Stepmommy issues

This time last year I was writing a lot about mother daughter issues, mostly my issues as a daughter/daughter in law.

It seems ironic that this year the issue would be about my issues as a stepmother.  Anytime now we should be getting the judge’s decision about custody.  Anytime now I could be more than tripling my time as a parent.

I recently told my best friend that I was scared either way.  I’m scared about the challenge of day to day parenting, something I never expected to do, and I’m also scared about losing.  Either way, the coming months are bound to be crazy.  I’ll either be trying to find my groove with the kids, or trying to deal with everyone’s grief at not getting joint custody.

The bio mom has intensified her attacks, I feel like every time I think she has reached the point of ultimate viciousness, she ups her game and hits even lower.  My best friend keeps reminding me that things can’t really get much worse than they are now, we can’t see the kids any less, and my BF is already paying the maximum in child support. 

I feel like lately all I have been doing is trying to shield everyone around me, and then I go to bed at night and worry about how I will get through it all.  That is when I remember my Nanny telling me that when you can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, just focus on your feet, and put one foot in front of the other.  Eventually, you’ll get there.

So I’m just focusing on the simple things, my new job, getting a Christmas tree for the kids, and trying to fit in all of the family parties.  This year I’m just gonna cross my fingers, let go, and hope for the best.

Inspired by Mama Kat's writer's workshop : What were you blogging about a year ago today? What has changed?

Thank you Pinterest for making me look smart

I have a Pinterest bord on parenting / stepmom humour. This past weekend, however, I actually used this one. 

 On Friday night, I got up around midnight and as I always do, I checked on the kids while I was up.

When I looked in the boys' room, I was furious to find them with the TV on playing video games. They had actually woken up, turned on the TV, and muted it so we wouldn't hear and were playing. When I busted them they jumped about two feet, and turned everything off and went to bed without saying a word. We thought we had it covered by bringing their remote and Nintendo DS with us to bed, and making sure they were asleep before going to bed ourselves. They had outsmarted us, for the moment.

The next day I talked it over with my BF. What to do? The TV in their room is 40'', so too big to take it out. They had apparently found the buttons behind the TV so keeping the remote was useless, and there were just too many things hooked up to make taking anything out of the room an option.

Then it hit me, I looked at my board and thought, hey, it's worth a shot. That day I stopped by a dollar store and picked up a luggage lock and that night when we put them to bed, we unplugged the TV and put the lock through the plug. At first I don't think they quite understood what we were doing, but when we left the room we listened at the door. We couldn't help chuckling to ourselves when it dawned on them, without the key, they couldn't plug the TV in, and no TV, no games.

The next morning, the oldest asked why we did that, we told him that it was to make sure they couldn't get up and play video games in the middle of the night. He conceded that it was a pretty smart idea. I didn't tell him I saw it anywhere, we figure it will be better off if he just thinks we're that much smarter than them.

Inspired by Mama Kat's writer's workshop : You saw it on Pinterest…does it really work?