Author Archives: Cindy

learning how to get mad

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A few months ago, when I started seeing a psychiatrist about my anxiety issues, she tried changing my meds. It didn’t really help, and the new medications had some really awful side effects. There were a few other factors in this decision-making process, but working with my doctor, we decided to try weaning me off of all medications to see how I’d do.

I added in a magnesium supplement and a couple of other herbal remedies that are supposed to naturally help with anxiety. And for the most part, I’ve been doing really well.

One weird thing, though: not being on an SSRI means that I’m suddenly feeling ALL of my feelings. I’m happier, yes absolutely, but I also cry more easily and I get frustrated more often. These are not bad things, mind you, just part of the basic human experience which I more-or-less medicated myself out of, for the past two years.

But I have a very hard time dealing with anger. When I’m in a relationship with someone, I don’t know how to fight. It basically scares me to death.

Growing up, my parents argued a lot (they still do, really) – and I remember going to my room and turning my music up so I wouldn’t hear them. They fought dirty, and they were mean to each other. I never wanted a relationship like that.

When I was married, I thought it was great that Dave and I never fought – how perfect is our relationship? We never even argue about anything! Turns out, that’s actually not a good thing, it just leads to years of anger and resentment build-up. And we all saw how well that ended, right?

I don’t really know where the in-between is, but I’m trying to find it with Chris. For the most part, we’re still in the shmoopy lovey-dovey phase where everything is all passion and sex, but we’ve talked about how this is something I struggle with, and I don’t want it to become a problem in our relationship.

And last night, I got angry. Well, specifically, he made me angry. I’m not even going to get into the whole backstory because it’s just way too long and drawn out to even start, but it happened. And I said the words out loud, “I’m really mad at you right now.” And the world didn’t end. He didn’t dismiss my feelings, or emotionally shut down and withdraw from me, or say something nasty and hateful in return. He hugged me and tried to make me talk about it. Which I couldn’t really do (there was a lot of “why do you think [whatever]?” questions which I could only answer with an “I don’t know”), but we tried.

Whenever we hit some new emotional raw nerve, I always feel sort of shaky and needy the next day. This was no exception. He spent the night last night (something he’s been doing a lot lately, which makes me happy), and before he left for work, I hugged him as hard as I could and buried my face in his chest.

He asked if I was ok.

I said, “Promise me you’ll still come back tonight.”

He said yes.

I said, “Then I’m ok.”

I don’t know if this is normal, I feel like I should be doing a better job at keeping my shit together emotionally than I do. But I appreciate that he’s trying to help make me stronger and more articulate about my feelings.

That whole personal growth thing, though. Man, that’s tough.

six and a half

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I know that lately all of my posts have been about my relationship or my boobs, but can I stop for just a minute here and talk about Catie?

Because, my god. That kid.

She is this amazing combination of toddler and teenager. She can still throw a tantrum with the best of them — although to be fair, she didn’t have them for a long time, it’s only been since Lucy hit the “terrible twos” that Catie has started acting out again (obviously a case of sibling competition happening here). At the same time, she can throw her hands on her hips and heave a sigh at me, and I swear it feels like a 14 year-old just showed up in my house.

She picks up on everything. I can’t spell words around her anymore because she’ll immediately figure out what I’m trying to say that I don’t want her to hear.

She’s tall and skinny and she’s all long limbs that she hasn’t quite mastered yet. She’s clumsy, like a baby horse trying to find its legs.

She hides from my camera now, and on the rare occasions when she does smile for a picture, she does it awkwardly.

The first time they both let me put their hair up on the same day

There are two missing teeth in that smile. Every day, she checks the mirror to see if her “grown-up teeth” have come in yet.

She loves Skylanders and Angry Birds and Plants Vs Zombies and a million other video games, and I have no doubt that she’s going to grow up to be a video gamer chick. Her favorite baby-sitter plays Legend of Zelda with her after Lucy goes to bed.

She’s a tomboy. She doesn’t like to wear dresses, and on the rare occasions when she does, she wants to wear leggings or shorts under them (which is FINE with me.)

She still says she wants to be a paleontologist when she grows up.

One of her favorite songs is “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

She loves “Eye of the Tiger,” and songs by Michael Jackson and Duran Duran. She had me put the entire Xanadu soundtrack on her iPad so she can listen to it over & over, just like I did when I was a kid. (Only, you know, mine was on a cassette tape.)

She also loves most songs on pop radio – she’s a big Macklemore fan. I love singing along with her in the car while we drive.

She still believes in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, although I know I only have a couple of years left for that. (I learned about Santa when I was 7.) One day, because of scheduling issues, she had to come with me to my chiropractor’s appointment, and he – being kind of an oddball dude – showed her a couple of magic tricks. She was amazed. It struck me that to her, there was no slight of hand or trick of the eye, that magic was all real to her. Which is pretty awesome.

But oh, she can be difficult. She’ll whine that I don’t like her because I only take care of Lucy and I don’t do anything for her, she’ll dig her heels in and refuse to try something new just because I suggested it, she’ll throw a fit because Lucy dared to pick up a toy that she hasn’t touched or played with in at least a year.

But then she’ll go the other direction and blow my mind. She’ll get out her old Halloween costumes so she and Lucy can play dinosaurs together…

Oh dear. Looks like there are dinosaurs in my bed.

…Or she, the one I’ve always called my Cautious Girl, will decide to go to some giant indoor trampoline place, which she would’ve been too scared to attempt even just a year ago, and she’ll launch herself off of a trampoline into a giant pit of foam blocks…

My super cautious girl getting ready to jump off a trampoline into a pit of foam blocks.

…Or she’ll sit down with Lucy to try to teach her how to write letters and color within the lines.

One of the few moments where they sit quietly next to each other without fighting.

She has so much empathy for people around her. A little boy at daycare stomped on a caterpillar and killed it when they were playing outside – no reason why, he was just being a jerk, I guess – and Catie sobbed. She said she scooped it up with a leaf and put it under a bush in the shade to “bury it.” And then she cried to me, “And I told him that I hope he has a happy life in heaven.” I told her that heaven needs butterflies too, so it was ok, but she was heartbroken for that caterpillar.

Before kindergarten ended, she came home from school one day and told me, “Everyone in my class says that [little girl’s name] is fat, but I think she’s the beautifulest.” Since I was one of those fat little girls myself, my heart just melted.

Yesterday, I had to get my hair cut, and I had my hairstylist also do Catie’s hair, since it was looking really long and shaggy. She gave her this really great bob cut, and suddenly she looks so much more grown up to me.

My hairstylist also cut Catie's hair. She looks so pretty I can't stand it.

Seriously, I do not know how I created a little girl that is this pretty. (I tend to not say too many flattering things about my ex-husband, but I think he gets the credit for most of her.)

She starts first grade in less than three weeks. I know she’s nervous about it, but she’s ready.

I hope she knows how proud I am of her. I tell her all the time, I just hope she hears me.

Because she is amazing.

boobage

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I’ve been debating on whether or not this is a topic for my blog, and… well, here goes.

I’m getting a boob job next week.

A lot of people I know, upon hearing this, have reacted along the lines of, “What? Why? Your boobs are fine!”

You know what those people have in common? They’ve never seen me naked.

Have you seen those super-padded “add a cup size” bras? Those are all I own. So, if you think my boobs look normal, that’s why.

I’m not going to post a topless photo of myself on the Internet to prove just how much I need this, so instead, I took a picture of myself in my pajamas and just pulled my t-shirt tight so you can see exactly how much I’m not rocking up top.

Before Boobs

See? There’s not a lot going on there. Like, at all.

And I’ve wanted bigger boobs for the past 20 years, at least. For a while I thought, oh well, someday I’ll have kids and they’ll get bigger. Only they didn’t get bigger. Even after my girls were born and I thought that maybe I’d get giant nursing boobs? Nope. I went up maybe half a cup size (and that’s being generous), but that was all.

I remember trying on nursing bras in a store, and realizing they didn’t make padded, push-up nursing bras. And I cried. (Although to be fair, I’d had a baby the week before, so I cried about lots of things then.)

Perk of having had a blog for ages: I realized that oh yeah, I’ve written about this before. Key passage there:

I started thinking about how most women have at least one part of their body that they hate and obsess about constantly? Mine has always been my breasts. They’re too small, they aren’t a pretty shape, my nipples are proportionally too large, whatever. Hating my boobs has pretty much been a constant in my life since puberty. I guess I feel like this is just another way in which they’ve failed me.

They failed me twice, actually, because breastfeeding didn’t work with Lucy either. And then earlier this year, I lost over 30 pounds, which is wonderful, but I went from having pretty-much-nothing boobs to now-wrinkly-REALLY-nothing boobs.

And it’s not like I want anything freakishly large either. I want my upper body to feel proportionate to my lower body. No giant circus clown boobs. Just, I don’t know, a solid C cup would be lovely.

Chris is a typical guy, so he doesn’t really care one way or the other – boobs are boobs. But since I decided to do this, there have been so many boob-related puns lately, y’all – like he “fully supports” my decision, jokes about cups that runneth over, etc. He’s awesome, but there’s also been a lot of eye rolling happening over here.

I worried a little about how I’d explain it to Catie, because I’m so cautious about her learning negative body image ideas from me. (For example, I never tell her that I’m on a diet to lose weight, I tell her that I’m on a diet to make myself stronger so that I can keep up with her and Lucy.) So I kind of casually mentioned that you know, my boobs don’t look the same since I had kids, so a doctor is going to fix them up for me, but it’s no big deal. She kind of shrugged and said, “oh ok.” And that was that.

(Obviously, since Lucy is only two, I don’t worry about what she thinks too much. I doubt she’ll internalize any body image issues at her age.)

So, yeah. Boobs. Next Thursday, July 18th. And I am really, really excited, you guys.

the first boyfriend sleepover

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I’ve mentioned before that Chris and I have been taking things pretty slowly and carefully with our kids and what they’re exposed to, as far as our relationship. And I think it’s gone really well – our kids get along well together, and his kids seem to like me, and my girls adore him.

One of the things that he and I have talked about many times, but hadn’t actually done yet, is having a sleepover when the kids are in the house. On the nights when Chris doesn’t have his kids, sometimes he’ll come over for dinner and hang out until after the girls go to bed, but typically he’ll come over around 9 p.m., after the girls are already asleep, and he leaves to go home long before they wake up in the morning.

Saturday was a little different. We met up with our kids at Pullen Park and let them play together. Chris’s mom was also there, which made me a little nervous, but this is the second time I’ve met her, and she seems to like me as far as I can tell. (Older Southern women can be hard to read. They’re going to act like they like you, no matter what, because that whole Southern Hospitality Gene is fully ingrained in their personalities.)

The kids had a great time, although it was ridiculously hot and sweaty at the park. After a couple of hours, we split up – he took his kids to their mom’s house, and I picked up Jasmine (my girls’ favorite baby-sitter) on our way home.

The plan had been that we’d go back to our respective homes and clean up, and then Chris would pick me up for a date night on Saturday night. I showered and got dressed while the girls hung out with Jasmine (seriously, teenagers are the BEST), and I ordered pizza for them to have while I was out. It was getting kind of late, and Chris hadn’t gotten to my house yet, which was odd.

Then he called and said, “Sooooo, I think we’re having dinner at Bonefish Grill.”

Me: “Ok, that’s fine with me, but why there?”

Him: “Because my car just broke down next to it.”

Yikes. So, instead of him picking me up, I hopped in my car and took off to pick him up. He had managed to get his car into a parking space by coasting downhill into a shopping center. He called his mechanic (who happens to be a friend of his), and he said he’d come out to meet him the next morning to look at the car. But basically he was stranded with me from Saturday night until around 11:00 a.m. on Sunday morning.

And that’s the backstory on how we had our first official sleepover with the kids in the house. He couldn’t leave before they woke up, because his car was dead in a parking lot five miles from my house.

Around 6 a.m. on Sunday morning, Lucy came to get in bed with me, the way she always does. I let her climb in, but I said, “Look, baby, Chris is here too, see?” I didn’t want her to be scared, and she wasn’t, she just looked kind of confused. I scooted into the middle of the bed and pulled her up next to me, and she kept craning her head up to look over me at Chris, like, “Huh. Well this isn’t part of our routine.” Then finally she lay back down and went to sleep for a while.

(Side note just because some people may read this and wonder: everyone was sleeping fully clothed. T-shirts and pajama pants all around. Just in case anyone was worried.)

By 8:30, Catie came into my room too, which woke us all up. She saw Chris was there and was totally unfazed. Lucy was happy by then too, and I turned on the TV in my bedroom for the kids to watch cartoons for a while. They climbed all over us and tickled each other and laughed, and it was a really great little moment there.

Finally, we got out of bed and got dressed, then went out for pancakes, before taking Chris to his car to meet up with his mechanic friend. (It turned out to be a dead alternator. It’s fixed now.)

I love that my girls love him and are totally at ease with him. In fact, on Sunday morning, I fussed at Lucy for something (I don’t even remember what, it just got a, “no ma’am, we don’t do that” from me), and she ran to Chris and buried her face in his neck for comfort. And Catie gives him hugs and kisses whenever she can.

Lucy watches Bubble Guppies on The Guy's lap while Catie shows him her iPad game. #love

Watching how easily their relationship has developed makes me really happy. He’s great with his own kids, I should’ve known that he’d be equally great with mine.

Later on Sunday, I had this conversation in the car with Catie:

Me: “Hey, Bug, I need a favor. How about we don’t tell Pop-Pop that Chris spent the night?”

Catie: “Ok, but why?”

Me: “Well, Pop-Pop thinks that boys & girls shouldn’t spend the night together unless they’re married.”

Catie: “Why does he think that?”

Me: “You know, babe, Pop-Pop is just old, and there were certain things people believed when he was young that we don’t believe anymore, but he still does, even though it’s stuff that doesn’t matter anymore. Does that make sense?”

Catie: “Is this like how he sometimes says bad things about black people?”

Me: “Yes, exactly like that. We know that’s wrong, and we don’t believe that anymore, but that’s how things were when Pop-Pop was growing up, so he still thinks that way.”

Catie: “That’s silly.”

Me: “Yep, it sure is.”

And then she dropped it, and she hasn’t said a word about the sleepover since then. I know my dad will eventually find out, and I’m sure he’ll flip his lid, because even after two kids, he can’t handle the idea that maybe I’m not a virgin anymore. But as much as I love my dad, he doesn’t get to dictate the rules of my relationship. So, if/when he finds out and gets upset, we’ll deal with it. That’s just life.

But right now? Life is really, really good.

divorced mom rules

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I suppose it’s universally known that divorce sucks, right? I mean, that’s no secret. And it’s worse when there are little kids involved. Again: not a secret.

But I’ve always had this rule, that I will do everything in my power to limit what the kids are exposed to. Dave and I go through phases where we get along, and phases where we don’t, but the kids don’t hear about it when we’re fighting. I never want them to feel like they’re being put in the middle, or forced to pick sides.

Since Dave lives in Seattle and we’re in North Carolina, I do whatever I can to try to facilitate the girls’ relationship with their dad. If they ask to have a FaceTime chat with him, unless it’s in the middle of the night, I always text him to see if he can talk to them. I try to make sure they get as much time with him as possible when he’s in town. Sometimes it’s inconvenient or hard for me personally, but I put my own feelings aside for their benefit. What am I going to say, “no I won’t text Daddy to see if he can chat, because I’m really annoyed with him right now”? He’s their dad, they have a right to a relationship with him, and the way I see it, it’s my job to help that along however I can.

I thought this was just a common sense rule of divorce. It seems so basic, doesn’t it?

It’s interesting, dating someone who is also divorced with kids, and seeing how other people handle the same life situations. And I have learned a lot about the kind of ex-wife I will never, ever be.

Chris told me ages ago when we first started dating that his ex-wife had some “anger issues” (phrasing it nicely), and I knew some stories of things that had happened between the two of them (and I’ve seen the court papers myself), but I naively thought that the kids weren’t exposed to any obvious hostility between the two of them.

I was wrong.

Based on his ex-wife’s behavior, I’m now coming up with a list of things that I vow to never do as a divorced mom. For example:

* I will never tell my kids that their dad doesn’t love them.
* I will never tell my kids that their dad didn’t want them.
* I will never call my ex-husband names in front of my kids.
* I will never tell them that they aren’t allowed to hug their dad.
* I will never tell my kids that if Daddy gets mad at them, they should call 911 and say that he’s trying to kill them. (No, really. I’m not making that up.)

This list could go on and on. There are also things that don’t involve the kids that I will never do. I mean, just as an example? I will never randomly text my ex-husband in the middle of a workday to call him a c*cksucker, for no apparent reason. Which has very little to do with my relationship with Dave, and more to do with the fact that I would never text anyone in the middle of a workday (or any other time, for that matter), just for the purpose of calling them a c*cksucker. I mean, honestly. That’s just rude. What would Miss Manners say?

Up until recently, I didn’t think that I had some superior moral compass or anything, I just thought that I was doing what all grown adults try to do when faced with a divorce while their kids are young. Now I’m wondering if her “do everything possible to alienate the kids from the other parent” scenario is more common. I really and truly hope that’s not the case, though. Because I cannot imagine how much that sucks for those two sweet kids.

the meeting of the kids

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Chris has two kids that are somewhat close in age to mine. His daughter is 8 and his son is nearly 6 (and is also a kindergartener-going-on-first-grader like Catie). Since he has the kids half the time, we decided a while back that if we wanted to try to spend any substantial amount of time together, eventually our kids were going to have to meet.

The thing is, neither of us wanted it to be some formal introduction of, “….and this is Mommy’s boyfriend,” or anything like that. We figured the best way to handle it was to keep it as low key as possible.

So, a few weeks ago, we met up at a McDonald’s PlayPlace. We sat at tables next to each other, and just chatted casually while the kids played. The idea was that if they wanted to play together, great, but there were also other kids there for them to play with and nobody would feel pressured. And it actually worked out REALLY well, everyone seemed to hit it off.

Since then, we’ve gone on a few other outings together with the kids. We’ve met up at playgrounds and gone to a local street carnival, that kind of thing. Chris and I have (so far) made a point of not having any physical contact with each other when the kids are around (no hugging, kissing, holding hands, etc.). For a while there, I wasn’t sure that the kids had any idea that we were dating, or if they thought we were just friends.

That has changed, recently: I accidentally referred to him as my boyfriend while talking to someone else when Catie was within earshot, but I don’t know if that word really means anything to her yet. On Chris’s end, his 8 year-old daughter has been asking questions about me that indicate she knows that I’m his girlfriend. But fortunately, all of the kids seem to be ok with it.

Last weekend, we decided at the last minute to meet up at the Museum of Life and Science in Durham, but unfortunately we got there at 4:30 p.m., not realizing that the museum closes at 5 p.m. (Oops?) So instead we went for some Goodberry’s frozen custard.

While we were having ice cream, the kids whined that they wanted to go play somewhere else. Chris noticed a Chick-Fil-A next door, and while I have tried for the past year or so to boycott them due to their anti-LGBT views… well. It was over 80 degrees outside and they had an indoor, climate-controlled play area. So, yeah, we went to Chick-Fil-A. (Apparently my morals are for sale when the price is air-conditioning.) They played for about two hours and had a blast.

Lucy is a little too young to join in with the older kids when they play, so she decided that the best game was to keep going in and out of the play area. Since we were at the table right next to the door, it meant that Chris had to keep jumping up to open the door for her. Lucy would come up to the door of the play area and lean on it until Chris opened it for her, then she’d run over to me, give me a kiss, then run back to the door and look over her shoulder at Chris until he opened the door for her to go back into the play area. I told him he could stop, he didn’t have to play along with her little game, but he was a good sport about it.

One of the times she came out, instead of running over to give me a kiss, she ran up to him and raised her arms up in the air, the universal toddler sign language for “pick me up!” He picked her up, and she hugged him and buried her face in his neck for a couple of minutes. Then she wriggled back down to the floor and got back to her game of running in and out of the play area. But it was such a sweet little moment, I wish I’d taken a picture.

I did get a picture of this a couple of weeks ago, though.

Watching my boyfriend push my kids & his kids on a tire swing on a gorgeous Saturday afternoon. Pretty awesome.

All four kids on a tire swing, and all four of them were yelling for Chris to push them higher and faster. That was a pretty great moment right there, too.

I made Chris promise a long time ago that he’ll never ask me to marry him, so it’s not like we’re going to have any kind of Brady Bunch thing happening here. But I have to admit, I do love that our kids seem to enjoy each other and all get along really well. It’s a pretty fun dynamic to watch as it evolves.

major milestones

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Today, Lucy is two years old.

Checking out the koi pond at our local garden supply center

She’s been walking around the house this morning, repeating, “Ha’ buffday, Cici!” (Yes, she still calls herself Cici. I kind of hope she never stops.)

I got cookies for her class at daycare. Her little classmate saw them and started yelling, “My cookies!” Lucy just looked at him coolly and said, “MY buffday.” Like, step off mah cookies, yo. (Gotta say I can totally relate to that feeling.)

If you ask her how old she is, she holds up her entire hand and says, “I TWO!”

When I ask her how old she is, she holds up her whole hand & says, "I TWO!"

She is hilarious and amazing and exhausting and a complete and utter terror. She is so much like me that it freaks me out. Her stubborn streak, her need to sleep with a million stuffed animals all around her like I did when I was little, the way she wants to do everything herself (both “I do it!” and “no help!” are in heavy rotation in her vocabulary). I already worry about how we’ll butt heads when she’s older because we’re so much alike. But she is utterly fantastic.

The other milestone is that today is Catie’s last day of kindergarten.

First day of kindergarten:
Catie on her first day of kindergarten!

Last day of kindergarten:
Catie's last day of kindergarten

Her school had an end-of-school pizza party where the kids did a little performance for all the parents, which was really sweet and funny.


(You probably don’t really want to watch a video of my kid singing “First Grade, First Grade,” to the tune of “New York, New York,” but I filmed it anyway because I knew my parents would want to see it.)

And you know, I guess it should feel weird to say that I now have a 2 year-old and a first grader. But for some reason it hasn’t really fazed me at all.

So many people I know get nostalgic about every single one of their child’s milestones, and I see so many of them say things like, where did the time go, they grew up so fast, things like that. I kind of understand that in a way, but I don’t feel that way at all. I mean, sure, I tell Catie that I’m going to tie a brick to her head to weigh her down and make her stop growing, but that’s because she keeps outgrowing her clothes, not because I think she’s getting too grown up.

Instead, with every milestone, I feel like I can let my breath out a little bit. Like, ok, we survived that part. Now let’s get through this next bit. Parenting to me feels like a marathon that I’m running, which is full of hills. I survived Lucy’s first two years. There’s a hill. I got Catie through kindergarten. There’s another hill.

And I know – I KNOW – that I should stop and savor them while they’re so little, because time is fleeting. I get that. But at the same time? Toddlers are JERKS, man. I honestly just want a fast-forward button to get me through Lucy’s next two years. Terrible twos are rough, and I seem to recall that three year-olds are even worse. Four was a good age. You can (try to) reason with a four year-old. They’re generally potty-trained, sleep through the night, and are somewhat self-sufficient. Can’t we just skip ahead to four? Has anyone figured out that technology yet?

Although, I admit that there I do like comparing pictures from last year to now. If nothing else, there is quite a significant change in Lucy’s hair. Like WHOA.

Lucy & Catie

Lucy is 2 years old & it's Catie's last day of kindergarten

So, maybe I’m not nostalgic about it. That’s ok. But I do have a pretty awesome two year-old and a completely fantastic first grader. And for that, I’m thankful.

family pic on Catie's last day of kindergarten & Lucy's 2nd birthday

They’re pretty cute too.