Family

Do you happen to remember this post, that included this photograph?

It was posted the day before this happened….

Then we did this…

Today I’d like to remember a Great man on what should be his anniversary with his beautiful wife.

Happy Anniversary Grandma & Grandpa, I miss you Grandpa!

My whole life everyone has told me, don’t rush things… they were referring to relationships, families, kids, etc.  So I didn’t.  Partially by choice and partially because I didn’t find the right guy at the right moment… the right moment being God’s moment.  I believe he has a set time for everything (or fairly close…) And no I’m not going all religious here… This is my belief, I’m not pushing it off on you…

So When you start dating someone the first question you hear is:

So when are you getting engaged?

Doesn’t matter if he is the right guy or not… it’s all about that engagement…

So then you finally decide yeah, maybe this is the right guy and you make it official, you become engaged, the next question you hear is:

So when is the wedding?

It could be the exact day of the proposal and you haven’t even had a chance to think/talk about it…

So then Once the wedding has come and gone it is:

So when are you having kids?

Seriously?  I just got married {a day, a week, a month, 6 months, a year} ago… Can I not enjoy some hubby/me alone time first?

So finally you bring in the first child, then it is:

So when are you having the second?

Everyone always says don’t rush things but then they immediately start in on these questions when something monumental happens.  Why is there such a rush?  I hear kids are the greatest thing but you know… isn’t it better to build a solid foundation for your marriage before adding children and that stress?  And don’t get me wrong, we all know we stress about kids, are they sick, are they healthy, do they have enough to eat, clothing, school, and the list goes on and on.

But why not allow Newly weds to be newly wed before hounding them about children?  I came back from my honeymoon (I’ve now been married just shy of 8 months) and people were already hounding me about when am I going to have kids.  1 week people…  It made me want to look at them and say “NEVER!”

My usual smart a$$ remark is, “I have a step-daughter and a pup (now 2 pups), I have all the kids I need for a while.” 

Which come on, seriously, that’s the truth at 1 week married.  My opinion, that’s the truth at 1 year married.  Solid foundation people!!  Now some people don’t have that luxury because the only fool proof option is abstinence… a friend of mine learned that… 5 months married and she wound up pregnant.  and 5 months after she had him she realized she was pregnant again.  There’s 13 months between her kids.  Would she trade them for the world… NOPE but would she have liked to have waited just a bit… I’m fairly certain.

Ok so I’m 27 years old… I’ll be considered an older parent than probably most of my kids classmates but you know, my mom was 28 when she had me and my dad was 32.  I was their first and only.  I asked them one time why my parents were so much older than other’s parents and they told me that they were settled in their jobs and their finances.  They faced struggles yes but it wasn’t nearly as hard as some of my friends parents stories I heard about.  Granted I wasn’t there during my parents struggles or my friends parents struggles, just going off stories both my parents told me and my friends parents told me.  I liked the stability my parents had and don’t tell but my parents were (and still are which you can tell them) both really cool! 🙂

If you don’t have that solid/stable foundation for your marriage, it’s similar to the old High School school of thought… a girl thinks she’s losing her boyfriend so she sleeps with him so hopefully she’ll get pregnant because he won’t leave her if she has his baby.  And HELLO… it doesn’t work that way 99% of the time…  Or the girl who is getting abused by her significant other and a friend says, “Oh if you have his baby he’ll love you both and he’ll quit beating you up…”  Again HELLO… kids aren’t the answer.  They are just a fabulous addition so why not get that fabulous foundation for them to be added to?

But if you’ll notice, a lot of Hollywood people are having children later in life, so I guess I won’t have the ONLY kid with older parents when it comes time in our life to add that addition, but you know, there is absolutely NO rush!!!

The first year presents it’s own troubles, why add a kid into that mix?

But I just want to know why there is such a push when everyone says… DON’T RUSH THINGS?

I’ve been thinking…. a lot…. but again it started up yesterday based off a movie we watched, the 1961 (original) version of The Parent Trap.  Step mothers tend to get a bad rep!  Think about that movie (whether new or old) the soon to be step mother was a real wench.  Once she got her foot in, then the daughter was to be sent off to boarding school.

Think about Cinderella, the Wicked Step-Mother, she wasn’t nice to poor Cinderella.  How about the version of Cinderella with Hilary Duff and Chad Michael Murray, A Cinderella Story, again another classic instance where Step mom = horrible!

Now think about the movie Step Mom with Julia Roberts & Susan Sarandon, that was actually a movie that proved that step-mom’s weren’t all bad, but still, movies like that are few and far between.

I was one of the lucky ones that grew up with both my parents, in fact this year they will celebrate 33 years together.  I didn’t have a step mother or a step father for that matter growing up, but a lot of my friends did.  And there were always different reasons but it seemed like 7 times out of 10 they all  had the same opinion about their “step parent”… I hate them.  Well it’s true, the step parent isn’t your real parents, but that thought of, “I hate them,” makes me sad now that I’m a step parent (although it made me sad then…).

When I first started dating my husband he told me a line his daughter said to him that has always stuck with me, “Daddy, I don’t want you to get remarried because step moms are evil.”  Now I started dating my husband when his daughter was 6, so she was younger when she said this and I won’t lie, it made me sad.  I’m lucky right now because she likes me, in fact she loves me, and if you ask her, she’ll tell you that, but I’m waiting for that moment when she will “hate my guts.”  Maybe I’ll get lucky and she’ll just dislike me like any kid dislikes their parents at one time or another, you know because of the infamous “No” answer…

Then to add to these thoughts, you hear a lot of times about the mother in these split families, she goes on, gets remarried and generally tends to stay remarried.  But on the flip side, I’ve heard a lot of stories of the father of that split family going through wife after wife, and again that makes me sad.  What causes this?  Is it just that women are more vocal about things and men tend to be quiet about these things, because yes that’s probably true compared to the overall scheme of how men and women operate.  I know there are men out there that after the first divorce, get re-married and stay that way…

One day that really hit me pretty hard and had me down.  I asked my husband why that was and that I wanted to know of one husband who once he got remarried just stayed remarried.  For some reason I couldn’t think of any and that had me upset, that’s when my husband reminded me that I know of one, in fact they are very dear to my heart.  I asked him who he was referring to and he reminded me that my grandparents were that way.  Oh Duh…. I knew that… LOL.  They were married 53 years and it would have been longer if cancer hadn’t taken my grandma in 07 and my grandpa in 08.  Then he reminded me of my friends Jamie and Brian who have been married for 16 years and my friends Rachael and Andy who have been married for a few years (not sure the exact number) and lastly he said us, even though we’re only at 6 months, we’ll be one of those couples.

In these types of situations, the kids are the ones who suffer the most.  Do they truly suffer, I think that just depends on the child at the time, but what I’m referring to is the fact that they have to split their time between parents and generally it isn’t equal split time with each parent so that’s not only hard on the child, but the parents.  Some kids aren’t lucky enough to have both parents who want to spend time with them either.  There are so many different circumstances out there that you can’t lump everyone in to the same boat.

I think my {step} daughter has it pretty lucky for the conditions she has… she has 4 parents (even though I can’t truly speak for her mom and step-dad, but by their actions they show it) who love her.  She has more sets of grandparents that love her than she probably knows what to do with, but most importantly she has people who love her.  That’s the main part.

I just truly hope she never looks at me as the evil step mom.

It does make me feel good when she says she loves coming to our house and when she doesn’t want to leave.  Apparently we are doing something right, I hope 🙂