So here they are in no particular order, just the way I saved the pictures.

Thank you my first love, my furry baby. Through thick and thin, you drove us crazy, and still do, yet we love you Monty. You’re not so young anymore buddy, but you’re still a puppy in our eyes, both in looks and behavior, my friend.

Tiny, well, what to say about you? Not much in terms of appearance, but you’re one loyal dog. We love you girl.

Thank you to my girls. You’re more than I could ever write or speak about because you’re the essence of my life.

Nina

Livia

Eva

Anna

Luisa

And then there’s you, big guy.
You’re my companion, friend, lover, husband.
You push and challenge me, but in the end, no matter what, you hold me at night, and I overlook your annoying habit of undoing the sheets on my side of the bed.
Still, you’re the one who tells me that I look good when my hair is sticking up like a bad rendition of an 80’s perm.
The one who tells me that I’m funny despite the fact that I’m a woman – seriously, you say that with a straight face.
The one who chokes up when you see me hugging your mother.
The one who after a bad fight followed me with your car and flashed a giant sign through the windows telling me ‘I love you’.
The one who packs the five kids in the car when I tell you that I need your support so we can get the best training for Anna’s gymnastics.
The one who puts on desert gear, packs heavy black bags, goes to Iraq and breaks my heart every time we say goodbye.
The one who makes me a better person, even though I most certainly make you an even better person, so we’re even.
The one I want and hope to be with forever.

The same one who’s camera shy…

Despite my failure to deliver a decent home made mac and cheese (and I’m Italian) I’m thankful that photo editing made it look better and my dogs really, really enjoyed it…..

I haven’t forgotten you Zoey – I’m thankful for your ‘catness’ baby.

Then there’s my FAMIGLIA – no mafia relations – just my family back home.

Thank you for my strong and charming father. I wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for him. I wouldn’t be the woman I’ve become, I’d have given up on moving to a new country on my own, learning a language, getting through the tough times.

Thank you for my angel on earth, my Mamma, my lovely and always so important Mamma. She’s all that a daughter could want and she comes with an added bonus, professional listener, or psychologist by trade. Sometimes I think that she must have developed calluses on her ears from listening to me talk so much on the phone

Thank you sister. I don’t even have to say it, and you already know it. TVB Luisa and off course TELLA.

Thank you to all of you for making my life so rich and beautiful.

Unfortunately the doubts are in my head, so I can’t squish them like blood sucking mosquitoes, or pause my tv and then speed up past the commercials.

Questions plague my days and nights. Who are these two beings in my dreams? What do they represent? What’s the hidden meaning behind my dog and cat sleeping together? It’s possibly something very perverse.

When I wake up the day time doubts take over. I ask myself questions about what to do. Should I straighten my hair or should I let it go wild? Should I clean and do the laundry or should I sit on the couch and watch Dora, while secretly routing for Swiper? Should I get Botox?
I should definitely, most certainly wax my eyebrows.

What about them?

Will she be ok?

Will she get to a healthy weight?

Will he be all right wherever he goes next?

Why is his picture so small? Because for some mysterious reason it was gigantic when I tried to download it so I had to put it as a thumbnail – some type of omen maybe.

Are people looking at my lips because they are nice and plump or because there’s something stuck on them?

Me, answers? I have no clue what I want for dinner!

What are doubts mommy?

I’m ok, I found this little headband and look I’m smiling now.

Too much thinking, just climb on the subway poles for crying out loud!

Still smiling!

Take this jacket off me instead of wondering whether it’s too hot in here!

And then the big guy chimes in.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I know, I could color my hair at home, but my inability to complete tasks that require precision, rule out the die-your-hair at home option.

I was prepared to go grey in my 30s because all of my relatives on my mother’s side of the family went gray in their 20s, but I believe that in my case genetics is only partially the culprit, and that gray hair drastically increased since my husband’s latest deployment, and because of having five children. Not that I would ever change that, I;d go bold for my girls.

I guess I should be grateful I actually have some hair left.

While I’ve read that there is no scientific correlation between gray hair and stress, I’m convinced that a few days ago a large chunk of gray hair grew on the right side of my head, when I momentarily couldn’t see my 3-year-old daughter in the pool, and was gripped by sheer terror that she drowned.

This past week, while still on our pseudo-vacation, we went to the base pool a few times. There were two very friendly lifeguards who helped me out with the kids on more than one occasion. I felt we were safe and had taken all precautions because my three oldest daughters are very good swimmers and I had the perfect gear for my two youngest ones, pink lifevests and matching duck floaties.

But one afternoon, while in the water with all of my kids, I momentarily left the pool to change my 1 year old. I asked the life guard to keep an eye on my 3-year-old daughter, Livia, who was glued to the side of the pool with her floating gear and refused to move even an inch.

It only took a couple of minutes to change the baby, but when I turned around Livia wasn’t there. I quickly scanned the pool but didn’t see her, so I looked for the life guard who was also gone. Just as I was about to panic, I saw a chubby pink shape and a long slender figure with a red bathing suit near the candy machine. Livia and the lifeguard walked to get a snack. The life guard told me that Livia informed her that while I was changing the baby she could become her best friend if she got her a snack. The girl thought it was funny and decided to get my daughter a small treat.

I was so relieved nothing happened, but my hair carried the effects of this stress in the form of the new patch of gray. Perhaps my theory that deployments and mom stress cause gray hair has some validity.

My big test will be the Chicago trip.

If I get back with a full head of white hair I’ll contact a medical journal to enroll in a study, or maybe I’ll just die my hair platinum blonde.

I’ve written before about my frustration with my husband’s intense deployment schedule, which hasn’t slowed down in the least, and as the time for this camp approached and my daughter’s excitement grew, I decided that I wouldn’t let the military change our plans, so we went anyway.

Traveling with five little ones isn’t relaxing, but we made the best of it.

My six year old enjoyed her camp and got to meet some professional gymnasts and Olympic athletes. She was thrilled. Her sisters and I spent time in the pool at our hotel, visited children’s museums, the zoo, the aquarium and a few other fun spots. We even managed to visit a friend and fellow writer and see her super cute children and little baby.

These little outings were often accompanied by meltdowns and some fighting, but overall we made it back unscathed and happy.

The hardest part thing about the trip was the actual eight hour drive to and from the camp. I didn’t want to get tired or sleepy, and kept drinking caffeinated beverages which required bathroom stops and having to unbuckle and get everyone back in the car with lots of complaints and the kids’ most favorite sentence, “Are we there yet?” The kids fought incessantly while cooped up in our van.

They argued about anything that came to their minds, including the fact that while watching Max and Ruby on our small car TV only one of them could pretend to be Max while the others all had to be Ruby.

Our actual stay was without many problems. We were able to book a room at a base hotel, which was fairly close to my daughter’s camp. It was nice to be around military people, use the commissary and the base pool with lots of kids around.

The thought of wanting my husband around more than one or two months out of every year came to my mind as I carried our luggage up three flights of stairs in our hotel, which didn’t have an elevator. I thought about my better half again when I couldn’t open the crib because it was stuck and required far more strength that I could muster – the nice gentleman working at the hotel reception opened it for me.

On this trip my youngest daughter also took her first steps and as I tried to capture her wobbly walk on my video camera and in pictures, I thought about how much I really wished I could have shared this moment with my husband.
I have two more trips this summer one to Chicago and another one to Dallas. I’m sure we’ll make it all right, but I’ll still miss my husband every mile of our journey.

I know. It’s only the middle of May, there are many months ahead and great things can, and hopefully will be done, but I’m an inpatient person.

I actually worked on a story on what the year of the military family would mean and discovered from various sources that nothing official has been planned. Nada. Zilch.

I know, I know, I’m not privy to all initiatives being brought forth, but I wanted to hear that policy makers were going to do something concrete.

I can’t look at the news anymore without thinking that recent events should be enough to let public officials know that the military has urgent and pressing needs. An American soldier, Army Sgt. John M. Russell, killed five of his comrades at a stress center in Baghdad. The same week media reported that a former soldier, Stephen Dale Green, was convicted of killing and raping a 14 year old Iraqi girl, and murdering her family. He faces a possible death penalty sentence.

These are two extreme cases and don’t speak for the majority, not even the minority, of combat troops who suffer from post traumatic stress disorder, but they highlight the difficulty of dealing with enormous pressure – back to back deployments, family concerns, instability and mental health issues.

I don’t justify atrocities or blame personal choices on the harshness of deployments or even war, but I do think about all of the service members, some of them men and women I personally know, who don’t pull a trigger, but live their own personal nightmares day in and day out.

The reality is that service members, spouses left behind and children are shouldering huge strains, two wars and heavy deployment schedules for many years. It takes its toll.

We must take action. It’s not only the cases that make the news that we need to prevent – though of course this should be our focus. We need to step in before the unthinkable becomes possible. We need to sustain deployed troops with adequate mental health care. We need to offer support for marriages, finances, physical and mental health back home before and after a deployment, and most importantly we need to make sure that people know how to get help and encourage them to do so.

It’s an enormous and difficult task, but we need to undertake it now.

When I hear that the Year of the Military Family has so far been only symbolic, I’m disappointed. Symbols are nice, but military families are a community in a steady-state of crisis. What would help is very simple – time, money and people.

I know there isn’t enough to go around, the recession, the budget, and the war itself. But policy makers need to step up and address these issues head on if they want a strong military, not with a symbolic gesture, but with concrete actions.

We need more time with our loved ones, and more money and resources to help alleviate the financial and emotional stress that pushes so many military families to their own limits, which they usually don’t cross with horrible violence, but with the quiet heartache of unhappiness and instability.