Meeting the ex-wife's parents? How did I get here?

It's the holidays and everybody's happy and grateful and feeling generous… However, what I would like to know is why am I meeting my husband's ex-wife's parents?  Don't get me wrong, the relationship is amicable. We respect each other, mostly and definitely when it's regarding the children's sake. 

True, her parents live out of state, they are visiting for the holidays, and they're my step-children's grandparents. But that is the only connection. I am not related to them nor them to me nor them to my own child yet we are scheduled to meet them tomorrow for a quick pop in.  What the...?

They are from the south and I am sure they are lovely people. Honestly, I understand them wanting to meet their grandchildrens' half-sister. Kind of. Sort of.  Ugh... So unbelievably weird!  And being the cool stepmom I believe I am, I agreed to meet them since my husband asked so cautiously and politely. Promising me that we will not stay for more than a few minutes and that we were doing it for the children. 

I get it. I really do. It just doesn't make it any less awkward.  

Brush your damn hair!

My darling 12y.o. stepdaughter comes back from spending the week at her mother's with the absolute worst matted hair I've ever seen.  Now you probably think I'm overreacting, but rest assured, you would think there was a small animal living in this giant mess.

Couple of things before I get into this... why do teenage girls hate the shower?  What is it about hot water and steam that sets them off?  This has been an on-going struggle for years, actually,  since I first met her.  It's a constant negotiation with getting her in the shower. Sometimes it's : "Go have a quick shower and we'll do your nails after" or "go rinse off (after swimming lessons) so we can watch a movie tonight" to which her rebuttal has been "I don't need to shower, I had swim today"  WTF?  Seriously, that's when I go through the damaging effects of chlorine on her (drying) skin and the potential of having her gorgeous, shiny blonde mane turn green from the dye.  So when she's in the shower, which lasts up to 1hour, we just keep our mouths shut and praise her for keeping her body film-free and relatively odorless.  She's a teenager after all...

FACTS:

1. There are 24inches of hair
2. It's gorgeous, shiny and blonde
3. The matted area has shortened the hair to 12inches
4. This is the result of at least 4-6weeks of unkept hair

Sadly, my Super-Stepmom radar has been too busy lately to notice that she's been tricking us for at least one month if not since school started (10weeks ago!).   Her MO? Showering without shampooing and quickly putting her hair up in a bun so we wouldn't notice the nest building up at the nape of her neck.

I mentioned her need to shampoo a few weeks ago cause I could smell (wwww) that it needed refreshing.  So yesterday, after our big welcome back bear hug,  I suggested we start brushing her hair out.  And for a change, she was very quick to agree and ran upstairs to shower.  When she came back to me, comb in-hand,  I didn't expect the grapefruit size matte of hair...

After trying to work through it for 2 hours, laughing at some jokes about white-girl dreadlocks and a bird nesting in there and a few tears.  I Googled everything about detangling hair, from wide-tooth combs to detangling spray, but nothing seemed to work.  We tried soaking it in conditioner overnight and are going to continue the painful process again tonight and every night this week... worst case is she's going to get an infamous bad childhood haircut we've all had.

I believe I'll let her bio-mom take her for that salon appointment.  :-)

Don't let this happen to your child's hair!

My stepson? He loves me. He really does.

Being one of three girls, I grew up with nothing but girly things, (sorry Dad).  Yes, one of my sisters ended up being a 'tomboy' but we definitely had more Barbie dolls than sporting equipment in the house.  And sure I played with WWE figurines just as much as the neighborhood boys with whom I traded my Macho Man Randy Savage for the newest British Bulldog (no brainer, right?).  

So when we got married, I had no idea what to expect from my husband's kids, especially then 12yr old boy, J.  He never says much, keeps to himself and his Xbox and frankly,  we don't have much in common.  I'm this outgoing, cheery and sometimes opinionated Canadian girl who works in the beauty industry,  in other words, I don't knew what a soccer ball looked like but rarely got passed the uniform colors.  While he is the calm, cool and soccer type.

I've been in their lives for nearly 3 years and it's been an incredible journey.  I've learned more from both of my step kids than I could have imagined.  It's hard to know if I'm doing a good 'job' with them... Not being their 'mother' but still playing such an important role at this insanely crazy teenage stage is a huge undertaking.  I accept I have my limits and I might not have all the answers but... I am doing my best.

So, despite this 15yr old man child's quiet and reserved existence, he made my heart melt when I opened my birthday card and read these 2 words, in his own handwriting... "Love you, J."

Hooray for me!  I'm doing something right by him.  According to my loving husband, the boy wasn't even coaxed/threatened/bribed into writing it.  Totally on his own volition.  And that, my friends, is good (parental) stuff. :-)

Lessons? Why? I'm really good.

So my 12 year old step daughter is taking band at school.  She is supposed to practice her saxophone every day so my husband decides to rent her a saxophone so she doesn't have to carry the case back and forth from school to home every night.  Well, though the intention is nice, the playing rarely occurs.  More than once have I signed her weekly practice sheet with gaping holes in it and a few 'incorrect' data points.  Alas, I've accepted that when she does practice, she actually is pretty good.
I'm reminiscent of my 8th grade saxophone fiasco, which involved an ambulance and an angry teacher. (while playing the sax, I fainted and knocked over several sheet stands when I tumbled off my chair.  Minor headache ensued, followed by much ridicule as I was switched to a different instrument, the coveted triangle.)

So when I was looking for summer camps and fun things for this tween to do during her 12week-long summer, music lessons came up.  My husband loves that she likes to play an instrument and so we talked about getting her some private lessons.  Without batting an eye, her response?  "No,  I don't need lessons.  I'm REALLY good." This response killed me.   Seriously, I thought I would die.  Initially, I'm thinking; Who the f#@k do you think you are? John Coltrane? Kenny G maybe? Jeezus girl! Take it down a notch!...  Then my husband, the ever proud father to his spitting image daughter, tells me about how proud he is of her confidence.  Which, in hindsight, I might just be jealous of.  I mean, there's no way I thought I was too good for any kind of musical learning so who am I to judge this 12yr old who seems to know everything?  After all, she might be a child prodigy.  Right? Maybe?.... hmmmm

Basically, she's a 7th grader looking to make the big time.  Any agents out there? :-)

Hooray for (Step)Mother's Day!

Ah Mother's Day.  A National holiday honoring she who gave us life, the very people who help prevent the extinction of humankind (ok, I'm being dramatic), the same woman who's taken care of us when we've been sick, be it with chicken pox, first heartbreaks or worst, (and unbeknownst to her) a hangover.

To most mothers, this is a pretty special day.  Time to spend the day with your offspring and cherish the moments.  To others, like the ex-wife, not so much.  

For background, let me recap Mother's Day, 2012.  My daughter was born in August 2011, so last year's was my first official Mother's Day.  To me, this is HUGE.  I look forward to the tacky crafts she'll come home from preschool with one day and I'll stick them to the refrigerator with pride.  I want to be celebrated as a Supermom.  I really do.  It may be related to the fact that I gave birth to her, naturally, midwife/doula/2 assistants and a lot of swearing during those +18 hours of contractions & laboring.  Or it could be the fact that we are done having kids, and this is my one & only pride and joy, my very own mini-me!  So last year, my husband took us (9month old and myself) to an amazing brunch.  We planned a whole day of just hanging out, doing things I love.  Like, said brunch and walking on the beach.  FULL STOP.  Phone call from his ex-wife announcing that she's done spending time with her/their kids and can we come get them.   Now?  PRE our walk on the beach.. She basically spent 2-3 hours with them, they had breakfast at a Bagel Shop because there was too long a line anywhere else.  Ya think?!  And she wants us to cut our day in half because... she wants to go watch a baseball game with her BF.  Btw, did I mention it's Mother's Day, she's supposed to have them ALL day. WTF?

Fast forward to today and our plans for Mother's Day, 2013.  My husband, the chef, is making a  special champagne brunch.  Yum!  Like last year, my step kids are expected to spend the day with their mother.  Alas, my husband's attempt to remind her this is "her" day to spend with the kids was futile. She'll be out of town visiting her BF's parents and therefore doesn't want to get up early to pick up her children.  So we'll be having an amazing brunch, just the 5 of us and she, well, she'll come get them for the afternoon.  As long as there's no game on.  It's no big deal, not to her.  This Mother's Day thing is just another day, or obligation?  

I can only speak for myself.  And I'm excited to spend the day with 21month old (holy shit! when did that happen?),  the Love of my Life and his pretty cool teenagers.  I even requested a game night leading up to the brunch.  Yay for Monopoly.  After all, it's my turn to win.   

Sink or swim..

One sport and one extracurricular activity per school year.  That's what my husband recommends for the kids.  I couldn't agree more, until they're old enough to disagree with you, and want to do their own thing. Which is what? When they're 3 or 4?  Ugh.

Seeing that she's already playing in the local playhouse's adaptation of The Little Mermaid.  After many conversations about what type of sport she'd like to do, my 12year old step daughter chooses swimming or volleyball or tennis or... maybe fencing.  Fencing? Really? I like it when things move along in life so after a school year's worth of humming and hawing, I inquire about swimming.  After hunting down a one-piece swimsuit that's "wedgie-proof" and still girly enough for this very opinionated fashionista-in-training, I find out there are daily tryouts at our community pool.  We can stop any day to test her stroke and talk about swim goals.
We've talked about this tryout a few times already.  Clearly I don't want to take away from her academics so I wait for a day she comes home and says she has no homework.  Which was yesterday.. hooray! I say, let's put your suit on and check it out.  Great timing, the weather is perfect and she has 10minutes to get ready.

8minutes later... "I'm really tired." She gives me this look from the top of the stairs, still wearing her day clothes... wait, I recognize that look. Uh oh. She's on the verge of another meltdown.  Eek!  I cheerily tell her it'll take 10 minutes and she can be back home playing video games in no time.  But..."I already took a shower today!" To which I say she can just rinse off the chlorine post swim.  And then... it happens.  I walk away to get the beach towel and lo & behold, 3 minutes later she is wearing her swimsuit and the biggest frown.  Clearly annoyed but she pulled it together enough for us to make it in time and find out she has 3 friends in the same swim group.

Phew! Crisis averted.

She did great, jumped into the cool water and swam her lap for the coach.
She starts on Monday. :-)

Disney and wicked stepmothers

My toddler, Lucy, seems to be erring on the side of everything "princess-y"lately.  Blame it on our proximity & weekly visits to Disneyland if you will.  She's only 20months old so doesn't really get it yet but as I read her the traditional fairytales, I can't help but notice the recurring role of wicked stepmothers.  And being a stepmother myself, I can't have my own child thinking we're all evil spell-casting witches can I?  I'm not sure I ever really noticed Walt Disney's longtime dislike for stepmothers before... So I did the only thing I could do, I changed the story.  Instead of wicked step mothers, we now talk about the wicked neighbor who poisoned the apple that poor Snow White bit into and that mean neighbor with the two mean girls who adopted Cinderella when her father didn't come home.   Now, if you read my previous post about a not-so-nice neighbor, you'll get the irony.   Hey, what goes around comes around, right?  There's plenty of wicked to go around in this neighborhood!

But as with everything, I also Googled it... turns out there are many cyber conversations about Disney's lack of mother figures & portrayal of step moms.  And did you know he was dyslexic?  There's a lot of angry and defensive people out there discussing how there are no mentions of a mother at all in The Little Mermaid and Beauty & the Beast.  And only wicked stepmothers in Cinderella, Snow White and don't forget poor Tangled up Rapunzel, if you consider the evil witch who hid her away in a tower for 18years, which, let's face it, if I'm going to lock anyone up in a tower, it will be my own little Lucy who's growing up much too fast already!

For more information click the link below...

Top 5 Evil Stepmothers

Nothing says success like mastering a video game

Now I've had my share of gaming thumb-a-litis in my day.  I delivered the daily newspaper to 50 households for years to procure myself a Nintendo (yes, the very first edition) gaming device.  My game of choice was Super Mario Bros., in all it's warp zones and glory.  I'm proud to say I mastered it, albeit not without causing my parents grief for spending so much time, (I was allowed to play 1hour/day).  At that rate, it took me a good 2 years to finish it.  I spent many weekends with Mario, Luigi, Mushroom and that annoying, can't jump for anything Princess.  Times have changed, we've gone from jumping after flagpoles to 18th century assassins fighting for peace through control?!

I just have to remind myself of the hours upon hours I played, not unlike "R", whom last night, proudly boasted she had completed all levels of "Assassins Creed 3".  In only 3 months!  Well done, young grasshopper, well done.


Assassins Creed

Let's just agree to disagree. A lot.

As much as I dislike the saying, I've learned to use it more often than not since becoming a stepmother to two teenagers.  

It amazes me how much teens know these days.  They must have vastly increased the education curriculum these last 20 years because I don't remember knowing absolutely EVERYTHING about EVERYTHING when I was 11 or 15 years old.  I'm just so impressed, er, baffled by the opinions of my 11 year old stepdaughter on all matters I just had to share.  Think I'm exaggerating? Let me give you an example..

I was driving my stepdaughter to a playhouse rehearsal last week when Duran Duran came on the radio.  I'll give her credit, the girl can sing.  It's when she insisted they were an all-girl band I had to object.  Now, I'm a 70s child and a bit 80s obsessed so I knew this was in fact an "all-boy" band, for lack of a better term.  I admit I didn't know every band member's names, though Simon Le Bon with his mullet was a major crush so I proceeded to let this young girl, born in 2001 btw, know this.
Instead of accepting the information presented to her, she outright says "no it's a girl band."  To which I tell her how I saw them in concert years ago and there were no girls on stage, and so unless the band underwent serious surgery since... the melodic voices she was happily singing along with were of the opposite gender.  To which she just shrugged saying "don't think so".

As much as I feel compelled to show her the albums, yes albums!, and prove my right-ness, I know it won't matter to her.  So I just shake my head and laugh it off.

Let's agree to disagree.

Duran Duran Official Website

(Un) Welcome to the neighborhood

I thought it was "Love thy neighbor" not call the cops on them?! Which is what happened to me last week.   We just moved to this really quaint neighborhood a few months ago, it's everything I thought I wanted in a home, including 1 of 8 houses at the end of a cul de sac, access to parks & trails, within walking distance to a good school and preschool, not to mention a Starbucks and martini bar (hello heaven!)  So when I had some friends over for brunch one Tuesday morning, I had forgotten about the NO PARKING on Tuesdays due to street sweeping.  So my next door neighbor says "just use my driveway" which I thought was a great idea and since she was so generous, I thought everyone would be this nice.  So I proceeded to use other neighbors driveways since most of them work and are gone all day they wouldn't even notice.  So I had 6 vehicles parked randomly in people's driveways.  I left notes on the cars and on the front doors explaining it was me and to let me know if they need their driveways.

Not 5 minutes later, a knock at the door.  It's the not-so-neighborly neighbor from across the street is fuming, smoke from ears & hands on hips et al... so I apologize profusely and move the car to the other end of the nearby school (5min walk back home).  20 minutes later, another knock on the door.  This time 2 police officers are standing there.  Initial panic subsides when they ask if the note they pulled off of "someone's"door belonged to me.  I confess and explain the situation which they kindly suggest I warn the neighbors next time.  Which I agreed shouldn't be a problem if I hadn't just moved in and had everyone's phone numbers.  Which is why I left the notes to begin with.  They took my personal information and moved on with their day. Sorry to waste your time Officers!  It's a really nice, typically calm and quiet street.  Today, there are 2 Sheriff SUVs and nosy neighbors from 2 streets over walking by to see what the fuss is about.

Now what?  I am über annoyed but seriously can not believe this happened.  Who does that?  What kind of person calls the police when she finds a strange car in the driveway, but not just any strange car, ready? A Mercedes (gasp!) What is my next step here?  Do I ignore the whole thing? What do I say/do with the not-so-neighborly neighbor?  Egg her house?  Hmmm... tempting.  Alas, my husband calms me down with a martini and I decide to take the high road.  I march over, yes, march and knock at the door and ready for this?  She doesn't answer! She's clearly home, her car is now on one side of the driveway, not even where my friend's car was parked so I march back home.  10 minutes and another martini olive later I stroll back over there.  This time she answers the door.  But not in a friendly  manner, she quickly closes the door behind her and crosses her arms just looking at me with this look.  Pure disgust in her eyes.  Ugh.  Meanwhile, I'm thinking, WTF?  But I'm proud to say I kept my cool.  I killed her with kindness, apologized over and over again about the HUGE inconvenience this caused her and that it would never happen again.  Her response? "You wouldn't like it if my friends parked in your driveway".  At this point I am stifling a giggle.  But I just smile and tell her "Actually, I wouldn't mind, but that's me. And I am truly sorry for this whole thing."

What I learned from this... there are just some really crabby people in every neighborhood.  I just choose not to be one of them.

Which is worst? A 2 or 12 year old's tantrum?

Despite having Disneyland passes, which I am committed to getting my money's worth, my step daughter (12) recently claimed she prefers going to the beach than to Disneyland.  This is the same girl who has gone to the beach a whopping 3 or 4 times in the past 2 years. Even though we are lucky enough to live 20minutes away. So in an attempt to being Stepmother of the year, I get up the following sunny Saturday morning to California-perfect weather so I decide it's a good day for the beach.  I get everything ready for myself, my toddler and the 12 year old who's sleeping in at the time.

Once Sleeping Beauty wakes, I tell her we are having a beach day!  Hooray! Right?  This is the same girl who insisted she preferred the beach to thrill rides. Hmmm... well not so much as it turns out.  She looks at me like I'm from another planet and says "I didn't mean that I wanted to go TODAY!".  I say there's no time like the present, get dressed cause we're going.  She stomps upstairs and comes back 2 minutes later, still in pajamas & is crying about not wanting to go to the beach.  But not just whining-crying (which I can handle) we're talking hysterical crying, full-on balling her eyes out.  I look at her, remind her that SHE said she "loves" the beach and that I was trying to do something fun together.  I get a "you don't understand, I REALLY don't want to go".  So I concede, because frankly, I'd rather not bring her at this point. I warn her she will not have a choice but to come during Spring Break, which is next week.  Can you hear the enthusiasm in my voice? Ugh.

One thing I am sure of, if I could look back at myself at that age, I know going to the beach was not considered a form of torture.

Too close for comfort. With his ex-wife?

There are worst things in life than being too friendly with your husband's ex-wife but there are boundaries.

I have been more than fortunate in my dealings with the ex-wife.  She and I have been cordial and pleasant for the kids' sake and mostly, she and I have had a good rapport.   We only really interact when we're transferring the kids' stuff every week.  We share custody, 50/50, so one of us drops their stuff off at each other's houses every Monday.  Sometimes there's no interaction because she will just leave their stuff in the entrance if I'm not home.  And there are times she offers to drive my step-daughter to school (it's a 10minute walk otherwise)... which is generous of the ex and it gives her a chance to see her daughter on weeks she doesn't have her.  My issue is when she is 20 minutes early picking her up.
Anyone else in this situation would kill time, stop at Starbucks or even wait in the car. What she does is walks right into my house and hangs out.  I'm still in my pj's, making breakfast for my toddler and stepdaughter, I haven't even had my first cup of coffee yet.  If there's one thing I need to wake up in the morning, it's coffee.  And not with my husband's ex-wife.  Twenty minutes is a long time feeling uncomfortable in your own house.  Especially that it turned awkward after 5minutes.  What am I supposed to do?  My instinct was to offer her coffee because that's what I would do for friends, but we're not "friends".  And that's ok.

I respect you and your space.  Please offer me the same courtesy.