Family

There is something special about the relationship L and C have with each other.  She has loved him even when she and I weren't allowed to talk to each other, before he even knew she existed she loved him.  And just last week, after a year and a half of her being in his life, and 8 months of her living with us, something heart-melting happened.  L sums it up best with her post on onesentence.org "The first time he called me "Mom", he was snuggling with me on the couch and then followed it up with "This is the best day.""  Something tells me she felt the very same way. 

The dynamic duo R & C posing on R's first
day of pre-school.

Our family is settling in nicely here in Colorado and despite all the big changes in their lives the kids are doing especially well.  They love having friends they get to play with all the time, R especially loves school, C is adjusting to school slowly but surely.  Best of all though is that a lot of C's behavior issues seem to be mellowing.  He's still got a lot of the 4/5 year old boy moodiness and limit testing going on, but the extreme temper tantrums and things of those ilk have pretty much gone by the wayside.  The fact that C is actually feeling safe enough in our new life to call L "Mom" makes me feel like just maybe uprooting their whole lives was worth it.  

Even R is starting to call L "Mama" pretty regularly and that melts my heart too.  They love her, and they are starting to realize that she's really sticking around.  For preschool, R was asked to draw a picture of her family and she managed it pretty well.  There are 5 different colored stick figures and her teacher labeled them all according to who R told her they were.  There was Brother, Mommy, Mama, Mimi(my mom) and RyRy.  Our current living situation may not be "normal" but at least the kids know they are loved.

Speaking of our living situation, I now know we aren't the only two mom family at the kids' school!  I saw another one yesterday when picking R up from pre-school, they were there to get their son from the 4 year old class.  It may not seem like a lot to some people, but knowing we aren't the only family like ours at the school is really reassuring.  Looks like we aren't as alone as I've been feeling after all.

**Author's note: Please forgive me if this post seems a bit jumbled, I'm sick as a dog and operating on not nearly enough sleep.  The second I'm used to, add the first in and well... **

What the heart wants

Back in March I wrote about what marriage equality meant to me and while it wasn't a long post it touched on how I truly feel about marriage equality.  Over the past five months as more states have been added to the list of those that allow same-sex marriages, and since moving from that does to one that only has domestic partnerships, I've had a lot of time to think.  I know, I know, that's where the burning smell is coming from.  Really though, I've thought a lot about this.

L and I are incredibly happy how we are.  For all intents and purposes we are living like we're married already but the truth of it is that we're not.  While us not being married really doesn't affect us at all in our personal lives and how we interact with each other I still want to be.  I want it so badly.  Yep, there it is for all the world to see, I want to marry my silly, compassionate, wonderful L.  I've always been a believer in second chances and what L and I have now is one huge second chance, one that I want to enjoy to its fullest and with no regrets.  I dream of the day that I will be able to call her my wife.

However, the catch here is that while L isn't opposed to the idea of marriage, she just isn't ready.  There is a lot to take into consideration before we take that plunge and I can understand why she wants to take her time to think it all over.  If it were just her and me involved in this whole thing it might be an easier decision for her, but we are raising two kids together as well (mine biologically but hers in heart which matters just as much!).  She wants to make sure that whatever decision we make will do right by C & R, as well as me and her.  There are also other things she needs to be able to take time thinking about too, and as ready as I am to throw all caution to the wind and just go for it I really admire her for wanting to be confident in her decision.

So, while my heart gets all warm and fuzzy and my eyes get misty at wedding stories, pictures and videos, I will just keep dreaming for now.  It may not be tomorrow, but hopefully someday in the relatively near future my lips will get to say the words that my heart already has and we will be able to share our love with our closest friends and family in a ceremony that is just as quirky and full of love and laughter as our life together already is.  I can't wait to see what our future holds!

Worries of a Kindergarten Mom: Where to even start?

Well, the post-move/before-start-of-school insanity is kicking in.  The house isn't fully unpacked yet, getting C enrolled in a school close to our house was a nightmare, and we're dead broke.  Yay!  

Okay, so maybe that yay really does make me seem crazy but I'm really beginning to feel it.  This move was killer on our finances and while I don't regret making it for an instant, the fact that it cost us nearly twice as much to move here as we expected, and that we're still paying on the house we left in WA until October 1st, means that buying school supplies and uniforms (yep, both kids' schools require uniforms instead of regular clothes) is going to be incredibly hard.  Can you feel my stress levels rising yet?  If you can't, just keep reading.

Even if we were still in WA and our finances weren't so dire I'd still be feeling the crazies right about now, however.  The impending upheaval in our family's daily lives is going to change everything.  Both kids will be going to school for the first time in only a matter of weeks.  My house will be empty of chatter, and screaming, and giggles for at least 3 hours a day while both kids are gone, and then even after R gets home from preschool its still going to be strangely quiet because by herself she's quiet as a mouse most of the time.  Then, once they're both home there is going to be homework to be done and stories to be told of their days spent away from me.  That'll be cool, but really weird.  

While I am excited for both C & R to go to school, because they are both so excited, I'm also getting pretty anxious as well.  I had sincerely hoped that both kids would be in the same school but as things have worked out they just won't be.  This means instead of one set of parents, teachers, and staff to get used to and try and fit in with I will have two sets.  Instead of only having to worry about how our kids would be accepted at one school for having two mommies who don't happen to be incredibly religious I'm now faced with two.

On the whole, I love our new city and our new life here.  But this whole school thing has me more than a little nervous.  I have no idea when the proper time is to mention to the kids' teachers that, oh by the way, I'm not their only mommy.  When I was doing C's enrollment papers the other day I think is when this hit me.  There were questions asking about who the child lives with, and what those people's relationships were to the child.  There were places for "parent/guardian #1" and "parent/guardian #2" and a third place for "parent the child doesn't live with".  It was cool, but a bit startling that the forms weren't just limited to mom and dad but that they made it pretty generic for any possible parenting combination.

When I got home from enrolling C, and the two of us being given the grand tour by one of the lovely secretaries, L asked me if I had mentioned that C had two mommies and I immediately felt bad that I hadn't.  If anybody actually takes the time to read the forms it will be crystal clear that he does, but it never came up in conversation and I was honestly too nervous to say anything.  I don't want C's first experience with school to have a shadow hanging over it before he even starts just because of who I love and am planning on spending my life with.  R is a lot more durable than her brother when it comes to change and not a whole lot phases her so even if there are issues at her school as well I have a feeling I will be able to cope with those better than if there are some at C's school.

My big worry right now is how/when to tell people about our family.  Where do I even start?  With the kids' teachers?  With the super sweet secretary?  With the principal?  With another parent?  A secondary worry I have has to do with those annoying money issues I mentioned earlier.  Most of the local assistance groups that help with school supplies and uniform costs are religious groups.  And while I wish it wasn't the case, I know that many of those groups do not like or approve of our type of family and I honestly would feel horribly awkward even going to them for assistance in the first place.  

Luckily I have L.  She's not much of a social butterfly, much like myself, but at least she is better able to handle my worries than I am.  She's the more level headed of the two of us by far.  I know that even if things do get rocky at either of the kids' schools she'll be able to help me not overreact too much.  I just wish I had at least one connection to a family like ours here, that way I could hopefully talk to other parents who have been through the worries I'm going through right now that could laugh and tell me everything will be just fine. 

We survived the move!

We made it to Colorado all in one piece!  Tired and cranky and ready to just settle into our new house, but we made it.  Two weeks ago.  Why haven't I posted this sooner?  Because trying to get settled in has been something of a chore.  We are quickly discovering that trying to squeeze two fully furnished houses into one is quite the challenge.  Not to mention our new abode is riddled with problems from the last tenants.  Our poor (but amazing!) landlord has been practically spending his days here for the past week trying to get it up to snuff.  He feels awful that we moved in with it in such awful condition but we don't mind too much.  It just means that he's more than happy for us to do little improvements around the place to make it nicer and more our own.  I honestly don't see us leaving here the whole time we're in Pueblo unless something even better comes up.

On top of the house problems I've been fighting with my once-broken foot.  It has been causing me a lot of pain and just the other night I kicked one of our boxes of stuff destined for the thrift store.  Today is day three since doing that and I'm only just now able to put my full weight on it again.  My down time from my foot means that the mountain of boxes hasn't shrunk at all since I hurt it.  We have unpacking and projects to get done but I just can't be on my foot for long.  Its so incredibly frustrating.

Despite the issues we've been dealing with, I'm really coming to love our new hometown.  I've got two amazing friends here, both of whom have kids the same ages as C & R so they've got friends here too.  We live a block from one big park, and two from a smaller one.  The big one just behind our house has a pool and a free splash park (fountains for the kidlets to splash around in) and both have nice play equipment.  There is a zoo not far away, a children's museum, and so many different activities for the kids that I just can't wait to have the time to get them involved in something.

Speaking of time, we've got just over three weeks until C's first day of Kindergarten and 1 month until R's first day of Pre-K!  I can't believe both of our kids are starting school this year, its just so strange.  They are both super excited about going to school though so I'm excited for them.  Just need to figure out where to get uniforms and find their school supply lists and get them ready.  Also need to change our address with the school district and hopefully get C into a school closer to our house.  As it is, the one he's enrolled at now is a 10+ minute drive from our house and since both he and R will need to be dropped off at/by 8am at different schools that'll be horribly inconvenient.  Oh well, the school district doesn't open up again until the 5th of August so I guess I'll just have to wait.

There are so many things left to do before we're totally settled but at least we're here.  Our family is back together (with the addition of my mom) and even though they talk to him a couple nights a week on Skype, the kids are finally adjusting to just living with L and me.  The stability of being in just one house is proving a good thing for them, just like we thought it would.  C is having fewer accidents at night and is being a little less defiant and R, well she's three so she's just going to be crazy for a while no matter what.  Over-all the stress on everybody seems to have lessened since we got here.  I miss our friends and family back in WA, but so far CO is proving to be a great fit for our family.

A little reprieve

This whole getting packed up and ready to move 1500 miles thing is rough.  Its even harder when the one person that would be the biggest support to me is already in our new hometown working her new job.  L has been in Colorado since the end of May, she left days after R's 3rd birthday, and it has not been easy with her gone.

For a few weeks I was juggling school, packing, kids, and legal paperwork so I could get permission to move the kids out of state.  Once school ended and I got the bulk of the paperwork for the courts done things should have gotten easier right?  Well sure!  Except they didn't.  My load got a little lighter, what with no homework and paperwork to do, but emotionally things got tougher.  L and I have done the long distance thing before and we knew what it was like so we thought we were prepared.  We weren't.  Not even close.

After having lived together for 5 months, having to separate again was the last thing we had expected to do.  Our relationship is sound, and I'm still ridiculously happy in it, but the first month or so that she was gone was really difficult.  We normally communicate pretty well but emotionally this separation was harder on both of us than the others and because of that the communication really suffered.  Talking ,skyping, and texting didn't really happen a lot for that first month as L got settled in our new town and in her new job.  Those things all reminded her of just how much she missed me, the kids and our life we were building before everything got crazy with this moving stuff.  I tried my hardest to understand her new emotional distance that helped her cope with the physical distance, but where she needed her space I need contact more than ever.  It was brutally hard.

Then something happened a couple weeks ago, I honestly don't know what changed, but one day she started joking with me again!  Whatever had been going on eased up and things have been getting back on track.  I think it had something to do with both of us realizing we only had a matter of weeks until we knew we were going to get to see each other again.  Regardless, the return of her joking around and more open demeanor brought instant relief for me.

While things had been going better for us, this past weekend though brought total stress relief for an amazing mini-visit.  L was here for less than 48 hours but it was perfect.  Her mom had come to visit and eyeball the house to see if she wanted to buy it (she did!) and L hadn't seen her in a while so she had booked a ticket up here.  For the first time in months I was asleep before midnight and the dang eyelid twitch that has been plaguing me since she left magically disappeared.  While both of those things were nice, the best part was seeing her and the kids together again.  I know I've said it many times before but C and R absolutely adore L and seeing the three of them together just melts my heart every single time.  To see the woman I love being loved by and loving on my littlest loves is, to me, pure perfection.  Having our little family complete again for even such a short time was just what I needed to get me through these next few hectic weeks.

So now L is gone to Colorado again, the kids are being little terrors like normal, and packing is super stressful.  But! I've had my emotional batteries recharged.  I can do this.  And in less than a week we will be leaving this town behind and starting our five day journey to L and our new life.

Worries of a Kindergarten Mom: Will my kids have problems in school because they have two mommies?

As I've been trying to wrangle all of the necessary details for our upcoming move into some semblance of order it just occurred to me tonight that starting in August when C and R start school, kindergarten and preschool respectively, that I'm going to get to navigate the possibly tricky world of elementary school politics.  I've never done this before and while I'm excited my kids are starting school and will be making new friends I can't help but wonder how their new friends' parents and teachers will feel about me and L.  How many other families at my kids' school are going to have two-mom or two-dad families?  Are we going to be something strange to gawk at or are we going to be just another ordinary couple?

When asking my friends for school advice for the kids this question wasn't even a blip on my radar of all-important-things-to-ask.  Instead I asked about the teachers, and the curriculum, and if they can handle kids with attention and emotional issues like C's.  Never once did I think to ask about things like if the school was LGBT friendly, or if it had serious religious leanings.  I don't think of these things because to me our family is just like any other with small children.  I don't think of these things because religion doesn't play a big part in our daily lives.

But now I'm worried.

The "what ifs" are bombarding my brain (at 2am no less), demanding to be given thought better late than never.  What if our kids get teased for having two moms.  What if the other kids' parents won't let them play with C and R because their family is "different".  What if (heaven forbid!) the teachers discriminate against C and R because they don't like mine and L's "lifestyle".  What if because we aren't a good Christian family that the kids get left out of after school playdates with their classmates?  What if, what if, what if?  If I didn't already have a headache this train of thought would definitely give me one!

At this point there isn't a whole lot that can be done.  The kids' information has been submitted, they are both enrolled.  We got to pick our first and second choice schools for the kids to go to but aside from that the school district will actually decide for us and once the decision is made and we are informed of it in late July/early August it'll be too late to change where they go this year.  Best case scenario all of my what if worryings will be for naught and the school that the kids wind up in will be fantastic and open-minded, regardless of our family make-up or religious beliefs.  Worst case scenario...  I don't really wanna go there but we all know it'll be bad.

Only time will tell how this turns out but I know I've got my fingers crossed.  I just really hope that our family's first foray into the public school system isn't a total bust simply because our kids have two mommies.

Complicated life

In my absence this past month I've been working on trying not to fall apart as my life goes through some major changes again.  We are actually going through with the move to CO.  It looks like it may be in as few as 5.5 weeks but could be as many as 8.  Either way its too long though.  L has already left for CO to set up her new job and she started working this week.  Its been great for her in that she likes having something to do with herself, but being apart from our family has been hard on her. 

Truthfully its been hard on all of us.  R seems to be doing the best out of the three of us, she misses L a lot and asks for her on a daily basis, but mostly she's pretty accepting of the whole situation so long as I remind her that L wen to CO to work and find us a new house to live in when we move down there too.  Unlike his sister, C is taking it pretty rough.  He's been extra moody and clingy and strangely shy with strangers and even some people he has known since he was a baby.  His therapist (yep, my 4.5 year old is in therapy for coping problems related to the divorce...) says that he just isn't coping well with yet another person leaving him and that the shyness at least is his way of "stepping out" to clear his head and try and adjust to whatever situation is causing him to be shy.  Silly me opened my mouth and said that sounded just like something I do a lot and from that point on his most recent therapy session was actually a therapy session for me...

I basically got told that if I want my son to learn to cope and to be himself, sensitive and gentle and all, that I need to learn to do the same.  How can I argue with that? I know that L is supportive and wants to help me get back to who I used to be, but its been so darn long that I just really don't even know how to be myself anymore.  Its been too long since I've been allowed to be anything but the person who just shoves their feelings aside as an inconvenience rather than a real part of me.  She also told me that having emotional reactions to things isn't a sign of weakness, just that I am a gentle and sensitive person.  L has said something very similar to that on more than one occasion and while I love her and value her opinion above anybody else's, hearing the same thing from the therapist kind of made it really sink in.  If somebody who didn't know me could read me so well and could pick up on one of my biggest challenges, then it must really be something to try harder to fix.

I've been hoping to find somebody to talk to but there just never seems to be a good fit, I never seem to be able to open up to a therapist the way I can to friends or even a few random acquaintances.  And yet, 8 weeks before we are set to leave, I find somebody.  Just figures!

C will see her maybe 3 or 4 more times before we leave and I strangely find myself hoping that maybe one of those times I will get to talk to the therapist more about me.  I want to get better so I can be a better mom for C and R, so I can be a better girlfriend for L, but with this move and L and I being separated because of her heading down early for work I'm scared that I'm just going to get worse.  My emotions are so tangled lately because of the legal stuff required to move the kids with me out of the state, and I'm overwhelmed by the prospect of packing up our house by myself (for the most part).  Not to mention I'm finishing up Spring Quarter of school and I had to drop a class because I just got so far behind.  There is just so much going on right now, so many complicated things that I am trying to juggle.  I just don't have time to have an emotional reaction to anything, otherwise I'll never get anything done.  I want to scream and cry but at the moment it will serve no purpose.  

If I can just make it through until the truck is unloaded on the other end of this move, then I'll allow myself to react and possibly fall apart.  But I'll be with L again, in our new home, in our new state away from so many of the issues that I've been dealing with for way too long, so what really will there be to fall apart about?  For a little while I would just really like things to be simpler, just so I can get my feet back under me and get my head and my heart back on track for the first time in years.  I'm so incredibly tired of everything being so complicated.