Mommy blogger alert! Mommy blogger alert! Mommy blogger alert!
Derick is flying home in about a week to visit for Thanksgiving. He'll be home for about 10 days and I just cannot wait till he gets here. I haven't seen him since August when I took him to the airport to go back to his dad's house after spending most of the summer with me. Jackson and I have been talking about how Derick's going to get on a plane and come see us. Jackson thinks planes are the coolest thing ever along with his big brother so it's double excitement for him.
I keep hoping that Derick will come home to visit and decide to stay for good but I know that's probably not going to happen. I've resigned myself to the fact that he's thriving at his dad's house and that's really all I can ask for. He's happy and keeps busy and he's likes it. Honestly, he's a teenage boy and let me tell you, those teenage boy things they go through is for the birds. All those wonky hormones and brain miss-firings and farting is a lot for one momma to handle. Not that I couldn't do it, but it's nice to have a man (his dad) to pick up where I left off. He gets the sex talk every time he comes home, though, I've already planned on this talk already. He'll be so embarrassed!
Derick will only be here for 10 days and I'm still not quite certain if he's going to come home for Christmas. The school he's at just doesn't have long holiday breaks like they do here so his time is limited and I can't have him missing a ton of school. I worry he doesn't come home enough. I worry that he's not bonding enough with his brother, his cousins and his uncles and grandparents.
What they don't tell you in the parenting books is about the worry and the heartache. Or maybe I missed the chapter for divorced parents where it tells you that eventually your kid will choose one parent over the other and that even though you shouldn't take it personally, you do. I missed that particular paragraph in the Dr. Sears book. Maybe that's because I was too busy trying for the Th time to get Derick to tie his shoes correctly so he wouldn't trip and fall on his perfect little nose that looks just like his dad's. Hell, I'm sure that same scenario happens to parents who are still married. Don't kids gravitate toward one parent over the other eventually?
Speaking of a kid who gravitates to one parent. It irks me that Jackson cries for his daddy when I'm doing things like wiping his butt or his nose or whatever else needs wiping. WHAT IS THAT? It's normal, I know, or so they say so. Last weekend Jackson's dad brought him home from being gone all weekend and Jackson was so excited to see me and I was all HUZZAH!, me kid loves me! Then, not two hours later he was whining about his dad and going to his daddy's house.
INHALE. EXHALE.
Derick was very excited about Halloween this year. Jackson was also excited about Halloween. Derick went through a haunted house with some friends and thought it was hilarious that the girls were freaked out and were screaming like, well, girls. Ah, I remember those high school days of screaming and hoping one of the boys would be my hero and rescue me from the un-dead. Jackson was ecstatic about getting "monies". He calls candy money because once his dad told him it cost money to get candy and the word stuck. I promptly put the non-vegan Halloween "monies" in a pile to give away and the rest is in a bag in the freezer for a rainy or particularly crappy day.
That crappy day might come sooner than later, I'm afraid. My kid cannot get this time change business down and it's killing me slowly. We get up around 8 AM on average which is just fine with me. Occasionally the sleep gods will bless me with an 8:30-9:00 AM wake up time. But not these past few weeks. 5:45 AM, 6:30 AM, whenever-he-damned-well-pleases AM. I've tried laying him down with me which ends with a big toe in my nose and then a big smiley face all up in my business saying "is it time to get up mommy? the sun is up, see". It was cute once or twice and now I'm over it. Please kid, let your momma sleep.
Hey! I have an idea! Maybe I can train Jackson to go wake up Derick at 6 AM when he gets here. That'll help with the bonding time I think they need. And bonus ammo to go along with the sex talk we're going to have. Mommy WIN.
Not being a parent, I can't speak from experience, but I can imagine that it must be so hard not to take this stuff personally, even though from the outside it seems SO CLEAR that this is just about your kids and their moods and their specific needs and not about whether they prefer one parent to the other or love one parent more, you know? But from the inside, when your kid asks for the parent who isn't you... I can only imagine how heart-wrenching that is.
Posted by: Jess | Nov 16, 2009 at 01:23 PM