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Family Life Marriage Me My Babies

An Unlikely Love Story

*cue Mary J. Blige and Method Man “All I Need and loop in your head as many times as necessary to get through this post*

Once upon a time in June of 1998 I met a guy named A.D. Initially I was not impressed, he grew up very different from me and being as shallow minded as I was at the time I wanted nothing to do with a freshman college student who didn’t own a car, or who grew up in the mean streets of Miami, Fl. At the urging of a mutual friend of ours that actually went to high school with him, I agreed to ONE conversation. As cliche as it sounds the rest was history!

We dated from June 1998 to August of 1999. We decided to go our separate ways and rekindled our relationship in December of 2002. Amazingly during that time I never saw him more than two times and we lived in a very small town but people always said he would ask about me. We agreed to give it another shot prior to my graduating from college and moving from Tallahassee to Charlotte. 

He graduated in 2003 and joined me in Charlotte

 We lived in Charlotte for a year and a half before moving to Atlanta. About a year after moving here we got engaged..Woot Woot!!

 Then a week later we discovered I was pregnant…After all those years, our luck ran out!

 

 

 Shortly before Lil Man was born we got married at the courthouse.

You see my boy..Peace up, A town down

We had our own little family 

Shortly after our trip to Disney in Summer 2009, We decided it was time to add to the roster

 

All of this because these two people fell in love….

Moral of the story is, if you haven’t found your “love” yet be patient and overlook the material things. If I had stayed hung up on the fact that he didn’t have a car and grew up in the projects this post would have never been!

Happy Valentines Day!

Family Marriage

The Blended Family Conundrum–Time vs. Money

This weekend over dinner the Mr. and I were discussing quite a few issues regarding the direction our family is headed in for the new year and our goals as husband and wife, mother and father.

While talking we somehow started a casual conversation regarding the disparities that exist amongst children of blended families. While these children share one parent there is indeed a difference in parenting and the method by which each child’s needs are met. I for one always hate when these issues come to the table because we are a “blended family” and I admittedly have many mixed feelings considering I was raised by a single mother, and every other weekend I was thrust into a blended family environment. Despite my past and clear understanding of the plight of the outside child and the struggling single mother, my feelings regarding the situation are almost always lopsided and most often skewed in the best interest of my children. Selfish? Yes. Human? Yes. Any mother in my opinion wants the best for her children and anything that doesn’t fall in line with that agenda in my book will undoubtedly get the *side eye*.  I digress.

So the conversation in detail was regarding the fact that the non custodial child gets less than the child that stays in the home because they don’t have access to both of their parents, so if a little extra change, doll, iPad or new sneakers are presented its okay because those things will never make up for the child not having both parents in the household.

I’m not convinced..are you?!

Family Life Marriage Me NaBloPoMo

The Selfish Stepmother

This past weekend my father and stepmother came to visit and surprisingly I really enjoyed having them both here and was sad to see them go. Well let me rephrase that, I always enjoy my dad, the surprising part was that I actually enjoyed my stepmother as well.

My dad has been married to her for 28 years and oddly enough I have never really seen her as much more than his wife. As a child I felt like she only dealt with me because she had to, and I was convinced she was only going through the motions and at times felt like an outsider in their home. I’m more than certain that my disdain for her started at an early age based on information that my mother fed to me regarding my dad. God bless her, my mother was hell bent on making my dad’s life miserable, and if the saying was in existence back then she would have, without a doubt been known to most as a “baby mama”. As I grew older I think I truly began to see her in a new, more positive light when I had to walk a mile in her shoes by marrying a man with a child and becoming a stepmother myself.

For sometime I have struggled with my feelings regarding the whole blended family ideal and oddly enough I feel as though I should have felt more comfortable marrying into this type of situation being that I was raised in the same environment. However, the opposite happened. I started beating myself up because I didn’t see my stepdaughter as my own child like everyone around me always claimed I should. Ironically I was reacting in the situation in the same manner by which I felt my own stepmother had wronged me. I never wanted that for my stepdaughter, I owed her more being that I was that child who was shuffled around every other weekend, for the summers and alternate holidays. Once I eventually got over that hurdle, I found it difficult and at times still do find it hard to say I have three children when I have only birthed two. I know you are probably thinking I am so selfish, and I am. I am working on it, half of the battle is knowing and the other half is doing something about it.

My progress and growth in accepting my own stepmother and acting as one has oddly enough come from my 5 year old son. Although he hadn’t laid eyes on my stepmom her for nearly three years and has only spoken to her on the phone maybe five times the first words that came out of his mouth was “hey Grandma”, I was taken aback and I think she was to. There have also been times when people see me out with Adrian and Addison and ask me if they are my only children and I say yes, and he will embarrass me by saying I have an older sister proceeding to tell them her name and where she lives, then I am forced to come behind him and explain that I indeed have another child, she just lives in another house. Children only know and recognize those who love them, not giving any thought to who is a blood relative and who isn’t. Man do I have so much to learn from him.

Blended families are work for all parties involved. It seems that I am the one that needs the most work in this situation and at times it still bothers me that I have such a hard time readily accepting a sweet innocent child that has been caught up in the middle of an adult situation. I long to figure out exactly where the problem lies, and why I can’t just roll with the punches and move on, but I’m still not there yet. Maybe I am selfish and it feels that my family is incomplete and that I have to always consider another child that doesn’t live in my house, or is it the fact that another woman has control over my husband. Whatever it is, I’ll be the first to tell you that I totally need to get over myself and put an end to my foolishness once and for all.

Any stepmothers out there…got any advice?!!

Family Life Lil Man Marriage

Life’s Lessons Taught in 5 Years

On October 14th my Lil Man turned 5 years old! When I found out I was pregnant with him the Mr. and I were engaged and in the process of planning this huge elaborate wedding, the deposit had already been put down on the reception hall, invitations were picked out and scheduled to be mailed even the floral arrangements were finalized.

Then one day it hit me. We were getting ready to spend well over $10,000 on a wedding and we didn’t own a home, we were in debt and had two RAGGEDY cars with a baby on the way. After going around and around trying to make it work, it became clear that the wedding was going to have to wait until we were in a better position financially. I managed to get the deposit back and my dad kept his word and blessed us with all of the money we were going to use for the wedding. As hard as it was to make the adult decision to put the wedding on hold, sensibility won out and we used the money to get out of debt and buy a home.

I thought I would be good just waiting until we were financially able to afford a wedding, but then it started to bother me that the baby would be born out of wedlock, so on September 2, 2005 we went to the courthouse and tied the knot. From that day forward our family has faced numerous challenges and at times I have wanted to walk away with just him and I but it wasn’t so easy so I stayed. I prayed and prayed and hoped things would get better and they did…eventually. My son was the “glue” that kept us together long enough to realize our potential as husband and wife, mother and father and most of all friends. There wasn’t a honeymoon period for us. We were quickly thrust into real life and at times it wasn’t pretty but we made it work.

See to him its just a birthday, but to us its symbolic of five long hard years of life’s lessons and growth. We have failed more of those lessons than we have passed but whose counting. He is the best thing that ever happened to us. We started and continued on this journey for him even when we both felt like throwing in the towel. Somewhere along the way we found ourselves, and a stride and we haven’t looked back. We are now blessed with a strong family unit and he was a huge motivating factor in why we stayed together when it would have been so much easier to walk away. We are forever grateful.

Happy Birthday to my sweet baby boy!!!

Peace Up…A-town down!!!




Happy Birthday…check out the costumes!