Getting Things Done

My long-time readers will remember that we bought a house back in December of 2009.  This house has 4 bedrooms…a master, the Little Guy’s bedroom, a play/game room for the LG and a spare bedroom that has been turned in to my scrapping room.  This 4^th bedroom was intended to be a nursery and hopefully that is exactly what it will be in a few months.

We have told the LG since we moved in that we were going to fix up his play room.  We were going to get him a new TV, paint, hang up a bunch of sports stuff and make it a really cool room.  Well, we have dragged our feet.  It’s not cheap to buy a new TV and TV stand so we have been procrastinating.  We have also had a hard time finding a TV stand that we like and that will hold the video games and consoles in a neat and orderly fashion.

I’m now pregnant and BJ is anxious (to say the least) to get started on the basement so that we can move my scrapping things down there and turn the room into the nursery.  I told him that there is no way we are starting on the nursery until we complete the LG’s playroom.  I suggested doing it all at once on a weekend that we didn’t have him so that he could see it completed on his first day back at our house.  BJ agreed and we set our plan in motion.  I already had bought quite a few things to hang up in the room over the last couple of years so we were set there.  We bought a TV and actually found a really cheap but perfect TV stand and hid them in the basement.  BJ bought the paint (the same gray we painted our bedroom and a bright orange that the LG had picked out for an accent wall) and we were set.  One Friday after work BJ began taping off the trim and ceiling and we moved everything out of the room and I did almost all the cutting in.  It was a late night for us.  The next morning I got up early and finished cutting in while BJ drank his coffee and then he joined me.  He taped off the accent wall and we starting painting.  We worked all day and into the evening but we got the room painted with 2 coats and it looked great!

Sunday was spent adding all the decorating touches…sticking on the wall decals, hanging the sports pictures, pinning the Ovechkin jersey to the wall, hooking up the TV, hanging the pictures of the LG playing sports, setting his trophies out and making sure everything looked awesome.  The room was missing something so we headed to kmart to see if we could find a sports clock.  No luck, but we found a great sports area rug that we snatched up and added to the room for a final touch.  There are still a few bare spots on one of the walls so we need to get some Orioles things and maybe a few more Redskins items and then we will be 100% finished.  The room looks so great.  I don’t think I’ve ever been so proud of us and how we worked together to make it perfect for the LG.

Monday came and BJ told the LG that we had a surprise for him in his room so he wasn’t allowed to go in there to play.  As soon as I got home from work we all headed upstairs and we did the big reveal.  He was so happy.  He really likes his room and I’m so glad.  I hope that he can hold onto this memory and really appreciate all that we did for him.  And although he probably wouldn’t have said anything to us if we had done the nursery first, I think there would have been an underlying resentment there.  And who could have blamed him, you know?  So now he knows for sure that he is just as important as the new baby and that we worked just as hard for him as we will on the nursery.

I’ll eventually post pictures of the room and pictures of the rest of the house because we have done some work over the last couple of years and I promised pictures a long time ago.

Feeling Like a Fraud

As most of you know, I’m a step parent. The LG (Little Guy) came into my life not long after he turned 4. I love him dearly. He’s almost 10 now...unbelievable. Being a step parent is not without challenges. Parenting of any form has challenges. He is with us 50% of the time and that boils down to every other day during the week and then every other weekend (F, S, S). It’s nice to have the pattern and to see him so much. I will write more about step parenting on this blog in the future but right now I want to address why being a step parent makes me feel like a fraud.


I’m very involved in the LG’s life. I don’t know how not to be. It’s very easy for me to fall into a parenting roll when he’s with us. I worry about him all the time. I worry if kids at school are picking on him because of his slight speech impairment (he has trouble with the letter R). I worry about whether or not he’s getting enough sleep and what he’s eating and drinking. I worry that something is wrong when he sleeps late on the weekend. He’s a heart patient and his doctor says that he’s the picture of health, but still....I worry.

I also do other “motherly” things. I cook for him, I pack his lunch, I do his laundry, I help with homework, I try to teach him things, I hug him when he’s sad, I laugh at his silly jokes, I attend some school functions, I go to school meetings, I go to all sporting events, I scrapbook for him, I buy him clothes and toys, I take him out to eat and to the movies and to hockey games. I also do the not so fun things like tell him to hurry up and eat his dinner because it’s getting late, tell him to scoop the litter, to clean his bathroom, to throw his trash away, to put his clothes in the laundry basket...all those things that his future wife will thank me for later. Basically, I’m trying to teach him to be responsible, courteous of others, have some initiative and how to be independent. These things are not easy to accomplish since his mother does not make him do much of anything. That is a topic for another post.

When I’m at a scrapbooking event and people ask me about my pictures I have to say that the child in them is my stepson. I sometimes wonder if they think it’s strange that I have so many photos of him and that I’m taking such pride in making the scrapbook when he’s not “my” child. I wonder if they think I’m going a little overboard since he’s not “mine”. I wonder if they think it’s odd that I’m doing this for him instead of “just having my own”. If only they knew.

When I do all of these things, I feel like a Mom. I feel the love, the pride, the angst, the worry, the disappointment (sometimes), the joy, the excitement...all of it. But he’s not mine. He never will be. I wonder if I'm too attached. Am I too involved? Am I stepping over my bounds as a step parent? I wonder how his mother feels sometimes when she knows how involved I am. I know that if I were in her shoes I’d be happy that someone loved my child but I’d also want her back off a little (a lot??) sometimes.

I have all these parenting duties and feelings and then time and time again I’m slapped in the face with the fact that he’s not mine and that I’m not his mother. It’s like I’m playing House and pretending to be the Mom. The LG loves me, I know that. He’s very sweet and very affectionate and when BJ and I are playing around (wrestling) he comes to my defense. We are allies when BJ is in one of his moods and we stick together when one of us is feeling down and out. He never intentionally makes me feel like I’m second best, but I know that I am. He has a mother. She is very involved in his life, too, of course. I’m glad that she is but at the same time it just kills me to be the 3rd wheel of the parenting vehicle.

I had a very bitter sweet moment a couple of weeks ago when his mother was out of town. There was an event at school for kids and their moms. Since she was not available, he asked me to go. I was thrilled to be there. I also felt very out of place. There were moms and kids all around us and I knew I didn’t really belong and the only reason I was there was because the real mom was away.

Sometimes when the 3 of us are out together everyone assumes that he is mine. We have almost the same color hair and we both have blue eyes so it’s a natural assumption. People will say, “and what is mom having?” or “how does his hair look, mom?” (when he’s getting a haircut). Sometimes I ‘fess up but other times it’s just easier to go with the flow. I’ve explained my reasoning to him about why I don’t always tell people and he’s ok with it, or so he says. In the back of my mind I’m wishing that I never had to confess the truth.

I feel like a fake. I feel like I have no right to be so involved and so attached and so invested in this child. However, I just can’t help myself. I love him and I care about him and for him and who he is and who he will become. He will be the only child I will ever get the chance to parent. There are times when I tell myself that I’m going to take a step (or 10) back and just let BJ do the parenting. That doesn’t usually last very long because I just can’t seem to help myself.

And the burning question is: Would I still have all of these feelings if I were able to have or already had my own child? Would I be as attached to him? Would I be as involved? Would I feel like such a fraud if I mothered him right along with mothering my own child? That is another post waiting to be written.