Saturday, January 23, 2010

"This is, like, the best sleepover ever!"


Today is SD12's 10th birthday. Two of her friends are over (one spending the night, one getting picked up later). They're watching a movie and eating ice cream. SD12's having such a great time. It's nice to see her so happy and relaxed. She worries about everyone else so often, it's nice to see her being a normal kiddo.

I made her cake - she requested a 'smiley face cake'. Thank goodness, this is my first go-around with cake decorating, all I needed to do was not screw up the eyes and mouth. Mission accomplished.

We decorated the house. Nothing too exciting, paper streamers and balloons. But E was pretty excited about - she even said, "Wow, this looks really good, thanks D." I got lots of hugs and lots of praise for being the "best step-mom ever."

The husband and I gave SD12 $50 to spend on the micro-lending website Kiva . She's been talking a lot about how she's too little to make a difference, and I wanted to show her that that's not true. Once we got our money back, she can lend it to someone else. She thought it was pretty cool. But yes, we're taking her to Build-A-Bear tomorrow so she can build something. :-)

Good day. Really good day.

P.S.
Pic attached. Sorry for the blurring, you're missing out on how cute she is - but I want to protect her privacy. :-)

Thursday, January 7, 2010

culture clash

*sigh* No amount of graduate school work could have prepared me for this.

I'm white. I'm as white and as Californian as they come. Growing up, we lived 300 miles away from our nearest blood relatives - and I saw them once or twice a year. Not really a big deal. I haven't seen most of the aunts, uncles nor my paternal grandmother is almost a year. I'm not even sure if I've met all of my mom's brothers. When we visit each other, we stay in hotels (or in our case, in our motor home outside their home). We visit for short stretches, have a few formal-ish dinners and that's about it. We don't get in each other's business, but offer support when needed.

My husband is Mexican. He was born in Mexico and moved to the US full-time when he was in middle school. His family moved here because his father was getting a PhD in chemistry. Most of his maternal family lives about 3 hours from us and his parents live in town. *sigh* When the husband and the BM got pregnant (at 19 and 20 years old), my husband's parents stepped up and helped raise the kids. After the divorce they helped even more. So the kids and grandparents are used to week-night sleep overs, weekend sleepovers etc. Husband's mother begs to have the kids over. Which is great - when we need a break or have an appointment, they are there. But sometimes they are a little TOO there. We haven't seen the kids since they went to school on Tuesday morning - BM has them Wednesday and Thursday nights, barf. And the husband was ready to let the kids sleepover at his parents tomorrow night. Which means not seeing them for THREE DAYS. Ummm so not good with me. I want to see them. Check in with them about how their weeks went etc. PARENT them ourselves.

I don't get this whole extended family raising kids thing. I don't like it either. Too out of control - too much TV over there (we do basically none). Too much hand holding and babying that goes on - let them make mistakes for crying out loud! They have this ownership over the kids that I don't like. If they want to have kids there all the time, adopt. I want to spend time with them! It would be different if we had the kids 100% of the time, then it's not a big deal. But we are going to be seeing so little of them that I don't want to lose time with them. It sucks. But I feel like I can't speak up too much since "I'm not their mom." Shouldn't I crave alone time with the husband like all the step-parenting books say? Is it weird that I like to do things together, as a family? Isn't that what it's supposed to be like?

I wonder how things will be when I have kids myself. Because I plan to raise them at home. Yes, visits to grandparents, but they won't have a room there! That's strange to me. I want my little house and my little family - without so many hands in the pot. I just want to be left along to raise kids. Is that too much to ask? Or am I being selfish?