This Blessed Mess » kids

Everythings not about my boobs anymore.

Mrs. Messiness — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 21:54:10 +0000

Oh hai!

Um. I forgot I had a blog. It’ll never happen again. So ANYWAY.

Here, I’ll catch you up:

There was Halloween.

Bella & Veronica/Zombie Cheerleader & Cheeta Cat

Trevor & Billy/The Hobos

Jack/The Baby in Halloween Jammies

And then everyone in the house got disgustingly sick.

But Jack was the only one nice enough to let me take pictures of that part.

Then I got to go on a date with my husband, which happens like, once a year. Dinner and then to see Blue October play at Stubbs.. with NO KIDS which happens like, never.

We were sort of excited.

My handsome husband.

Fun was had by all *SQUEAL*

Then Jack turned one.

He's very good at cake.

Very very good.

We had Thanksgiving.. in which I did not have to cook anything because that’s how awesome my husband is.

Notice how you cannot see me anywhere near the food?

And then we found out we are expecting kid #6. Yes, 6. I’ll keep you updated on this one, I swear.

So now you know where the heck I’ve been. Where the heck have you been?

The incredible exploding family

Mrs. Messiness — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 19:16:41 +0000

So, we took Billy to the airport last week to send him off to his father for the yearly summer visit. After fighting with the ex all year over the visitation schedule, decision making authorities and who pays for what, it was a trip we weren’t sure he would be making. In the end, though, our strange lawyer turned out to me a super-hero and kicked some deadbeat-dad-ass; the ex pays for all transportation, cannot drink any alcohol while our son is in his possession, and only gets 30 days in the summer as opposed to the previous 80-90. We got all that we asked for, and (in true douche bag fashion) the ex threw in a “FINE – It’s just not worth it anyway!” at the end like a kid losing at hopscotch and not a man fighting to see his child. Whatever. Ass.

Either way, I still have to send my son on a plane to stay with that ‘man’ for his time and I still have to smile and pretend like I’m glad he’s having a great time playing Mature and Not Yet Rated video games and watching R and NC17 movies – not going to church and hearing his father get laughs all around for calling people ‘fagots’. Although the ass gets a sorry tale to tell about how his ex-wife screwed him (I didn’t) and how he lost everything (he didn’t), it still feels like a slap in the face to send my son to him at all.

We had to send Trevor & Veronica back the day before Billy left so they could spend their month with their mom; loosing all three at the same time feels like having your family explode and scatter all over the globe – needless to say, it makes me feel a bit shell shocked. Bella and Jack are left now, Bella ever-careful of not mentioning how she doesn’t get one of those vacations, and Jack still too little to care. Ironic, since he’s the only one that can truly enjoy never having been named in a divorce or custody battle.

Having kids is hard.

Wordless Wednesday ~ Trees.

Mrs. Messiness — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 19:45:40 +0000

Stick families

Mrs. Messiness — Tue, 12 May 2009 19:54:26 +0000

I love Mother’s Day. I love the handmade, homemade cards with pictures of mommies with stick-person babies and round kids with too-long legs and too-short hair living in square houses and smiling half-circle smiles. I love the cards. I look forward to them every year and I save them all in a big jumbley stack.

Someday I will put them all in plastic notebook sleeves and even label them with kid-names and ages and put them all in order by kid, then year; but that day is far, far away because, well, I have kids. Lots and lots of kids.

When people ask me how many kids I have I say “We have five” without missing a beat. Every once in awhile, I will offer the explanation of how he had two and I had two and then we had another one, but that usually leads having to listen to all the reasons why they did or did not like Eight Is Enough and/or The Brady Bunch and inevitably, them saying “Hey! Now you just need one more so it can be two and two and two!!” because apparently families work best and are complete when they are mathematically balanced. More often than not, though, I say “We have five” and leave it at that.

I grew up in what felt like a giant pile of mismatched socks; people were always asking who belonged to whom, and why. I grew up with my mom and step-father, two older step-sisters and my adopted younger sister (whose biological mother was my oldest step-sister). My brother lived with my dad and I visited on the weekends. My step-sisters insisted that my mom and I lived in their house with their dad – that my brother and I were the ’other kids’. In conversations, I never ever let a ‘your dad’ go by uncorrected when used in reference to my step-father. I never let anyone call my step-sisters my ‘sisters’, but I insisted that no one ever call my little sister anything less that my sister. There was always separation and distinction. We identified ourselves with our differences; displayed our separateness before our similarities – and in the end, are in fact, all separate.

My mother and step-father have long since divorced and after an ugly custody battle; my step-father raised my sister and my mother left town. I never speak to the step-sisters or my step-father but my brother and sister and I are close. My sister is very close to her biological mother – my oldest step-sister – and calls her husband a step-dad. As you can imagine, I have a hard time mapping out this whole community when trying to tell childhood stories to my kids. To this day, I avoid “how many kids were in your family?” because it was just too confusing to recite all the rules.

I glow when asked how many kids I have. I beam. I swell. We have five. All five of them stack up perfectly. They all match. They’re made out of tiny pieces all of us and of each other and we’re all glued together (in our triangle dresses and orange yarn hair) and I thank God daily for every extra minute we get to share together.

Someday, I’ll sit with a giant, nicely-organized binder full of all my Construction Paper Mother’s Day cards in their pretty flat plastic sleeves (in order of kid and year, no less) and I’ll show them all off to all my hundreds of grandkids. I’ll pull each card out one by one and we will reattach each taped-on heart and glued-on button that didn’t make it through the years. I’ll tell them all the stories about their mommies and daddies that I promised never to tell and show them all the embarrassing haircut pictures that they think I threw away.

And eventually, I will make sure they all know how some families are built with construction paper and Elmer’s glue, and that even though our buttons might fall off and our yarn hair might get fuzzy – we absolutely must stay stuck to each other.

Happy late Mother’s Day, mommies – may your Popsicle sticks never be splintery.

What I learned today

Mrs. Messiness — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 21:04:11 +0000

That 4 months and 2 weeks worth of laying around on your back makes learning to do this:

Worth screaming for joy over.

There is a very proud and tired baby in the Messiness household this evening, because apparently, once you learn how to roll over, it is ridiculous not to.

Thank you, God for our healthy babies.

Mrs. Messiness — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 15:08:58 +0000

After watching Heather & Mike’s unspeakable tragedy unfold and knowing that the world will not be the same after their precious baby Maddie has left it – I have no other words but to thank God for our five healthy and strong kids.

“Ye have lost a child–nay, she is not lost to you, who is found to Christ; she is not sent away, but only sent before; like unto a star, which going out of our sight, doth not die and vanish, but shineth in another hemisphere.” -Samuel Rutherford

Sleep sweet, baby Maddie.

Please consider donating to the March of Dimes in Maddie’s name here.

Foreheads, Republicans & Singing Doctors

Mrs. Messiness — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 16:47:57 +0000

Where the hell have I been?

Hiring a lawyer: Yay for custody battles! This appears to be going ok-ish, although my Republican, Bush-loving, animal-heads-mounted-on-his-walls, nervous-twitch-having lawyer kept smacking himself on the ass and telling us that he has a birthmark “RIGHT.THERE” that matches the one on Jack’s forehead. I think he is on drugs. He is a very nice man.

At the doctors office: My poor, poor, pitiful Bella was in line, walking to the bus after school when her “legs tangled” and she fell, face-first onto the pavement. Apparently, her “arms were busy falling” (direct quote from her) so they weren’t able to catch her and she broke her defenseless, minding-it’s-own-business, perky little nose. She also bit through her upper lip, got a big purple goose-egg on her head, and skinned both knees and an elbow. Bruises are spreading across her nose and under both eyes, and her lip is turning yellow to match the hue of the lump in the middle of her forehead. We are sure to become the talk of the town (or at least the talk of the crazy ladies at the bus-stop). Bonus: The doctor sang an off-key “We Will Rock You” to Belle after she finished peroxide-ing her wounds and sopping blood and mud from her nose. I love our doctor.

Sleeping!!: Jack has graced us with 8 long hours of wonderful, uninterrupted, fabulous sleep every night!! This is a beautiful, beautiful thing and I have caught myself more than once almost waking him up to nuzzle and snuggle and thank the slobber right out of him.

And that’s about the size of it. Plus, I am working on putting my story together for MaggieDammit who is my new hero. Stay tuned, my loyal readers (all 1.5 of you).

I hope you read this.

Mrs. Messiness — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 15:38:50 +0000

What you are doing is not fair. I know – life is not fair – but what you are doing is just offensive to me as a mother and as a woman and it’s plain wrong.

I married you when I was a silly little girl - just doing what I was told - but divorcing you filled me with a furious need to never be ‘silly’ again. To never be disregarded or ignored or insignificant again. I have long since nullified my resentment of you because I am not sure I would like a person that hadn’t learned all those lessons you taught me. All the strength that leaving you brought me – the bull-headed determination that still stamps itself on my face when someone tells me that I can’t do something, or raises a hand to me, or dares to act as if I am ‘insignificant’.

But your absence from our son was never excused. Make no mistake; I have never, and will never, speak ill of you to him, but I will never lie to him, either. I waited and waited for you to start being his father. I knew that Washington had nothing left for me – but I stayed – just in case you would decide to be in his life. I put my world on hold and I did not move on or do anything for myself because I never ever wanted to give you another excuse for why you just couldn’t make him significant enough. I waited for 8 years for you to make just one move closer to him. One. And you didn’t. I all but begged you – no, I did beg you to be in his life – and you simply said ‘no’.

So I left. I left because while I was busy trying to force you to not make my son feel insignificant and unimportant – your behavior began to highlight that fact and make it throb. So I took him and we left to find a better life. And we did. We found a wonderful life filled with love and compassion and family and no one ever feels left out or small. He has brothers and sisters and a man in his life that would never hurt him or his mom. And he was healing. I know that no amount of a mothers love can ever fill up the hole that being abandoned by a father leaves – but he was healing, and the wounds that you left became only bruises and they didn’t bleed like they did when you simply said ‘no’.

And then, lo and behold, because you just can’t just let people heal, you showed back up. Talking about video games and cars and all the things that a boys his age think dads talk about. With no explanation of why your face was not familiar to him or why your voice did not sound like home to him. With no reasoning or apology or anything to explain why you refused to exist for so long – nothing but expensive electronics and promises of a car when he turns 16 and BAM! You are a hero – you can do no wrong.

My son is caring and loving and considerate – but when he comes home from your house, he is mean. My son would never hurt his mom’s feelings – he knows what struggles we went through -he remembers . But when he comes home from your house he makes fun of our life – he belittles our home and he tries to makes it seem insignificant. That is not ok.

And now – you think he belongs to you. Now you think that all if takes is your money and your lawyer and you big words and you can just take him away. You think that it’s ‘your turn’. You think that you can just make demands on me and my family and we have to just lie down -like before- and that you’ll get whatever you want because you are ‘the man’ and what you say goes but you are wrong in so many ways.

I will fight with you. I will play your stupid game. I will go to court and I will break your ‘rules’. I say whatever I need to say and I won’t smile pretty this time. Did your brother ever find out all those things you told his wife? Did your mom ever find out why you really spent that time in jail when we were married? How about your wife – is she aware of your how you feel about other men? Or does she just ignore that – like I wouldn’t?

I will fight you for my son and he will stay with me. And no, I will not be covering ‘all the costs’ you incurred because I moved out-of-state. I simply say ‘no’. And if you want to play dirty and remind me that life is not fair – then I will do that too. I am not above hitting below the belt – and you should know that, going in.

My son will not be insignificant or unimportant- and you are not allowed to use him to try to alleviate your insignificance and unimportance. I raised him. I cried for him when he hurt and held him when he cried for you. I answered the hard questions and none of them ever had anything to do when an X-Box or an IPod. I built my whole world around him not hurting – so you are not allowed to come in and try to push it all over.

You are not important. You are not significant. You are not a dad- you are just another struggle that he will remember having to go through – I know that, because I know you – and I know you can’t endure anything that is real – and you will disappear again. And I know that you will blame it on me for fighting with you- and that’s ok too.

Just go – I’ll play your stupid game, and I’ll pick up all the pieces and put him back together, I always do, just go.