"Happy Major Day"

I know I mentioned some time in an earlier post that P. was being promoted. Well, today is his effective date of rank. However, his commander isn't able to come down to do the "ceremony" until the 6th. So I guess he won't "officially" be promoted until Tuesday.

The kids have been so cute. Sometimes when he tells them to clean their rooms or something else he wants them to do, J. will look at him, give a cute little salute and say, "Yes, sir, Captain!" Don't ask me where they got that from or how they learned that he was a Captain, because I certainly haven't discussed that with them. But they figured it out anyway. I guess they've paid more attention when we've been around other soldiers than I thought they had. Every now and then they'll even mockingly refer to me as Captain. So since they had figured that out and started referring to him in that manner, I explained to them that he would no longer be a Captain as of Feb 1st. J. seemed really disappointed about it. After all, P.'s been a Captain now for 6 years. Then I tried to explain to him that this was a good thing for Daddy. It's not really easy to explain that to an 8-year-old though. Of course they don't understand the rank structure, and I certainly don't want them to develop the attitude of "my daddy's better than your daddy," etc. But I think it is good to understand that good things like this happen for their daddy because of how hard he works.

Anyway, they've known for a couple of weeks that Feb. 1st was Daddy's day. So tonight, J. realized, hey, today's February 1st. Daddy's a Major now (although he doesn't really understand what that means other than the fact that I told them it was a good day for Daddy). So A. came down and J. shared the information with her. She said, "I know; today's February 1st." Then she came over, gave P. a kiss on the cheek, and said, "Happy Major Day, Daddy!" It was another one of those times when I wished I'd had my camera. She was so cute, and she succeeded in getting a smile out of him. Although he tried to be sarcastic and joke about it, he couldn't deny that it was awfully cute. Kids are great!