Stepmom diaries: What nobody tells you about being a Stepmom

Being a step mother is (hold on here for the shocker) not the same as being a 'real' mom.  I know, I know, this is newsworthy, for sure.  

When people think of motherhood they think of something like, well, above.  You go to the doctor and find out you are pregnant.  You have nearly 10 months to plan for your baby.  You get to do fun stuff like get the room ready, pick out adorable cloths, find the perfect teddy bear.   The baby comes and you don't sleep again for what?  5 years or so, I guess.  Most importantly, you bond with your child and learn all their little noises, faces, and manners. You get a chance to shape who they become when they are impressionable.  That's what motherhood seems like to me, a woman who has never given birth but who was and is the world's greatest aunt. 

No, when you are a step mom, you get to enjoy a different life and role.   You see, by the time I came into O's life, she was 10.   Now, I know what you are saying, 10 isn't old.  You still have a shot.  Well, this is actually true but there are some things you don't realize that makes being a step mother very different. 

Bonding:

I have said this before and I will say it until I am 94 but I missed all the cute, funny, years when she took her first steps, said her first words, and road her bike the first time.   Shoot, I even missed the first time she threw up or peed on her dad.  (I would have loved to see that!)  I missed a lot of bonding times.  

Respect:

Now let me start out by stating the obvious, just because you are around for the formative years does not mean your teenage hellion is going to respect you, but you have a way better shot.  What I have is an almost 13 year old who I have to frequently remind to watch her tone, language, and attitude.  This is almost always followed by the required eye roll, from her not me.  (And OMG do you know how annoying that eye roll is?  I may have had to stop myself from throwing something at her once or ten times.)

Boundaries:

I will never forget the first time O reminded me I wasn't her mother.  She basically told me that she was not going to eat dinner at the table like a family and I couldn't make her because....I am not her mother.  10 deep breaths, my red hair flaring, and smoke coming from my ears later and I politely but assertively reminded her of a few things.  Things like who makes breakfast twice a week and dinner for her every night when she is at our house.  Things like who it was that drove 45 minutes to another city to get her rabbits tagged for her F.F.A. class.  Things like who it is that bakes brownies or cookies when she needs stuff for her school fundraisers.   Things like who it is that normally takes her shopping for all those new cloths she needs remarkably every 7-10 days.  I then very, very calmly told her that I don't know what her definition of a parent is, but if those things didn't give me some rights to make her eat dinner with us and not in her room, where the plates end up in a trash bin and the dogs end up in the trash, then I seriously do not know what would.  (For the record, after about 5 minutes she was a totally different child.)

Caught in the middle:

Oddly, while O has reminded me a couple time that I am not her mom and that she feels like I am sort of her crazy aunt who just never leaves, when she has a problem (that isn't me) or just needs some girl talk, she opens up to me.   That's awesome but....sometimes she says things like "Don't tell dad."  Or "Please don't talk to my mom."  Okay, so some things I can handle, like dealing with her fluctuating "I hate all boys" vs "I like boys" moments.  Some, I feel compelled to talk to her parents about, like when she confided in me that at a local High School football game a girl was pushed down the bleachers and may have a broken neck and oh, by the way, she saw kids shooting up on drugs there too.   Well, I don't know about you but I felt it was absolutely her parents right and more important their need to know these things were happening to their still 12 year old daughter.  

But....I also realize that when I throw her under the bus about those things, I am going to cause her not to trust me.  Then comes the talk which goes something like this "I will not tell your parents things they do not need to  know but if your safety or life could be an issue, you better believe I am telling them."   This did not make her happy but she still tells me things so I suppose it worked

Love:

You can love a kid that isn't yours.  I mean people do it all the time.  You love your nieces and nephews.  You love your kids friends.  I am so overly protective of O at times that I want to march to the school and have a talk with her principal about why they need to do a better job.  I want to talk to the parents of the bullies and put them in their place.  Tell them to do a better job with their kids.   Mostly, I want what is best for O and I want her to rise above the garbage.  

Nothing prepares you for:

*The teen years!  Seriously, even if I had a chance to bond with this child at birth and love her from her first breath, I don't know that I would be prepared for the never ending drama that is an almost 13 year old girl.   The things that go on in school.  The way girls talk to one another.   The way she and her friends treat each other.  The number of times something was made out of nothing.  The number of times since September alone that the entire world was ending.  I swear to you, nobody can prepare for it.   The drama becomes exhausting.   The stupidity of the situation becomes exhausting.  The fact that no matter how much you try to reason with or punish the kid (Oh, my GAWD, the hate I received for taking away her phone for 3 days!) becomes the most exhausting of all.  Combine all of this with the knowledge that it will reappear no less than twice a month and you may want to run for the hills.

Or, do a lot of this:

Parenting: Do they sell a handbook for this stuff?

Kids:  God's revenge for every crappy thing you ever did to your parents.   

Kids: Your penance for every sin you committed in college.  (You know you did!) 

Kids:  Amazing creatures who look human but have no actual trace of human logic or common sense. 

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I swear if you think babies are hard try a pre-teen on for size.   Kids have the most unique and disturbing way of driving adults crazy.  

Invisible objects:

It amazes me how the dishwasher and dirty dishers are invisible.   It is a true and known fact in my house that I have the insane abilty to see dishes when nobody else notices them.   I stood there and watched one morning as my kid pulled open the already running dishwasher (on the dry cycle) and added a dirty bowl and spoon from her cereal.   I was shocked, not because she added dirty dishes to the clean but because she actually knew how to open the dishwasher!  

Sudden Child Deafness Syndrom:

It is also amazing to me too that a child can sit in the same room with you and be playing on their phone and you talk to them for 5 entire minutes while they are looking at your face at least part of the time and it takes them until you enter the 6th minute before they pull off their earbuds (disguised cunningly by their hair) and say innocently "What? Are you talking to me?" like suddenly they realize you are in the room.  It takes every bit of whatever God gave you to not say back "No, I randomly walk around the house talking out loud to myself for no reason what-so-ever because it's fun".  

The kid drop and toss: 

If you come to my house on any given night you will find not only a pair of shoes but a book bag and a jacket sitting in the middle of my living room floor.   Not because I keep them there but because they are dropped by the kid on the way to her room to play on her phone and text her friends.   Seriously, it's like my living room floor grows cloths.  When I asked her why she can't just put her bookbag in her room (Otherwise known as the federal disaster area) she says "Because I have to come out to this room to get to the car tomorrow anyway.   Ah, see logic.  Not sound logic but it is logic.   I, after all, leave my purse on the kitchen counter, or my bedroom, or the table but never do I plop it down in the middle of the floor.   Of course, I too take my shoes off and have to go around the house picking them up occassionally.  Again however, mine are in a corner somewhere where half the world isn't tripping over them in the dark, in the middle of the night. 

Human Garbage Disposal:

Also, have you ever noticed how MUCH kids eat?  I mean, I am not growing kids I am growing a bunch of hobbits.   First breakfast, second breakfast followed by snack, lunch and then comes first dinner (what is consumed just like dinner but happens almost right after the book bag is dropped in the middle of my livingroom floor) and second dinner, because that full blown meal at 5pm wasn't enough and kid must eat again before going to bed and turning into a gemlin.   We go through 2 loaves of bread, 3 lbs of turkey, the Lord only knows how much cheese, more if there is swiss every week.   Husband hates turkey.  I never remember to make a sandwich for lunch unless we are going somewhere on the weekend.   I don't know where all the cheese and meat go.   There must be ghosts in my house making sandwiches at weird times of the day and night.

Alarm Clocks: 

Does anyone remember having to set your alarm clock to wake up in the morning as a kid because one of the first things my mom did was show me how to use it and expect me to get myself out of bed and ready to go to school, if I wanted to eat first that is.   Well, the same kids that have cell phones and could probably redirect the government weapons of mass destruction from those phones, can't seem to hit the big button in the middle and say these words "Siri set alarm for ____" because that is too complicated and it is so much easier to make Mom or Step-Mom wake them up.   Easier for who? Clearly they have never delt with a grumpy, tired, sound sleeper who doesn't want to get out of bed in the morning.  It isn't easier for me. 

Because I said so: 

This is my favorite.  You tell them to do something and they spend 15 minutes explaining to you and negotiating with you why you not only don't know what you are talking about, but why they should do things when they want because it is better.   

Parent: Take a bath.

Kid:  I take my bath at 8pm.

Parent:  It is 7:58.  Start walking to the bathroom, it will take you 2 minutes and while you are going past, why don't you take your book bag in the middle of the floor to your room and put your dirty dishes in the dishwasher? 

Kid:  I want to see the end of this show.

Parent: it's a commercial and it's over. 

Kid: It's not 8 yet. 

Parent: go take a bath right now young lady, BECAUSE I SAID SO!

We all swore we wouldn't do it.  We would never pull the "because I said so" card out and yet, they force us into it.   It's some mass conspiracy that spans generations and creates parent-monsters.  We wake up one day and look in the mirror and see our mother/father and we sigh loudly, nod knowingly and get ready for work. 

Motor Mouth:

We share custody so every weekend we are getting kid on Sunday.  The minute she walks in she starts talking and doesn't stop until sometime Tuesday night.   I mean seriously, it is like her Corn Flakes are laced with speed.    God help you if you try to interupt either because the sudden deafness syndrom magically kicks in without earbuds and they can't hear you trying to tell them to slow down and take a breath for GOODNESS SAKE!!!!  I am so tired just thinking of it.  I then go in to parent self preservation mode.  I nod dumbly and say "Uh-huh" while I pretend to listen to why she is upset with her friend of the week. 

Loss of Human Contact: 

You know how everyone says you lose your friends when you have a kid.   It's true and it doesn't matter how old the kid is when you get them.  I can't talk to my single/no-kid friends because, well, first of all they stopped talking to me when I got married.   Second, if I do see them, (who has time for friends with kids sports, school activites, the odd moment of alone with said husband usually doing gardening and cooking and cleaning, and work anyway?) they want to talk about how horrible it is being alone when all I do is countdown to the rare weekend when I have a day off from being responsible for anyone but me.  (Sorry, but being alone, doesn't sound so bad when you haven't heard quiet in 9 months.)

So I turned to my friends that have kids in the desperate hope they will have some good advice.  You know what I get?  "It doesn't get better they just get mouthier as they get into High School."   "It is always going to be easier for them to drop their books on the floor and for you to wake them. "  They don't stop.  They just keep on keeping on.  It won't end until...well they have kid of their own, I guess. 

I am probably blocking out my childhood memories and I have some odd form of revisionist history happening but I just don't recall being so soundly illogical when I was 11, 12, 13.....and so on.   I am sure my mother would disagree however, kids today have way too much distracting them and not enough focus on things that matter, like putting away the stupid bookbag! 

Seriously, why do kids not come with handbooks?  I realize God isn't taking back the defective kids because they are all defective but couldn't they come with an Users manual or something?   Something to save my sanity when I feel like I am failing because there are dirty socks on the family room rug and they have been there for 3 days and I only just now noticed them because I was tripping over the shoes in the middle of the living room when I fell on my face, rolled into the other room past 5 dirty glasses left on the table and smack into the socks.  Of course, nobody hears my scream because you can't hear over the earbuds or the non-stop talking.  

I received so much positve feedback from so many people about this post that it has become one of my favorite posts.   It is definately my favorite this week so I am linking this up with Katherine's Corner Thursday Favorite Things Blog Hop.   If you haven't been to Katherine's Corner and all the lovely ladies who co-host the hop then please check it out.  They are amazing! 

Behind Closed Doors

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You never really know what is going on in the lives of people, behind closed doors.  I want to introduce you to a few people, just to prove my point.  You may like some, you may not like others, but I think you will understand my point.  Yes, I know these people.  Yes, some of the facts have been changed to protect the innocent people involved. 

Meet David:

He is a youth minister at church.  He can quote scripture chapter and verse.  He was raised in a God fearing home and loves Jesus. He is the perfect dotting dad to his little girl.  He has the typical divorced dad guilt.  On the outside David is the most together person you have ever met. He is talented, funny, smart.    Inside, David is falling apart.  David is afraid, angry, and broken.  David feels worthless and randomly rages against anyone or anything that makes him unhappy and everything makes David unhappy.  David thinks the whole world is against him, even God.  David goes through serious stages of depression.  When he is in love, he falls for the wrong person.  He picks based on the stuff that doesn't really matter, the superficial because being with someone beautiful makes him feel better about himself.  When the relationship ultimately ends up where all relationships end up when you are basing it on something that isn't concrete, he spins out of control, rage, depression, anger.  The cycle continues.   Only his close friends know.  On the outside he is the happy, church going, loving dad.  On the inside he is unhappy, sad, and wishes he were dead or better yet, never born.

Meet Jessica:

Jessica is a middle aged mother.  She is your typical soccer mom.  She is divorced and dating.  She goes to all of her kids sporting events.  Jessica has all the team t-shirts and she cheers the loudest at the games.  She runs the kids to and from practices whenever she can.  She takes them shopping and spends her time on Facebook posting all the great "mommy and me" photos.  She is always the first to volunteer for the kids school functions.  She is a part time student and runs her own business.  Everyone thinks Jess is mother of the year.   She is great, happy, funny, and lively.  Behind closed doors, Jess has a little problem.  She likes nice things and she can't always afford them so sometimes, she takes them.  She takes them a lot actually. The list of things that she has done to keep up with the Joneses is long, shameful, and pathetic. She belongs in jail.  She doesn't think about what is going to happen one day when her kids find out that she has been arrested several times for shop lifting. She doesn't remember that there are public records of her misdeeds.   She forgets that memories are long and google pulls up her mug shots.  She uses her kids to get to her ex-husband and his wife.  She manipulates them into thinking other people are bad when those people only have the best intentions for the kids. She doesn't consider the fact that she is going to destroy her children with her lies which eventually will catch up with her.  Her kids aren't always going to be little and naive and think "mommy hung the moon".   Eventually, they will catch on to her, just like everyone else.  

Meet Sam: 

Sam is a busy business owner.  He is on the go!  Sam spends all his time on the golf course trying to grow his business.  Except that isn't really what he is doing.  He is playing golf.  Sam also spends a lot of time with his young, cute girlfriend.  The one he left his wife of 25 years to be with.  Sam is hip.  He is fun.  He is in to all the cool things.  Sam isn't an old fuddy duddy.  No, not Sam.  He hasn't forgotten how to have fun. He isn't having a mid-life crisis he is just showing the world how to stay young!  Behind closed doors however, what he has forgotten is that he has two kids who need him.  He has forgotten that his two kids feel abandoned by him.  Sam's ex-wife, the one he thinks is a nag and a pest, just wants him to be present in his kids life once in a while. Sam however, is so wrapped up in his life that he can't see how he is hurting his children.  That's okay though because Sam is having the time of his life and in 15 years when his kids don't want to be part of their dad's life, Sam will regret not spending a couple weekends a month getting to know his kids.  That is, if anyone knows where Sam is.  

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Sadly, all of these stories have one thing in common, kids.  Hopefully the kids involved will be able to get past the issues of their parents but I posted this for a couple of reasons.  First, was to show you never know what is really going on with people and what you see on the outside may not be what you get.  Second, I know that the kids involved in some of these stories have already suffered because of their parents issues.  If you know kids with messed up parents, be kind to the kids.  They didn't create the problems.  They are victims too.

I have Never, Ever, Ever!!! I swear!

It's time to link up for Never, Ever, Ever. How fun! Linking up with Neely, Stephanie and Shelley for week 4. (Okay, I missed some but who's counting?)
So let's  go.

Never, ever, ever:

*am as happy as that glorious week and a half period when the only sport is baseball! (I am only counting the big 4 here. I realize there are other things soccer & racing fans).

*thought I would give up my dream of having a child but I have. I turn 43 in August and I have decided it is time for another dream because I could marry tomorrow and it just isn't happening.

*thought I would give up coffee. I have. This is harder than I thought.


*have I been so happy to see Ian Kinsler back for the Texas Rangers. With him this team plays amazing baseball. Without him this team looks like the Rangers I grew up watching. I think we have solved the riddle of who's team this is since Michael Young left.

*have I wanted to break power tools as much as the ones used by men who have been hammering, sawing, and drilling right on the other side of my office wall for the last 2 weeks. How long does it take? Honestly, Rome may not have been built in a day but I think they built it faster than these guys are building out the offices next door.

*Have I eaten so many peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. In my efforts to be more mindful of my eating and making sure I actually eat, I have relied heavily on this old standby. It's cheap and easy and it gives me protein so there isn't a lot it doesn't have going for it. If I wasn't out of bread I would have eaten that Saturday morning and hey, maybe saved myself an ER trip!

*speaking of the ER trip never will I ever, ever take water for granted again. I have become more than slightly obsessed! But I will save that for my Wed. Blog! ;-)

Happy Tuesday! XOXO



Simply,
Laura
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