends and people in my class dad's are home now because it's Christmas and our dad isn't and it's not fair".
*Gulp*


#1 attempt to diffuse situation: Logic
--Our dad will be home for R&R later--these Dads take R&R now, but won't be home later when our Dad is. We all have to take turns with our Dads coming home.

Tears form.
*Crap! Okay, think of something else*
#2 attempt to diffuse situation: Remind him of Christmas Plans
--Grandma, Grandpa, and Miss Meghan & Kiddos will be here to spend Christmas with us and we're going to go to the ICE Show and then we'll have more Army Family come visit after Grandma & Grandpa leave and then school will start up again and then Daddy will have leave

Sniffling and Tears
*Okay, don't look directly at him or you're going to start crying and God knows when that'll end...think, think, think*
#3 attempt to diffuse situation: Timeline
--Christmas, Daddy R&R, School, Redeployment--TIME WILL FLY BY!

Tears down cheeks
*Sigh, sniffle, tears well up....*
#4 attempt to diffuse situation: Admit Defeat
--Yup, buddy it sucks ass that our Daddy is missing Christmas and that other Daddy's aren't, but sometimes that's just the way it goes and there's not much we can do about it.

Crying & Hugging
*Stupid Deployment*

We did end up talking again about how the daddy's take turns coming home and how our daddy chose to come later, so that other daddies could come earlier and how that sucks for us, but it's important to remember that we're all in this together and we're all a big Army family and we all have our happy moments and our sad moments.

At the end of the whole conversation, I think that he got that it's all just a waiting game and that while it sucks that our Dad isn't home, it's really awesome that other dads are home. I think he did. I hope he did.

So Army, we need to talk about this whole Christmas thing--if we can observe local holidays that can stretch for a month at a time in their land, then I think we should be able to send ALL of our Soldiers home for the holidays. Just sayin....