Broken Hearts...........

Every time Chad deploys the kids and I make a chart to count down the days until he's back. The kids put stickers on each day. That way they can see that each day brings us closer and closer to when daddy's home and that we're making it through each day at a time. So, last night we made our chart for this deployment. We've been talking to the kids for quite a while about daddy been gone, especially McKaylie. Trying to explain that he'll be gone for 6 months. She'll finish Kindergarten, play all summer, start first grade and have Noah's birthday and Halloween before daddy comes home. She understood all that and so we thought she understood the "whole" concept, sort of thing. So, last night while we were starting the poster, McKaylie asked me how many days daddy would be gone. I hesitated for a second, because even to me it seems like forever, but I knew that we'd talked to her so I thought she'd be ok with it. I told her that he'd be gone for 202 days (which is actually closer to 7 months than 6, but I didn't tell her that) I watched her when I said it and it broke my heart. Her whole face just fell, you could see that she just never realized that 6 months was that long. She was crushed. She looked up at me with her big, sad eyes and said, "202 days, that's a really long time". I picked her up and hugged her and tried to say all the right things to soothe her little broken heart.............and mine.