This week is our week with the kids. And it’s started off wonderfully!
Yesterday at 5pm S dropped the kids off. Polite conversation ensued between her and myself about the kid’s schooling needs for the week…kids have bathed today, haven’t eaten dinner yet, N needs to finish the book he is reading for his school report. N then tries to drag his mom into the house to come and look at something or another. She extracts himself from his grip and makes an excuse why she has to leave. I say we are going out right now anyway. She goes and the kids jump right into “Nat this and Nat that”…all chatty and cheerful. Yay! No tears, no drama! Yay! They actually seem pleased to see me. Yay!
We always try to do something special with them for when they first come to us. Just a little something to mark the transition, to catch up and reconnect. So as B was working a bit later last night, I do it myself anyway and take the kids to Boston Market for some scrummy chicken dinner. And they’re typical mischievous kids playing tricks on each other with terrible table manners. But they’re happy and playful. Yay! And they don’t protest when I try to take them for hair cuts (ended up leaving because the wait was too long) and then love it when we browse through the toy store. Even my request that they don’t ask me for anything because I’m not buying tonight, is generally heeded.
Later in the evening M is getting ready for bed and she calls me into the bathroom, with a cheeky glint in her eye. She climbs up on the loo seat (toilet seat for the non-UK folk) and says “You know you want it, you know you do” and proceeds to launch herself into my arms. Wow! She has never, ever done that before. She then proceeds to plant little 6 year old kisses all over my face! Oh god, my heart is just melting all over the place!
And then this morning, N brings me breakfast in bed, an omelet that his Dad made for me. All shy and sweet…awwww.
I asked myself a rhetorical question in an earlier post…”Why exactly am I doing this?”. Why am I trying so hard to be a step-mom when it just seems like it’s not wanted or needed?
Well, I guess that weeks like this are why I am doing it. Yay!
Like Brian says, I need to remember these times, when we have other more challenging times. I need to hold onto the good times.
Your husband sounds like a very smart man. Eric goes through the same thing with our children. Meg has become very huggy with him lately, but today when she came in from school she was angry and pushed past him and said “excuuuuse me!” He was expecting loving…huggy…Meg, but instead he got moody….hateful Meg. He has to remember that progress has been made and that she does love him. As the “real” mom in this senario I struggle with the children too. What I have learned is that the kids are fickle…they will hurt you just as soon as look at you. I do not understand it, but do know that they love us….so we have to just be patient through the hard times an take the hugs and kisses when offered!!
Well now, what a change! Even in a “normal” family is every day a bed of roses, and like everything else in life we need to remember the good times, when it seems like the sky is falling on us! Enjoy all the cuddles and kissess and store them in your memory bank!
That’s fantastic Nats. I hope you get more and more weeks like this in the future.