Scared of teenage years!

Man, I’m so scared of the teenage years.. I was blessed with a boy and a girl, but I am sure that this is God’s way of teaching me that raising them both will be much different.

One of my girl friends is having trouble with her son who is only 12 or 13. The school year has barely started and he’s already having issues and she’s considering yanking him from the school. I honestly don’t think it’s the school’s fault for what is going on with him, his dad is volitale and never around so he has a lot of anger and resentment that is bottled up and coming out in the wrong ways. I personally think he needs counseling, and mentoring mixed with some sports or other after school activities to keep his mind and body occupied. And all this going on is just making me look at my little man and wonder what kind of little boy he is going to grow up to be.

Looking at both me and the kid’s dad, I already recognize a few things. I was fairly shy when I was younger, and really couldn’t express myself. I know I’m an introvert and I see this in Kiera. My goal for her at this stage in her life is to get her to be more comfortable around strangers and enjoy some extracurricular activities. We tried to do this hip hop class that they have at her school but the instructor said she didn’t want to participate and sat out. I asked her why and she wouldn’t really talk about it. Last year she had two performances and both times she got on stage, her hands flew to her face and she cried the entire time. This is not the little bubbly girl that is at home.

Their dad is pretty calm, but he does have his moments where he lets his anger overcome him. I honestly suspect that he is a true bipolar but he wouldn’t take that seriously. I don’t see this in either kid yet, but I did see it in their grandmother, Dev’s mother, so I’m wondering if it will come out later in life.

Also, with their dad being gone all the time and not calling them on a regular basis, I’m wondering what kind of effect this is going to have on them. Which is another reason why I’m excited to move back to Oregon, because I do have quite a few friends there, male and female that could help be good role models and support for them.

This journey we have together is scary, but exciting at the same time. Raising them on my own is a challenge, and I can only do the best job that I can.

Happy Father’s Day!!!

Happy Father’s Day to all the father’s out there! I know quite a few of you who are single fathers, taking care of your kids by yourselves, I hope you all enjoy your day.

Happy Father’s Day to my Dad!! I love you Dad! I wish we were closer together and I could take you out to dinner etc. Hopefully one of us will be able to make a trip to see one another soon.

I love my dad to pieces. I actually didn’t know him until I was 12, when we moved back down to Oregon from Alaska. He’s funny, insanely intelligent, a huge animal and nature lover, a very sweet, kind and gentle person. I think if I would have known him earlier in my life, my life now would have been much different. And me not knowing him until almost my teen years is one of the main reasons why I stuck it out with my kid’s dad so long, because I didn’t want them to go through the same thing I did. But alas, my dad is a great man, I couldn’t ask for a better dad in the world.

Happy Father’s Day as well to my grandpa’s, Jim V and Jim B on both parent’s side. And also to my Uncles, Chris, Paul and Andrew. I wish you all breakfast in bed and new tools for the shed. Haha!

And last, but not least, Happy Father’s Day to my kid’s dad. Even though we are no longer together, and you are in California, I hope you have a good day.

Oh and Happy Father’s Day to the single Mom’s out there that have to be both! Keep your head’s up ladies! We aren’t meant to do it all, but we are the most resilient of the two sexes, I have SO much respect for women as a whole.

Love all of you!

Aaaahhhh…. The Sweet Sound of Silence

It is amazingly quiet in here and I love it! Having a 3 and 5 year old is insanely loud at times. My daughter is a crazy chatterbox and I have to shush her a million times before she finally quiets down enough to fall asleep. Her wileing out gets her brother going too. :/ I feel like a broken record most of the time.

Little man woke up at 4 am this morning, coughing, sounding like he was going to vomit. As a parent, once you hear a sound like this, it doesn’t matter what kind of dream land you might be in, you will wake instantly and jump out of bed. I woke up and jumped up so fast that the blood rushed to my head and I had to catch my bearings. I rushed him to the bathroom though and he spit up a little but wanted to go back and lay down so I let him. Then at about 6:30, I was about to get him up and realized that he had just crapped all over himself. FML. Seriously, mammals are friggin’ disgusting. From throw up, to crap, to boogers and lougies. We are some friggin’ sick things. So I just called into work, I really need the hours but I cannot send him to daycare with the runs.

This lasted from about 6 ish to 9 ish. He ate a little cereal, I made him stay in bed until about 10, he vomited a couple other times, once on my bed…. and then finally, things have seemed to calm down. He watched some Elmo and some other cartoons with his sister while I cleaned the kitchen and living room areas, (might as well get something done while I’m stuck home) and both are finally taking a nap.

This is one of those times when I find it a little harder to be a single parent than others. For one, if my kids were ever sick longer than a day, I pray for it to be at the end of the week rather than the beginning because I don’t have anyone I can switch off taking days off work with. Their dad was a “stay at home” dad, so nothing would change unless I was sick or he was sick as well. I really cannot afford to take any days off. No other income to fall back on. No extra person to help clean up stuff or provide comfort to sick babies. Grr. But at least the company I work for is pretty understanding of this fact.

Well, since I’ve been up since 4 am ish, and the kids are napping, I think I’m going to join them. Ciao!

You can’t change anyone but yourself.

A major thing that I’ve learned from my relationship with my kid’s dad is that you can’t change anyone. You can change yourself but another person is only going to change their point of view or their actions if they decide to. Even if you present the best defense it is ultimately up to them.

With the kid’s dad, there wasn’t a lot that I was asking of him to change. I wanted him to get a real job, which to me, didn’t seem like a big deal to me. Everyone I know has a job or has worked before. But he flat out refused. He definitely has to be the most stubborn person I know. He wanted to follow his dreams of being a musician/designer and I never once had a problem with that. I loved that he dreamed big and outside of the box. But if those dreams aren’t providing for your family, then you gotta do what you have to do.

The other major thing that I wanted him to change was his attitude towards everything. He was such a major hard ass about everything. Here I am working, going to school and taking care of my household and he’d just want more and more and more. Design this, draft that, help with this. I was so insanely stressed. Not only was he rough on me but also the kids. Mind you, they just turned 3 and 5. I really could not handle the constant bickering, nagging and yelling from this dude anymore and no matter how much I would express that it bothered me, he just didn’t get it.

Now, I’m not saying I’m perfect, no one on this earth is. He had quite a few expectations of me that I just refused to do. One thing is, I’m not a super neat person. I’m not going to come home after 9 hours at work and clean the house. If I was by myself, it would be easy for me to maintain. But seems how I had someone that stayed home ALL day watching kids, why is it my job to do that? I have no problem sharing chores and would try and set some chore lists but they never worked. He also wanted me to be this like super vixen all the time. Excuse me? I have kids and I’m not going to change up my style for anyone. I wear what is comfortable to me and what I feel good in, I can’t wear the same stuff I used to wear before we had kids.

I guess the point that I’m trying to make here is that both of us had things that we didn’t necessarily like about each other and though I wanted him to do things differently and vice versa and we spent 6 years together trying to make things work, eventually one of us had to decide whether it was worth it to keep going. You either chose to put up with the bull crap if it really is worth it to you because you love that person and can’t see yourself without them or you decide that it’s too much of a headache and you don’t want to put up with it anymore, which is what I did.

Late night texts

There is nothing more annoying than a late night text. Okay, okay, there are things far more annoying, and I usually don’t see texts until the morning anyways because I sleep through the notification going off, but seriously. They annoy me.

There are a few different kinds of late night texts that I loathe.

# 1 - drunk texts / texts from boys in the middle of the night that you don’t really like because they are big, fat, jerkoffs that need to make an appointment with my open hand to their faces. Just don’t do it. If you have something to say, call me in the morning and we can meet up to talk about it, k?

# 2 - middle of the night “favor” texts. I have kids and I’m a single parent. Don’t call me or text me in the middle of the night asking for favors unless you are REALLY in a bad place and need me to come to rescue (example - at the hospital or something). I’m not going to wake up two toddlers out of their lollipop & sugarplum dreams to come pick you up. Why? Because I won’t have sugary children, I’ll have two raging, screaming, tear fests on my hands and you aren’t going to help me take care of them/calm them down/get them to go back to sleep after I get you. So just don’t do it.

# 3 - texts in the middle of the night on a weekday. I’m a working mom, I’m in bed by 10 pm at the latest. You will never get a response back from me in the middle of the night so why even bother?

This has been a public service announcement. My rant & rave has commenced. Back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Little mans 3rd birthday and 1/3 life crisises…

I seriously cannot believe how fast time flies. My little baby girl is five and my youngest, little stud man Edon is now three. Where the hell does time go?!

Yesterday I took the chitlins to go bowling for little man’s bday. We’ve never been and they loved it. Final score: Mommy 107, Kie 36, Edon 30. I should have grabbed that metal ramp for little man though… we kept having to call the guy down to get his balls. They would just stop rolling or start rolling back to us about halfway through…. SMDH. We had fun though, I’m going to try and bring the kids once a month. Their great grandfather on my mom’s side and my mom were pretty damn good at it and the youngest they can join a league is 6 so I may sign Kiera up after her next birthday. My ultimate goal as a parent is to keep these two occupied until I send them off to college, help them make good choices and their brains completely intact.

Just realizing how big my babies are getting freaks me out. It makes me think about where my life is going. I’ve taken a break from school right now so I can focus on my kids and figure out this whole single parent hand that I’ve just been dealt. I think I’ve always been a single parent in the financial department, but things definitely do change once that other parent is no longer there. I don’t feel like I’m wasting my life necessarily, because my #1 job is to raise up two little beings but I don’t feel fulfilled in the other aspects of my life. I like my job, but it doesn’t give me satisfaction or a feeling of accomplishment. I don’t really have time or energy to deal with a lot of friends. I have interests in tons of things from sports to art to history to nature but I haven’t channeled all my energy into one thing that I enjoy. I have this problem where I get bored with things really easily. Even things I enjoy. Maybe I just haven’t found that thing that really gets my motor running. So my goal is to get out, experience more things and try and find myself.