step parent

This has been a tough week…

I have been struggling with separation anxiety all week, now that all seven of my kids are finally school age, i.e. not at home anymore. I believe that in the ring of getting older, this is the right hook of empty nest syndrome, with the final jab knocking me down for the count: the kids leaving home for good.

No matter how prepared I think I am, I’m just not. I know I parade around on this page as though I haven’t given up my life for my kids, but when they’re gone like this, I realize how much I actually have. I went from grasping tiny and even medium sized hands for years to grasping at straws–in what feels like no time at all.

When Pippin and I met, it was an instant party.

Combined, we had 5 kids under age 6 when we got together. And because that wasn’t enough, we had two more. We were young ourselves, and Pippin was the perfect partner in all the blended chaos. I remember reading back then about how blended families have a 25% chance of making it past a year before they are usually faced with another divorce. That figure crushed me. I understood why, but when we blazed a trail past each year, still together and still very much in love, I knew we had cracked the code. I felt lucky, overwhelmed, tired, but well-loved and in so many different ways.

I had kids that were mine that weren’t his; kids that were his that weren’t mine; and we had kids together. It wasn’t long before I became concerned that each child would feel lost in our gaggle and made it my personal quest to ensure each one would find their way, and seek out who they are, what makes them unique, and still a very necessary cog in our crazy family wheel.

Why am I telling you all of this? Because not once did I ever think it would change.

Why? Because when we were all together, piled in our 12 passenger Econoline, or all attempting to sleep on the same never-big-enough mattress in the wee hours of the morning when they were collectively much smaller, everything was perfect. I mean, we were far from normal, but this was everything I ever wanted, without really knowing it.

Everyone around me was shocked: She could handle seven kids, let alone one? Yessir, and these kids were everything that defined, or re-defined, family for me: wacky, emotional, hilarious and inconvenient–but chock full of endless, breathtaking love. No wonder I handed over my life to them–what in the hell was I before them? I couldn’t remember because I scrubbed it from my mind for a reason. This was my life now: a permanent upgrade–or so I thought.

Fast forward to today.

Imagine seven different kindergarten goodbyes, spread out over 13 years. You’d think I was a pro by now and although I can handle back to school paperwork in my sleep these days and have even gotten really good at turning down school-wide pleas for me to join the PTA (I jest), I’m definitely not good at the letting go thing. And it’s especially compounded when they are doing so well away from me, and I need to pretend that I am too.

That’s the best picture I’ve seen you draw. You made it all the way across the monkey bars with no help? You spelled your entire name with no help? You check out a library book on spiders all by yourself? Oh, what did I do today? Well, I thought of how great you are doing and then I did some laundry. Unfortunately I had no planned response in my back pocket to offer–that was better at least, than a soggy sandwich reply like thinking of you and laundry.

So the best thing I can do for myself is to look for a job; I simply can’t take the quiet. They go do their thing during the day and I go and do mine and we can talk about it each night and I can adjust. Slowly but surely. So that I can ultimately get myself ready for those much bigger goodbyes coming down the line…and if I’m not mistaken, my first is about seven months out.

Better get good at this,

So-Called Mom

It’s official. I hate the words: I’m BORED.

I mean, I hated those words long before we went a week without screens sucking the life out of us, but I hate it even more now. We don’t want our kids to be bored. We want them to be entertained and even better, to be doing something worthwhile. We want them to make the most out of their childhood. And we don’t want to be living life for them, but since screens have arrived on the scene, playtime doesn’t seem to come naturally anymore. So we have to keep pushing for it.

So when the kids came to me with the idea of doing a lemonade stand, I was all for it:

I think they forgot about their boredom for the entire afternoon and wound up having a great time, celebrating these final days of summer.

As of today, I’m trying to get everyone to substitute the word bored with free time. It just sounds better, like the start of a solution, instead of the end of ambition: Entertain me, I’m bored. Yikes!

This is hard to commit to, even so. I’d love for this to be our new ground zero. Letting the kids free range with screens as they please makes parenting a snap because you can get away with putting in less effort. I hate admitting that, but it’s true. When you pull the plug on screen time, you’re forced to join in and work harder at engagement. There’s a lot of together time–a lot of active time–and we all feel way more wiped out by sundown than we ever have. And it’s not always fun or easy–but we try and that’s what counts.

I don’t know how long the kids are going to stick with it, but with school looming just around the corner, I have high hopes that it will have at least some longevity at our house.

One day at a time….