The Mommies' Diaries…Parenting, One Blog at a Time.

Facebook, Twitter and blogs are full of back to school photos.  I’ve always loved this time of year: brand new backpacks and lunchboxes, blank notebooks waiting to be filled with doodles or stories or math problems, new clothes and shoes, a new teacher and possibly new classmates.  A chance to start fresh and the anticipation of learning new things. A new school year, a blank slate.  I think my excitement is contagious.

Literally billions of children around the world are starting school. Millions of mothers across the country are sending kids off to kindergarten. So many little kids getting their first taste of “real” school. But this one…

This one is mine. My third and final baby on his first day of kindergarten.

I got choked up a little three years ago when I dropped my older two off at kindergarten. But when my little boy hung his backpack up, walked into the classroom and immediately wrote his name on the SmartBoard, I had to put my sunglasses back on to hide the tears.

He’s been my side kick for the past five plus years. Only leaving my side for eight hours and fifteen minutes a week. He’s tagged along to doctors appointments, hair appointments, meetings, lunch dates, errands and more errands, and volunteering at the school he now walks into comfortable enough to put his name on the board on the first day. “I’ll have to bring my son along,” has been my mantra.

Yes, this one is mine. Mine that I will miss terribly no matter how much I have been anticipating having some time to go to the gym and grocery shop by myself.

I am grateful for every poem I’ve read from his most favorite book sitting in our favorite chair, every matchbox car race where I came in 2nd place, every time I said yes to his favorite restaurant rather than my favorite salad bar. I’m grateful even for the trips to Target and Trader Joe’s that took me three times as long as they should have.

Tomorrow I’ll start in on the looooong list of projects I’ve been saving up for the past five years. Today I kind of miss my sidekick.

Today my tiny dancer turns 4.  I feel like my heart is torn in two.  On one side is the fierce mamma pride for her.  She was my first official “special needs” child (and the one we made all the rookie mistakes on).  This same child just officially got kicked out of the system this week because she is all caught up.   I marvel at the child who sings and dances and teases and runs and does all the things that we spent hours in therapy working on.    She is a living advertisement for how important early intervention programs are — and how well they can work.  Not every child will end up catching up on all fronts, but I am promise that every child who gets early intervention will do better than they would have without it.  

The other side of my heart is sad today.  I know that there is another family who has very different memories of this day.  Adoption can be a tricky beast sometimes.  I am acutely aware today of how her other family might be feeling today.  In our family we have a tradition the night before a birthday.  At bedtime we tell the story of the day that they were born and joined the family.   Nori has never asked about it. Ever.  I got to see her little face as I told her about the day we found out that we were matched with her and how we got the call that she was on her way just a few days later.  I explained how she just couldn’t wait to be born and decided to come early.   I ended the story by telling her about her first family and what we know about her other mom. I was very happy to see that she had lots of questions about her mom and I was equally as happy that I could answer most of them for her (hurrah for open adoption).  I dread the day that she starts to understand the whole story.  Too soon she will have the ability to understand the sad and hard parts that come along with her story.  For today though, she is thrilled to have cake and look forward to bringing treats to her school class.  As she marched off to school I heard her call her new baby doll by her birth mom’s name.  

In four short years she has come so far and made some many changes. She went from being a preemie that didn’t engage or move.  This was a kid who spent her first two years officially diagnosed as failure to thrive.  I have half forgotten the hours I spent with her in every kind of therapy (with a newborn in tow).  Crawling, standing, walking, feeding herself, talking; all the large and small milestones that she earned.  I also marvel at the people we met because of her.  At my very first parent support meeting  I met some amazing women who have remained friends (except now we go to dinner without the kids…..).   

I am thankful for my kids. I am thankful for my life.  I am thankful for the hard choices that one special woman made to allow me to raise this daughter that we share.   Now, I am off to make a pink cake with yellow frosting and wrap some presents.   Have a great week everyone!

In my blogs, I try to write about the challenges that come with being a single dad of teenagers.  Sometimes, when certain life situations happen, like dating, it’s important to have someone else to bounce your ideas off of.  It’s one of those advantages you have when you’re married that you don’t necessarily have anymore.

So, when my daughter first told me that she wanted to go to a dance for the first time, my first inclination was to tell her that I hoped she had a wonderful time.  But then she told me a ‘boy‘ had asked her!  My next thought was wondering how many years I was going to have to live behind bars.

When my kids were really young, we had the occasional talk with friends about first baths, the first bicycle ride without training wheels, and first 49er games.  You know, milestones.

When it came to first dates and first kisses, the talks got a little more serious as we joked about polishing knives and cleaning guns.  We laughed a lot.  It was funny.

But then the day arrived and it wasn’t so funny anymore.  My little girl was growing up.  And the biggest problem was that at one time in my life a long time ago, I was the boy asking the father’s daughter out to a dance…

How do you warn the daughter you’ve raised in the shroud of princesses and princes and knights in shining armor that the boy is a threat?  Suddenly your answers to her questions aren’t making any sense.  “Sure honey, but this boy isn’t the prince.  He’s a dark lord.”

“Why is he a dark lord daddy?  He could be the prince.”

How do you answer that?!  When they’re teens, ‘because I said so’s’ don’t really hold water anymore.  Teens are tricky.  They want to negotiate anything and for you to justify everything.  It’s a cruel hand of fate really.  It’s like someone hit the reset button on your list of self-sacrifices and you have to start all over again.

Suddenly, I realized that a tough choice had to be made.  I decided I would agree to the date on the condition that the boy had to be ‘introduced’ to me because that is what princes do.

She agreed and when the night of the dance came, I sat on a bench in the yard when my daughter brought him over to meet me.  I smiled broadly as I stood and when he reached out to shake my hand, I grabbed it firmly.  “When do you intend to bring my daughter home?” I asked.

The boy replied, “Twenty minutes after the dance ends sir.”

“Good answer,” I replied, the smile slipping from my face morphing into a face that would intimidate the devil himself.  “Because if she’s not, I’ll come like a thief in the night when you least expect it.”

I’m happy to report that the boy brought her home at the time the dance was to end.  They both had a good time and I am still a free man.

It’s hard being a single father.  Everyone has an opinion, but the only instinct you must follow is your own.  In my mind, princesses should remain princesses and I intended to keep it that way.