Stepmom, Part II

So 9 turns 16 tomorrow.  We've been all party, party, party around here for a few days.  Actually, we've really been all clean, clean, clean.  He had a glow in the dark party yesterday, and I learned the hard way that there are two layers of cleaning that one does when throwing any kind of party that involves a black light.  There's the normal cleaning one does when you're preparing your home for company, and then the second layer that's required when you see all the invisible germs that a traitorious black light exposes.   Very eye opening.  And horrific.  And embarrassing.  And shameful.  And I could go on with the adjectives here, but I think you get the idea.

However, it was all worth it in the end because he and his friends had a good time, or so I was told.  I took the littles and headed out of town for the night because mixing a 3, 5, and 8 year old in with a bunch of teenagers would be akin to dumping a bunch of yappy chihuahuas in with a roomful of monkeys, and why would we want to subject anyone to that scene?

(Who am I kidding?  It was myself who I didn't want to subject to that scene.  Me.  Anyone else would've been free to take it or leave it.)

Anyway, on to the reason for why I sat to write this post.

Ahem.

A few years ago I wrote Stepmom.  I have mixed feelings about that post.  I think I wrote my feelings in an honest, true way- and I'm proud of that.  But then some of my friends responded to it by saying that 9 was "lucky to have me", and while that was nice of them, I began to feel like a fraud.  No where in that post was I trying to give anybody the idea that I know what I'm doing as a step parent.

Listen.  This step parenting gig is hard.  It's harder than parenting your own kids, and not just because you have to work for that bond. It's also because that bond is negotiated between you and your stepkid.  I mean, they have a say in it (whereas your own kids just learn that their your DNA and deal with it). The whole process can be messy, and I will be the first to say that I have not been a shining star during al this.

My mom gave me some advice as a therapist when I first married Mr. C.  She told me to remember that Mr. C, Michelle, and 9 were a family at one time, and that for 9, this would always be the case.  I didn't have a problem accepting that.  I understood that Mr. C had a responsibility to them, even after he and I started our own family.  What I struggled with was how decisions for our family would overlap and affect the other family, and I handled it even worse when the situation was vice versa.  Actually, none of us handled that well.  (Would you?) There were so many occasions when we would muck stuff up, blame each other, fight with each other, complain to anyone who would listen, and get others involved when they had no business being involved.   Often times, 9 would unwittingly end up in the middle of it.  I can not tell you how many times I wanted to give up.  Just leave.  Pack it up, take the kids, and kindly ask to be taken out of the equation.  Sometimes it was because of something Michelle did.  Sometimes it was because of something Mr. C did.  Sometimes it was because of something the both of them did.  But mostly it was because of things that I did.  (I find it so ironic that I, being someone who will go to her grave caring too much about what other people think about her, married into this situation where there were so many occasions for her to mess up in front of so many other witnesses- not just 9 and Mr. C, but their families as well.)

Maybe you can see why running away and leaving was an attractive thought at times.

But I didn't run away.  I stuck it out.  And I'll always stick it out.  I haven't learned much as a step parent, but one thing I do know is that commitment is a good quality to have if one chooses this role.

So today, when I think about 9's birthday, I think about that fact that I've been here for 10 years, sticking it out with him.  And of course, I think about his mom.  She should be here.  Sixteen years ago, she, Mr. C, and 9 became a family.  They lived in a little apartment across the street from the beach, just the 3 of them.  Today 9 lives in the desert, in our very loud crazy house, with 3 siblings and a stepmother.  Everything that has happened between then and now has brought him to this very different place, and he's had more adjustment and changes to get used to than an average kid.  I think he's rolled with it well.  He's a cool kid, with a great sense of humor and great friends, and for every ounce of commitment that I put into our relationship, he's worth ten.

(Actually, he's worth more than that. Not many kids will wear a birthday hat made for them by their little sister in front of all his friends.  But he did.)

Happy Birthday, 9!

Animal Vegetable or Thermometer?

I know I've been writing about J way too much this year.  I assure you, all 4 of the kids are loved, appreciated, fed, and interacted with as equally as any mom can manage, but J this year, well he's..... he's a five year old boy.  They're hilarious.  I, being the oldest of 2 sisters and 7 female cousins, have never had the opportunity to experience this before, and it's been great material for this blog.

Anyway.  I just want to tell you this one thing.  I'm sorry for sounding like one of those moms who thinks everything her kid does is hilarious.  (Really, it's only like, 75% of everything he does that is hilarious.)  

It started this evening with J deciding that he was going to sleep in the hallway closet.  Why, you ask, would he want to sleep in a closet?

Because that's what Harry Potter did silly.  (He also informed us that he would need a pet owl.  When that was vetoed, he said that he would settle for a rat or a cat.  When we reminded him that he was allergic to cats,  he only had to think for a moment before running off to get his favorite stuffed animal and shoving into a shoebox.  Then he was happy.  He now had his magical creature, safe and secure in it's own "cage".)

 I don't know where or why this sudden infatuation came from, but I'm pretty sure his little heart wanted more than anything to have a flock of owls swoop down our chimney in the wee hours of the night with invitations from Hogwarts for him between their beaks.  J gets ideas like this in his head, and then he becomes relentless in his efforts to make his fantasies real.  He will work on you until you have run out of patience and logical arguments. In this scenario, it took him two days to wear us down. He even went through the trouble of drawing us a diagram of how he would fit his sleeping bag and pillow in the 2x3 space.  How could we say no to such thoroughness? So we said yes, knowing full well that he wouldn't really last in there for more than a hour.

We were right.

At 8:45, he came into my bedroom where I was reading.  He said that he missed PG because sometimes they would talk each other to sleep.  He asked if he could go talk to her.  I told him that she was already asleep, but that he could go sleep in his own bed any time he wanted to. He told me that he would.  I said okay, and reminded him to use the restroom before going to bed.

And that's when this conversation happened:

J: MOOOOOOOOOMMMM!!!  Is this candy?

He comes out of my bathroom holding a wrapped tampon and waves it at me accusingly.

Me: No!  Put it back.
J:  It's candy!
Me:  No, I swear it's not candy.  Go put it back.
J:  Well then, what is it?
Me:  Nothing!  It's just my stuff!  Now go put it back!

He walks slowly back into the bathroom.  I hear the crinkling of paper being torn and, sighing, I roll off my bed with the intent of grabbing the tampon from him and shooing him off to bed.  But then I hear him say this in a voice dripping with disappointment:

"Oh.  It's just a thermometer."

And that's when I grabbed my computer and typed this all out for you guys to see.

Have a good night.

Crossing Fingers, Closing Eyes

Preface:  Okay, I wasn’t going to do it.  I wasn’t going to write about the Time Magazine cover because DEAL LORD, haven’t we had enough of that this week? However, while wading through all the articles, all the blogs, and all the hype, I saw one too many comments from moms on both sides of the stupid media-incited “mommy wars” snipping at each other about how their children were going to grow up wonderful and how damaged those “other” children would be.  I find it so irksome and tiring.  Here’s my response to that nonsense:

One of the things you do after you have a baby is to find a group of mom friends.  It's got to be done because one of the things that new parents like to do is talk about their kids.  A lot.  And if you try to talk to your childfree friends incessantly about poop color and exhaustion they will become bored and leave.  Then you'll be all alone in the world with a cute little bundle of noise that leaks shocking amounts of body fluids, and no one to describe it to.  So you see, mommy friends are necessary.  They are all about comparing poop colors.

I, myself, have found a group of intelligent, smart, funny, and creative mothers who have their own style of parenting.  We came up with it ourselves over dinner and drinks a few weeks ago.  While discussing the impossible behavior of teens and preteens, someone (maybe, possibly me) said that parenting these guys was like floating around in space with no idea if what we were doing was effective or not.  Someone remarked that we may as well close our eyes and cross our fingers, and that’s how the "cross your fingers and close your eyes" theory of parenting was born.   It's genius.  There are basically only three principles to this philosophy and they go like this:

1)     Do your best

2)     Find humor where you can

3)     Tell the truth, always.

Our group is open to everyone, except for the people who feel that their way is the absolute only correct way in the whole universe. Obviously, you cannot close your eyes against something if you already are certain that it is the best.

Our group accepts that sometimes life gets between the best intentions that parents have for their children.  For instance, sometimes children will lose a parent at the brink of adolescence.  Sometimes children will begin wondering about their biological parentage and hurt others in their curiosity.  Sometimes close relatives will favor a child of one gender over another, thus causing unintentional pain to others.  There will be countless situations beyond your control, and at this time it won't matter one bit if you breastfed your child to 3 months, or to 3 years.  It won't matter if you let them choose their own education or if you sent them to an extremely structured and authoritative private school.  Whether they co-slept in your bed or if you sleep trained them won't matter at all, because life happens.  Things that we could never prepare our kids for occur, and our kids will have to deal with it their own way.

I know what many of you are thinking.  You're thinking something like "But by parenting my child with the (insert parenting method here), I am building self-esteem in my child and empowering them and this will be helpful to them when dealing with life."  Well. Maybe.  Or, maybe not.  I think reality is that often people latch on to a parenting method because it’s the closest thing we’re going to get to an instruction manual for parenting.  There’s nothing wrong with that, as long as you realize that it’s not a guarantee for how your child is going to end up.  

My own mom was parented by two alcoholics.  They were so far gone into their disease that they weren't able to take care of she and her sister properly.  The police once found my 2 year old aunt at the bottom of a freeway onramp, which is where she had walked to while my grandmother and her husband had gone on a binge.  My mom's 70-year-old grandmother had legal custody of both of them, but my mom mainly raised herself.  Both her parents had drank themselves to death by the time she was 19.  When that happened, she took over custody of her 10-year-old sister and raised her. She did this, and then she raised my 2 sisters and myself while going back to work and school.  Today she runs her own business and is a wonderful grandmother to 9 grandchildren.  According to some of the better known parenting theories out there, and some “research” as well, she should be violent, angry, insecure, and alcoholic. She is none of these things.  She is well balanced and as happy as anyone else is.

What I'm saying here people, is that it's a crapshoot.

So when you find out your kids have been lying to you for months about schoolwork and what they do online?  Cross your fingers, close your eyes, and pray that you're handling it okay.

When your kids are supposed to write a paper about a loved one and they decide to write about themselves instead? Cross your fingers, close your eyes, and pray that this is not a permanent affliction.

When your kids are getting too cozy with their boyfriend/girlfriend of several months?

When your kids are hurt by the mean group at school?

When your kids want to try out for the all-star team when you know they haven't a chance?

Cross your fingers, close your eyes.

Cross your fingers, close your eyes.

Cross your fingers, close your eyes.

Nora Ephron says this great thing in her book I Feel Bad About My Neck.  I can't find the exact quote, but it's something along the lines of how parenting has changed from a noun to a participle. In other words, it went from “I'm a parent" to “I'm a parent".  I don't know if the difference is clear to you, but I get what she's saying.  We’re over thinking things.  Of course we are.  We have access to too much information, and we want to believe that that information somehow gives us control of how things are going to turn out. Don't think.  Just do.  Do your best.  Be a family.  Love.  Argue.  Get mad at each other.  Forgive.  Don't expect perfection.  Don't expect anything.  Just be.

And through it all, cross your fingers and close your eyes.

(By the way, I feel like I should tell you that sometimes we cross our eyes and close our fingers, but that's only if we've had one or two extra glasses of wine.  It doesn't really matter, because the end result is usually the same.)

Have a good weekend! 

A Different Kind of Mother's Day Post

Sometimes J and Roo get along like white on rice, and other days they are like oil and water.  Today is an oil and water day.  Kindergarten drop off can not come soon enough.  My morning has been filled with bickering children, bickering children, and oh yes....more bickering children.  So in the midst of this big bowl of awesomesauce that is my day, I've been escaping into blog land and reading a variety of Mother's Day posts.  There are some really sweet, sentimental, heart warming, tear jerking posts out there this week..... and I can relate to none of them at the moment because it's too hard to reflect on the joys of motherhood when your children are acting like territorial primates with volume control issues.

So I'm taking a minute to write a different kind of Mother's Day post.  Crappy Pictures wrote a post yesterday about how all she wants for Mother's Day is a day off.  I'd like to take that idea into a slightly different direction.  All I want for Mother's Day is a 12 hour break from using particular phrases around this house.  These are phrases that I repeat so often that there have been days when I have come this close to pulling a Van Gogh and cutting my ears off- just so I wouldn't have to hear my own voice saying these words yet again.  And while yes, I'm aware that the power lies in me to just stop repeating the following phrases, you should know that no, really it doesn't, because if I don't address the following behaviors with my children, no one will.  Then my children will grow up to be heathens and societal rejects, and to be frank, I just can't handle that guilt.    So without further delay, here they are:

1.  "Who didn't flush?"
2.  "Your shirt is not a napkin."
3.  "Stop fighting!"
4.  "What happened?/Why are you crying?"
5.  "Put this away, please."
6.  "Put this away, please."
7.  "Put this away, please."
8.  "Brushing your teeth is part of getting dressed."
9.  "Don't argue.  Just do it."


A day without saying any of the above would be a simply glorious day.  My brain would squeal and hug itself.  My heart would beat contentedly.  My body would feel refreshed, and I would be able to wake up on Monday morning and begin using all of the above phrases once again, only this time I'd effuse love and kindness and all kinds of June Cleaver-y perfection.   (I'm not sure how hollering "Who didn't flush?" out the bathroom door would ever come out sounding kind and June Cleaver-y, but I would like the chance to find out.)

By the way, I couldn't think of a number 10 so I asked the kids if they could think of something that mommy says a lot.  I was hoping they would say something like "You always tell us that you love us.", so that I would have a sweet ending for this post.  Instead J answered, "Um, you say 'Go to your room if you're going to be loud'."

Oh well.  There goes my happy ending.   I guess I'm not the only one who's cranky around here.

Hopefully by Sunday when I'm basking in glory of homemade cards and tissue-wrapped gifts from school, I'll have forgotten all about this rotten morning and so will have they. Isn't that what we do?  We forget about the bad (or at least look for a way to laugh about it) so that we can find love in all the little things?  Especially when those little things come in the form of a painted hand print with a sweet poem.  Or spray painted macaronis glued onto a paper plate.  Or a dozen "tulips" made from pipe cleaners and egg cartons.  In any case, Happy Mother's Day to all my friends out there who are moms.  I am always awed by the inspiration, laughter, and learning I receive just by being in the ranks with you.  Much love to you all!

*And a shout out to my own mom, who is pretty awe-inspiring and cool.  Love you.

Caught In The Act

     Yep. We were. It happened. Before you die of embarrassment for me and wonder why in the world I'd even publish so private, let me say that I SWEAR it's a G rated story. No nudity. I won't even cuss in this post, all right? It's okay to read on, I promise. I promise! Plus, there might be something in here for you to laugh at or learn from.

     At the very least, you'll have something that you can make fun of me for. 

     So I'll just get right to it. This past weekend we put the kids to bed and put on a movie. It was boring. We moved on to a different activity. And before I say anything more, I want to suggest that someone do a study on the release of boring DVD's and birth rates 9 months later. I think I may be onto something.

     Anyway, as I was saying, we had moved on to a different activity and that's when a kid-an hour post bedtime-walked in.  Thankfully, clothing was still on (see, I told you- no nudity). However there was no denying that we were in a um.... compromising position. I sat up so fast that my head spun. And Mr. C, well- his reaction is the reason why I am sitting here telling you about this. While I was busy trying to figure out if I should lie, act like nothing was happening, or acknowledge the embarrassing situation, Mr. C's reaction was to jump up on his feet, put his hands out like a set of claws and to loudly exclaim "RAWR!"
     Picture this please: Me upright on the couch, bewildered kid in the doorway, and Mr. C frozen in his T-Rex stance, all of us looking around at one another in what had to be the world's most awkward triangular standoff.

     I've never been so confused in my life.

     In fact, I think Mr. C himself was feeling a little confused.

     Then he completely changed gears and said "What's up?" to which J stammered something about needing water. That's when the hilarity of the situation hit me, so that the whole time I was getting water and then later, laying there waiting for J to fall back asleep, I had to clasp both hands against my mouth to muffle my laughter. I mean, I was dying. Tears were streaming down my face, and I swear my abs haven't compressed that hard since I last did Cindy Crawford's workout. I was still laughing when it was time to walk back out into the living room. Unable to stand up straight, I stood in the doorway, held my palms out while giving Mr. C my best "What in the world?"look and asked him "What. Was. That????"
     With a completely straight face he looked at me and said, "I don't know! I guess....... I......it was a startling situation, and I guess I was just trying to startle him out of it."

     Well played Mr. C.

     The next morning nothing was said, no one acted weird, and life continued on, so I thought I was done with the whole uncomfortable subject. The universe had other plans for me.
     PG came home from her friend's house, where she was staying when the whole "incident" occurred. I found out that she had watched a movie over there that I had forbidden her to see because it contained a love scene (which surprised me because I had already let the parent over there know several months ago that she wasn't allowed to see that movie. But that's fodder for a different post).  I knew then that I had to have a talk with her. 

     Before I say anything, you should know that my instinct with all this sex talk stuff is just to basically ignore it. It's how I was raised. My father left the room every time a tampon commercial came on the television, and although I think my mother knew that we were stealing the "Where Did I Come From?" book off of her therapy shelf, she never said anything. Maybe she just figured we'd ask questions if we had any. We never did because basically, our understanding of sex was this: "Don't do it. You're not allowed." Maybe not the best approach, but in our family we choose denial over embarrassment, so it worked for us.
     Anyway, I decided to step out of my comfort zone and go with a more modern approach with PG. After holding her accountable for watching a movie that she knew she wasn't allowed to see, I brought up the love scene and tried to gage what her understanding of it was. With a very red face she informed me that she knew the characters were having sex. So I used that as a jumping off point and told her that movies make it seem like it's not a big deal when it really is a big deal, a very big deal. The whole time she's dying and saying "Mom! Okay. Stop. I know. I know." (See? Denial over embarrassment. It's genetic. I probably should've gone with my initial instincts.) Anyway, I ended up kind of backpedaling out of the conversation and ending it by saying "Look. Sex is not like in the movies. It's why I don't want you watching it. I don't want you thinking about it. You're 8. Go be 8. Don't think about sex." Relieved, she jumped off the kitchen stool, turned to me and said "Anyway, mom. Come on! They were in Paris, France!" I waited for a moment to see if those pieces would click into place, and when they didn't, said, "Um. What does that have to do with it?" And she said (not a little incredulously), "Paris? France? It's the city of love, mom." Then she rolled her eyes and walked away.

     Lordy. I have one child who apparently thinks that sex is okay as long as you're in Paris, France and another child who knows just a bit too much about what happens in our own living room.
     There are days when I think just having a dog would've been okay. A lot less mentally exhausting at least. 

     Have a good night!