EVILFLU

Showing posts with label Single Parenting. Show all posts

After a very strange/snowy/emotional weekend (in which I got questioned for murder), I decided we had to celebrate Family Day this year. Usually Family Day is just an extra day to veg out and binge on Netflix (OMG do you watch Wentworth??) - usually in separate rooms (I vowed to never watch Mall Cop again in my whole entire life after having to endure it twice in the theatre. It just so happens that Mason loves Mall Cop). It's an unfortunate situation.

This year, after being trapped inside due to a snowstorm and my neighbour's murder, I figured it was a good year to start a tradition where we will never stay home for Family Day again. Not that there's anything wrong with staying home - it's just so easy to pass an entire day without even really acknowledging that the other is there.

I let Mason decide on an activity to do in the community. I had a few rules: no crowds and low cost. Mason came up with the great idea of tobogganing. I was so in to it, until I remembered I had donated his sled to the Goodwill because he outgrew it.

Then he suggested skating...and I was shocked.

When I was in grade school, every week they would make us go to the arena next door and skate for an hour or so. It was torture! I hated being cold. I hated having to carry the gear to school every week. I was lucky I even owned a proper pair of skates that my mother didn't Macguyver up for me. I just hated that feeling of my feet burning off when I took off my skates. I never learned to properly skate because my teacher always picked on me and I got frustrated and gave up. Kind of like the time my dad tried to teach me how to park a boat. I got frustrated and never learned how to park a boat (Tip: never let me drive your boat).

Mason goes to the same school I went to and is lucky to get to attend these "fun" skating trips When he recommended skating as an activity, I realized that he has not been tortured enough at the arena because who in their right mind would want to freeze and skate around in a circle for an hour.

We have a couple of options when it comes to free outdoor skating in my city. It's really quite impressive because the ice is full of people who don't mind frostbite...or circles. A lot of people had the idea to take their families skating on Family Day (go figure) but that didn't stop Mason from lacing up and joining them on the ice. I stayed on the sidelines, watching nervously, because I like my feet being warm(ish) and not falling and breaking my ass in front of a good portion of the population of London.

As he clumsily made himself around that ice pad I felt something (other than frostbite creeping into my Uggs) - I felt proud. He wasn't the best skater out there, but he tried. He made his way around in circles, dodging little Ice Capades champions - or so I assumed they were anyway - and tried his best to stay on two skates. He certainly was a lot better than I was at skating. In fact, he only fell once when I distracted him to smile for the camera.

Next year we hopefully can do something where both of us can participate - and hopefully something a little warmer. I think it was a pretty successful excursion though. Mason had a lot of fun showing off his skating skills and I didn't freeze to death (although my iPhone did - boo).

http://findingjoy.net/10-things-single-moms-want-their-married-friends-to-know/ written by Rachel at finding joy

I read this from a friend on Facebook the other day and I just had to share with my lovely readers!

This. Exactly.

I never expected to be a single mother, and truthfully I don’t feel like a single mother, but here I am in the single mother category, and this article makes me feel like I belong here.

I honestly thought he was going to live – probably even longer than I would. The thought of doing this on my own just was never an option. Even when they told us on my son’s first birthday that he was not going to live, I didn’t believe it. Bad things never happened to me, and he was something to me so it just couldn’t happen. Then it did. I remember my first words were “What am I supposed to do now?” I still ask myself that every single day – but we’re making it.

People tell me how strong I am all the time, and I thank them for their observation, but I am not strong. I do this because I have to do it. The person I was before this happened would never have been able to do this. I’ve been thrown into this role. I’m definitely not strong and far from perfect, but I try and that kind of makes me a superhero. I don’t go saving the planet, I just make sure dinner is on the table, and there is a roof over our heads, same thing…right?

One thing you may not know is that I am completely financially on my own. When R. died, I applied for survivor benefits for Mason. I was then told that the person I chose to have a child with did not work enough hours in his lifetime for us to qualify. Ever since I have been supporting us financially on my own. I work harder just because our government felt that someone who died young and had cancer for five years didn’t contribute enough to make his son’s life worth anything financially.

I mean, we get by. I try really hard to make sure he has everything he needs and I think I’ve been lucky a lot to make sure that happens. Part of the reason I have trouble fitting in with the single mom group is that I do this alone. When I hear people complain about how their ex-husband doesn’t take their child enough or they got ripped off in their child support hearing, I cringe. I can’t say anything bad about my ex – ever. He didn’t choose to leave. I’m not saying every single parent complains, and not every single parent gets child support, I’m just jealous that they still have someone else to help make the major decisions and be there for their children.

Also – please don’t ever tell me that you wish your ex would just die. It is a horrible thing to say (and yes, it’s been said to me more than a few times). If you knew what I go through, just read back a few pages on this blog and it will give you an idea, you wouldn’t wish this upon anyone – no matter how much of a “d-bag” your ex-husband is.

I love this article because the message is “friendships matter. Greatly.” – and it is so true. I can’t imagine how hard it would be to go through this without some good friends. I have so many friends who I don’t get to see all the time (busy single mom thing…read the article!) but I know they are here for me if I ever need them – and that’s where my strength comes from. I love every single one of my friends – even the ones who tell me how strong I am!

but sometimes you really want it to seem that way. Eating out at a fancy restaurant, company outings, in a library, at an appointment, these are all times when you want people to look at your family and think "wow, they really are perfect".

For me, this time happens always at daycare. No parent wants the daycare teachers to see them fail! To the child, the daycare teacher is like a big giant bag of fun. The daycare teacher plays with them, gives them hugs when their parents abandon them and has a plethora of crayons, coloured macaroni and construction paper. The parents are seen as the evil masters of abandonment whereas the daycare teachers can do no wrong, it's really a sad situation to be in as evil is not so becoming of me.

Our routine this morning was a little disrupted by a scheduled visit to the new daycare that M. will be starting in a few short weeks. I dressed him in his "good clothes", brushed his hair and made sure all the chocolate cereal was wiped off his face. I was so worried that "Mr. Hyde" would make an appearance in front of the new daycare staff, and when everything went smoothly, I sighed a breath of relief and packed him into the car. Now here's where it gets ugly...

Even with my dirty rear view mirror, I could see his "Mr. Hyde" face coming out. Thinking nothing of it, I chose to ignore his morning grumpiness and continued on our way...and then when I opened the door, Mr. Hyde spilled out of the car. My little boy was no longer there, and I just knew the morning would end with me looking up exorcists in the phone book again.

Must give credit where it is due though, I fully did not expect this tantrum, not on this morning. He caught me by surprise!

By the time we got to the door, he was done. There was no getting him in the building. I decided my best defense at this point was the "fine then, I'm leaving" tactic, which proved to be successful, surprisingly. Getting him into his classroom was another battle though. My full grown self, trying to force this 56 pound body into the classroom just was not happening. I pulled, I pushed, I carried and in return he screamed, cried and grabbed onto doorways.

The teachers inside the classroom were all like "we're young and beautiful and we didn't get ourselves knocked up by a man with cancer who then died" (which translates into: we're not helping you drag your 56 pound pile of screambag into this classroom, we'll just stare and play with our hair instead).

After about 10 more minutes of me bribing, pulling, blocking and pushing, I gave up. I saw the older teacher coming, I managed to pass him off to her and sneak away like a burglar, only like an anti-burglar who like leaves their kid places because they are having a temper tantrum.

Mornings like this are HARD! It's hard to get through the day without your mind wandering back to that moment, the flashbacks of hearing him scream for you as you walk away, it's really hard. It takes all my will to not turn around, take him in my arms and run back home with him, but not only is that the wrong thing to do, I do have to go to work.

So when I went to pick him up, the teacher praised me for being able to leave him that way. My first thought was ~~this woman totally has a crush on me~~ she has to be kidding right now, but then I saw she actually meant it. She went on to explain that not many parents do leave their kids while they are acting that way. I don't know if I can be proud though, it's so hard to walk away and I do it because I have to, not because I have some excellent Supernanny tricks up my sleeve.

I can't believe I ever thought this would be easy, because it is sooo not!

For some of you, choosing your child's backpack for his first year of school is easy, some not so easy - but still okay, and for some it is a life or death situation...or so it seems that way anyway. Maybe there really are people who have life or death situations when it comes to picking a backpack like if their child was allergic to the material or something.

In my case, this was another decision I had to make on my own - and it's not easy! There are backpacks of all different kinds out there, as you are probably aware of if you are in the same situation as I was. Ones with characters, ones plain, big ones, small ones, ones with wheels, ones that had cute little owls on them only to find out it was actually for girls (oops!). I do not take these decisions lightly by any means.

Because this will be M's first year of actual school, I am freaking out. First of all, I am wondering how he is going to get there because his school is half day, everyday - definitely catered to the moms (or dads) who stay home while their significant other goes out to work. That being said, I worry about being the mom and dad. The one who is ALWAYS there. I already felt that way when we went to the interview for the school, but I am sure it will be much more real when school actually starts.

On a side note, this school stuff is really going to make me insane. There have been so many monumental events we have done alone. Birthdays two through five, surgeries, moving houses - they have all been just us and for some reason this one sticks out as a huge one. One of the ones where I stress about it (and probably even cry about it at night) because I'm a loser like that.

Back to the backpack though - I am sure there will be much more single mom whines once the year actually starts so stay tuned. I have lots of time, but everybody knows that all the good backpacks are gone way before school actually starts, and this one had to be special. Same with Halloween costumes, the good ones always sell out - even before September starts (that was my tip of the day). Seriously, I used to call Old Navy at least twice a week to find out when the costumes were actually out on the floor.

So choosing a backpack was a very big deal for me (one that Mason had absolutely no say in because what I say goes - just kidding - sorta). In the end, we chose a spaceship one, but decided against the matching lunchbox (which actually I'm kinda thinking I might go back and snatch up for the following year - grade one..eek!!). I chose it for the du

rability, comfort and of course the cute little "retro" spaceships.

If R. were still alive, he would be all like "you paid HOW much for that?" and I would be all like "honey, it was 30% off" and then his head would explode and he would die again. Although I would probably talk to him about it, be all ambiguous and mention it at the dinner table - because I knew how much he hated spending money - total opposite of me, but it was great! He would then let me down gently, tell me it was too much and that he would get an old backpack, slap a few AC/DC, Rolling Stones and Kid Rock (cuz that's how he rolled) patches on the back and he would be the coolest kid in school. To which I would then get upset^* and he would give in - because that's just how it was, and it worked well for both of us.

So I got the backpack, but now I am kind of regretting my decision and wish I would have seen this one. I'm just not so sure it is big enough...opinions? Not that they will matter (kidding!!)

^* - I was a 23 year old brat.

Mason started a new session of speech therapy this morning. I went to the meeting as it was his first time meeting his new speech therapist and I thought things could get a little awkward. As it turns out, Mason didn't need me at all to feel comfortable with this new speech therapist, actually he was very excited and I think he is still feeling the effects of the Halloween candy because he was bouncing off the walls...and the table...and the floor...he was rowdy!

I find as he gets older he comes to me less and less to help him out with things. In fact just tonight he tried to wash his own hair, which actually turned out to be a huge mess, but my point is he just doesn't come to me anymore for little things like that, he feels invincible...and it scares me.

So just as I'm about to leave, he gets this look of horror on his face and wraps around my legs like a spider monkey telling me not to go. Unfortunately I had to be at work but he was wrapped around me and just wasn't letting up. I finally made him a deal, I would go outside with his class and wait until he started playing on the playground before I left. His eyes lit up like my neighbour's Christmas lights (that is a whole other post!). I could tell he was pondering something but I just didn't know what his plan was.

Little did I know, when the kids go outside they have to sit in a row and listen to the rules...each and every time. I guess that is effective...who knows. So just as he's about to join his little group, he pulls up this tricycle. This tricycle was different from every other tricycle on the play yard and by the looks of it, it was faster. Mason pulled it up beside me and said...

"Now you stay here and save this tricycle for me, okay Mom?"

My kid used me to hold his favourite bike!!! Can you believe that?! I honestly think he had it planned from the time I said I would stay until they went outside. So that was my first thought, but then I started to get a little scared. What if another kid beat him back to the tricycle and I had to fight a kid for it?? Should I let this kid take it and disappoint my kid or do I put up a fight or a temper tantrum...who knows the playground rules anyway?

Luckily nothing like that happened, Mason came racing back and said bye to me without even looking back. Well at least I felt needed for a minute there!

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