...except... What am I supposed to do with him during the day, while I'm asleep? I can't just leave him in his playpen unsupervised; that's not safe and besides, he won't stay quiet for more than an hour or two. And I can't to send him to daycare for 20 hours a day; it's an extra $1000 a month that I don't have, and I would basically be visiting him at the babysitter's house while she kept him for almost 4 days straight.
I talked with my supervisor about it. She was "sympathetic."
"You know, I'm a single mom too, and I make it work. I had to have my mom move down here, and it stinks, but you do what you have to do. You can't just blow off your responsibilities at work."
I am increasingly aware of the fact that as long as I am in the military, my family will always have to be my secondary priority. There's no getting around this. They have every legal right to expect me to dump my kid off with a stranger at a moment's notice so I can come to work.
In the end my mom offered to come down here to help out for a while. She'll be here until the end of the month, at which point (hopefully) my co-location request will be approved and I'll move up to where my husband is stationed. Unfortunately, there's no guarantee of that, and my mom can't stay here forever, so I had to make a painful decision: if the request hasn't been approved by the end of this month, Little Lion Man will have to go live with Grandma and Grandpa for a while. In Wisconsin. On the other side of the country. It feels like being kicked in the chest by a large hoofed animal, but I know that all things considering it's the healthiest situation for him to be in.
In all likelihood I'll hear back pretty soon about the request and this will be a non-issue. But until then, the only thing I can do is pray hard and do what I can not to worry about it.
