A Real Mom's Halloween

Pin It Tonight is the night before Halloween. Exciting. Time to put my true Mom Skills to work.
Well, not tonight. Maybe I’ll get started tomorrow. Spencer isn’t here to help out with the normal evening duties and although I could take them all on myself and still find time to bake and decorate Mummy cookies; it isn’t common for me to have a quiet evening to myself with a relatively easy dinner practically cooking itself in the kitchen (Thank God for slow cookers!) and my son playing calmly and quietly with his basket of cars tipped over at his disposal in his bedroom; SO I’m spending the evening on here instead. Spencer finally told his job that if he couldn’t get any extra hours than he’d have no choice but to leave. They responded like crazy! There haven’t been more than two days over the past two weeks that he hasn’t gotten at least a small extra run. Today was an extra five hours. He only works part time, but he’s union and makes around 16 bucks an hour - so a little bit of extra work really goes a long, long way in our family. It’s a blessing to get the extra work right before the holidays.

I feel like this year is my first REAL Halloween as a mom. This is my third (I can’t BELIEVE IT! THIRD!) Halloween with Mary, but only my first as her official Stepmom. And although this is actually Matthew’s second Halloween, he’s close to two this year so he’ll be able to actually romp around outside through the neighbor’s yards and “WRAAAAAAWRRR!!” At strangers like he loves to do on any normal given day anyway. He’ll be out of his mind with excitement -- which guarantees that Spencer and I will have a great time, too. Mary’s mom actually took her for the weekend but is dropping her off at home to go Trick-or-Treating with us. I want to make it extra special.

Now, I’m not exactly one of those homemade-baby-food-blending moms or anything. I consider myself pretty down-to-earth. Being only twenty-three and raising a two-year-old and a nine-year-old isn’t easy to keep up with; two-year-olds keep you on your toes - literally, while raising a fourth-grader is like having your mind continuously challenged; your priorities endlessly questioned; your limits always stretched. With Matthew I face challenges like learning how to do everything from unlocking doors to setting tables with him in my arms; I have to have one eye on him at every second of every moment of every day to keep him from sticking his Bob the Builder screwdriver into the electrical outlets (whose plastic protective covers he has learned to easily slip off); I have to teach him not to hit the other kids at daycare when he’s left there for sometimes as long as eleven hours a day while I’m at work. With Mary, everyday feels like a marathon. From waking her up at 5:30 a.m., racing to collect signed papers and pennies for the penny-drive or money for her book-orders or the new clarinet for her band lessons, reading over her homework and signing her agenda book, reading over the description she wrote in her reading log from last night’s twenty-minutes of reading and signing that; to couching her through multiplication homework every afternoon and arguments with best friends who’ve suddenly and remorselessly moved on to NEW best friends without her permisssion. Everyday is an adventure that we struggle with a smile to get through. It’s hectic, but I wouldn’t want it any other way.
Chores. The impending first period. That pre-teen awkward phase of weight gain and braces. First weeks of allowance. Grades and DSTP tests.
All I want is to be everything she needs while still keeping up with being everything that Matthew deserves to get out of his Mommy, too. I’ve accepted a very large load of responsibility and it’s my goal in life to live up to it as well as any woman ten years my senior could. I’m reminded of everything that Mary doesn’t have in me when I go to the preschool that the youngest in my charge at work attends - where all of the moms are stay-at-home’s, ten years older than I at least, living off of incomes I’ll work my life away never reaching. It’s tough to swallow but it makes me want to work harder; it makes me determined to make myself more than I would be without that perspective. I don’t have the extra time to put together creative cocoa pebbles Haunted House treats for all of the kids in my son’s two-year-old-early-learning-program-class that he attends three days a week. 1. Because my son will never attend anything like that and 2. Because… well, things like that are unfortunately just too often out of the realm of realistic grocery spending and productive time management.
Spencer and I are penny-pinchers. Instead of taking our whole family out to the movies and dropping sixty bucks between arcade games and overpriced popcorn, we play Littlest Pet Shop Monopoly at home and ride bikes with Mary through the neighborhood. We take advantage of Kids Eat Free deals at restaurants and days that places like IHOP have free face painting. We keep a tight budget that provides us peace of mind by allowing us to save for the future and to never have to worry about not affording emergencies if they were to come up.
BUT! This year has been such a ride for everyone. We came so close to losing our house in Spencer’s divorce that we’d actually started packing… only to get it back by the skin of our teeth and a great, big answered prayer from The Big Guy upstairs. We’ve flirted with the idea of bringing another baby (likely our last) into the family. And we’ve started reconstruction and home improvement projects on the house. It’s a new beginning for our family and I want to make some changes in the way that we run things around here in light of that fresh start. This year for Halloween:

1. I’m dressing up with the kids.
2. I’m baking my first Pumpkin Pie!
3. We’re doing a bit of decorating (especially outside)
4. We’re doing Halloween activities with the kids
(Painting pumpkins making spooky treats)
5. Sending out Homemade Halloween cards with photos of the kids on the front.

The twist in our little challenge is that we’re also ripping up the upstairs carpet today.
Also, for my costume, I have a few challenges that I need to find a solution for by the end of the day. This will be my first adult Halloween dressing up. I went to one Halloween party in college at the dorms but I just threw on an old cowboy hat and some boots with my typical jeans and called myself a Cowgirl. This year I wanted to match with one of the kids. Matthew will be a lion this year and Mary wanted to be a Candy Corn Witch. I decided to go with being Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz so that Matthew could be my little Cowardly Lion. The only Dorothy outfit they had was the skanky one… and at the last minute I decided to just get it, hoping that maybe I could make a few alterations to it to make it a little more conservative. It really didn’t seem all that skimpy from the bag, but the biggest issue was that when I put it on, it was too big… which just made it awkward to wear. I tried to return it but all of the costume stores have really strict policies.
Another solution would be to just make myself a lion costume with one Giant, furry coat that we have down in the basement. It would be warmer, more conservative and would even match more obviously with Matthew’s costume. Since we already spent fifty bucks on the Dorothy costume, I’m not going to spend any more money on another costume, but if I could make one for free than I’d feel better about just forgoing the Wizard of Oz theme for this year. I’m thinking that if I can paint my face just like Matthew’s, and make myself some ears and a tail, than I’ll be good to go. Leaving the hood up would give the illusion of a main so that people would get what I was, but then I realized that that would make me a daddy lion instead of a mommy one…. Is that weird?

New Hardwood Floors, Our Hidden Little Gem

Pin It We’d planned to use a small chunk of our tax returns for new carpet throughout the whole house in a few months. To save time, we planned to pull up the carpet ourselves right before the carpet installers came. Just out of curiosity, Spencer pulled up a small square of it in the dining room…. Which revealed to us an immaculately beautiful hardwood floor! Nearly perfect condition in a bright honey color that practically glows. Previous owners must have had the carpet put in while the floor underneath was still brand new. This whole time it’s been hidden away and preserved by the carpet overtop that has endured probably thirty years of hard abuse but has cushioned the hardwood. We eagerly pulled up the rest of the carpet in the dining room that morning and spent the rest of the day cleaning, refinishing and polishing the newfound floor. We bought new floor dividers for where the kitchen tile meets the wood in the dining room and we’re getting new bottoms for the existing baseboards to cover up the tear from where we pulled up the carpet tacks. Excited with how much money we’d just saved from not having to carpet that one, major room, we couldn’t wait for this weekend to come so that we could test our luck out on the rest of the upstairs (minus the three bedrooms, which we want to carpet regardless). Last night was finally Friday. Even though Spencer worked late, until around 8:30 p.m., we still got to work like we’d planned to do as soon as he got home and had a bowl of dinner. We pulled up the carpet in the hallway and today we’re taking out the living room.

We’re in the process now of looking for the best deals in area rugs. We may just window shop a little and wait until tax time to make the purchase. Christmas is coming up and we can’t be thinking about ourselves…… Although it would really amp up the quality of those Christmas pictures to have Christmas morning sprawled out all over a nice area rug in the photos.

The Big Talk & Internet Safety

Pin It We’ve been getting little hints lately that Mary might be ready for 'The Big Talk'. She’s always been very inquisitive, but recently she’s been saying things to Spencer and I about ‘already knowing’ things we aren’t necessarily ready for her to know - at least not from sources outside of the family. We kind of expected her to ask questions first, but we’re not entirely surprised that she’s already begun to talk about things of that nature amongst her friends, especially because some of them are about a year or two older. Since the day that Spencer and I decided to get married and start a family (at which point her biological mom wasn’t a regular part of her life), I prepared myself for the idea of having to be the one to tackle the subject with her when the time came. I can’t believe that all of those years have drifted by already and that that little six-year-old girl with the baby teeth and the Tinker Bell lunchbox is almost TEN.

I decided about four months ago that it might be a good time to sit down with her and explain the old Birds and the Bees theory to her. I’ve noticed that her body is already starting to show some of those trademark signals of an impending first period so I called Spencer to get the Okay… and then kind of chickened out. There just haven’t been any really great opportunities to talk about something that heavy. Like I said before, Mary’s surprised us by throwing out there that she ‘already knows’ about babies coming from ‘the S word’ but always in the middle of life’s most inopportune times - like when I’m running late for work and trying to shuffle Matthew into the car and double-check that she has everything she needs for daycare and school before I lock the door; or when we’re shopping and in uncomfortably close proximity to 25 other strangers in the bread isle. At times like those, I’ll maul over in my head a rough outline of what I’d like to say to her when we get a chance back at home; I’ve never simply forgotten about it. But before we know it dinner dishes need to be cleaned up, Matthew needs to be tucked in and Mary’s too tired to really focus on anything important -- or she’s forgotten to do the back of a homework worksheet and will need to finish it up at the last minute before bed.


Our little family is very big on ‘talks’. It’s not something we’re normally shy about. With Mary having to cope with her parents’ divorce, her mother’s abandonment, our marriage, a new little brother and preparing for a potential move - we’ve had a lot of things to talk about. Mary and I are fortunate to have a very warm, open relationship and I feel privileged to be able to say that she comes to me pretty often about problems that she has with her friends and about some of her internal battles between right and wrong, looking for advice. She’s good about asking the right questions and seems to take in the advice that I offer pretty enthusiastically, even when she has her doubts about how to follow through or even whether or not it will really work. She isn’t afraid to question me, but she does trust me and those elements of our relationship really make for some great conversations.
The problem with the puberty talk is not so much that it’s embarrassing as it is susceptible to a very large margin of error.

Growing up, my mom was very open about sex and willing to talk to me about it. Apparently my grandmother was very anti-sex and didn’t even like to have it herself, much less talk about with her daughter. My mom resented not having her mother to talk to, so in true daughter fashion, she took the most opposite road that she could with me from the one that her mother took with her. I always appreciated that I could talk to my mom, but I also think that some of my moms unconventional ideas about sex outside of wedlock might have helped to instill ideas about sex that were a little bit too relaxed. Both of my brothers had children in their teens - LONG before they were mature enough to properly provide for their families; My little brother married his wife when she was about seven months along in her second pregnancy and my older brother now has five children cramped inside of a two bedroom apartment with his girlfriend whom he still has never married (though they have tried and have even set a few dates before, only to have more surprise pregnancies get in the way). My parents are into their fifties now; They are still and have always been probably the most happily married couple I’ve ever seen in my life… They still hold hands, they still kiss in public, they’re always taking up for one another and backing each other up, and they laugh together constantly. They were both going through divorces when they decided to start trying to conceive me - which meant that they couldn’t legally get married yet. They didn’t end up getting married until after my little brother, the last of their three children, was born. Likewise, Spencer’s parents are still married (we’re actually planning their 25th anniversary reception now); but they had Spencer before they got married too.


There are two things that make tackling the subject of sex a little questionable: The first is that Mary herself is the product of a teen pregnancy. After doing a little research on the subject, I’ve found that most experts agree that when discussing sex, it’s important to place it within the context of marriage -- or at the VERY, VERY least, a loving, mature, responsible, ADULT relationship; with which I am in complete agreement. I’m having trouble, though, thinking of a way to explain that context without making Mary feel like her birth was wrong or in any way a mistake… After all, she’s watched her parents go through just about the nastiest divorce it’s possible for two people getting out of a five-year marriage to go through. They got married for the sake of providing Mary with the closest thing to a ‘real’ family they could conjure up at the time and it’s important that she understands that it was their marriage that was a mistake - not her. But is going into all of that a little over her head? Or is it just too much heaviness for one conversation?

Secondly, Mary’s father and I have openly discussed with Mary that we’d like to start preparing for another baby this year. We’re in the process of finishing the basement to make it into a nice, large master bedroom for us which will open up a third upstairs bedroom. We’d like to switch the kids’ rooms around (probably giving Mary our current bedroom so that she has a little bit more space) and then giving Matthew her current bedroom so that his old nursery (being the smallest room of the house) can room a new little one. I’m afraid the explaining the whole physicality of the whole process, especially knowing that her dad and I are currently somewhat trying, will make it all the more embarrassing or uncomfortable.

Well Friday night reality kind of through us for a loop. Mary clicked on Google history, which popped up the five most recent searches. There were:
1. Who was the 5th president (which I told her to look up online when she asked me this question)
2. What number president was Abe Lincoln
3. Toontown
4. Boobs
5. A little girl who is “pregnate” (Giving herself away with the guesswork in the spelling)

Spencer’s first inclination was to yell at her and demand to know why she wanted to see stuff like that but I couldn’t resist rescuing her from the embarrassment. I talked to her about the normalcy of being curious but that the internet is a dangerous place that requires self-control and a little bit more responsibility than she’s shown us she’s ready to handle right now. I told her that I would be more than happy to answer any questions she has about things of that nature and that she has to be smart about where she goes for information because it would be very easy to come across more information than she’s ready to handle or wrong information altogether that could very potentially cause a lot of unwanted problems. She seemed to understand. I didn’t get into the whole sex talk then because I wanted her to register the information I was giving her that focused more on internet safety and responsibility… especially because her real mom’s mother had just bought her a laptop and she’ll be using it away from Spencer and I. I got up early this morning and fished around on the internet for a few tween-friendly sights. She’s still big on kid’s gaming sights like Toontown and Poptropica, but now that her tastes have matured a little past Spongebob and Tinkerbell, I’d like to provide her with some more mature sights that I’ve already approved of instead of letting her venture out onto the internet alone to search for them herself. I really didn’t want to punish her because sometimes I think the humiliation of getting caught is just enough, but I did tell her that she isn’t allowed on YouTube or Google anymore without first asking us what she would like to look up or search for -- which is something I’ve been wanting to do for some time anyway. I decided that instead of treating her like a baby and taking away all of her freedom with the computer, I’d set her up with her own desktop on the computer; and I’d look up some tween-friendly sites for girls. There are actually a lot of empowering and inspirational girl sites out there with age-appropriate information that I think would be interesting to her and might give her something a little more productive to look at on the internet than Postopia games or Boobs.

Anyway, it was this morning while I was looking up websites for her that I came across a few websites about how to talk to your young daughters about puberty. Mary told us that the reason she wanted to see a little girl who was pregnant on the internet was because I had told her once that one of the reasons your body menstruates is because you’re becoming a woman and physically developing the ability to become pregnant and carry a baby inside of your belly; that the blood that comes out is tissue that has been building up inside of your womb, creating a home for a baby in case one is made between periods. I then, told her at a later time that girls get their periods between the ages of nine and sixteen. Mary being nine now, put two and two together and decided that she wanted to know more. Knowing that it was information that I gave her that led to her looking for more answers in some of the worst places makes having the talk that much more intimidating. I’m going to have to bite the bullet and take care of it today though. One of the things that I read this morning was that children are often still more innocent than we give them credit for… Even when they ARE armed with information that’s a little above their heads from friends at school -- it’s still above their heads. They often don’t actually know as much as they think they know or even as much as we think that they do.

Murals

Pin It Ok, normally I don't write in here much about my job (just a privacy thing for the sake of the family that I work for) but I'm really excited about this. The boys are switching rooms; The older two share a room right now and the littlest has a room of his own. Now that the oldest is getting bigger and staying up later, he's getting his own room and my boss wants me to paint small murals on both of their walls! I'm so excited about this. It's been a long time since I've gotten the chance to get my hands dirty doing any real artwork. In my college days I was elbow deep in charcoal and oil paints on a non-stop basis... but motherhood has definitely shifted my priorities around. I do try to keep up with it by every once in a while taking out a sketchbook in my spare time and even making portraits of family as gifts from time to time too, but actually being paid to paint something again will be a refreshing change of pace. Wednesday my boss sent me out to Micheals with her debit card and had me buy whatever paints I wanted for the projects. We're painting shelving in one of the rooms camoflage and I'll be painting a karate guy silhouette on one wall; In the other room, a few things incorperating the Phillies and Eagles teams. I'll keep you posted with how it all turns out!

The dinner table

Pin It When I started it, this blog was intended to be kind of a keepsake of little family events and everyday moments… to kind of chronicle the way the our children grow as individuals and the way that my husband and I grow as parents and spouses. Our house is being an attention hog, though. I can’t remember the last entry I actually made about the family… Although the house is an enormous part of us now - it isn’t all we consist of, so I’m letting it go for at least the next few minutes to talk about our weekend.

As always, it went by too fast. One of the goals I set for myself months ago was to make better use of the weekends… That goal kind of shifted recently from being less about making better ‘use’ of it and more about simply getting more out of it - even if that meant staying in my pajamas all day and watching movies with Spencer and the kids. I’ve discovered that sometimes getting some R & R can actually end up being vastly more productive than spending all weekend outside of the house running errands. When I first started this job a little over a year ago, it was a bit of a challenge to make the shift from being a new mommy (and a stay-at-home one at that) to being a new mommy and working almost fifty hours a week. My job is definitely enjoyable and even provides me with a fair amount of “down” time where I can usually get my work done at a pretty leisurely pace; But when I need my energy, I REALLY need my energy, and even on the less stressful days I quickly got used to getting home with an aching back, stiff neck and severe drainage of vigor. I wasn’t able to get anything done after work and I even needed a lot of Spencer’s help with just getting the kids taken care of for bed. Of course, since then I’ve mastered the art of balancing my motherly duties at home throughout the workweek so that it doesn’t pile up so much on the weekends - but by the time the weekends arrive, I’m much more deprived of rest. In a way I definitely feel like I’m still getting the hang of perfecting the balancing act of being a working mother. I don’t make homemade baby food or feed my children a strict Organic Only diet - but I can work an eleven hour day, and still have time to scrub a floor or two, make a pork chop dinner for a family of four, wrestle with my two-year-old, study multiplication flashcards with my daughter, fold a load of towels, clean up the kitchen, get two children bathed and say Night-Night prayers with my kids before bed. I never thought I’d be able to do it, but I’ve even trained myself to be able to keep the house in an orderly state throughout the hectic workweek. When we were having showings for the house every day throughout the week, it was like being in Housekeeping Boot Camp. I wake up at 4 in the morning, feed two kids, get them dressed and ready for daycare/school and am out of the house by six to drop them off at their two separate daycares. Having the house ready for showings meant making sure every bed was made, everything was in it’s place, all floors/counters/carpets/tables/shelves were clean and clear, and the dishes were done and all of that had to be done before six o’clock in the morning. In any case, by the end of the week, I tend to be kind of a wreck.

Spencer finally brought it to my attention the other day that our weekends were being completely drained of any fun. Even with getting more housework than usual taken care of throughout the week, there was always a hefty list of to-do things left for the weekend that could only be taken care of then: taking health appraisals to the doctor; going grocery shopping; shopping for socks, belts and raincoats; returning safety latches that didn’t fit; mowing the lawn; re-organizing the closets and getting rid of outgrown clothes; cleaning out the storage room; bleaching white laundry; planning meals for the week; reading, studying and working on school projects with Mary; redecorating; attending family events; reevaluating our budget and planning for upcoming holidays; dealing with the lawyer….. The list was just constantly growing no matter how efficient we tried to be. Eventually we just became so exhausted that we stopped caring about even trying to enjoy the weekend - in fact we looked forward to it only as a time to get more things done than we could on a normal weekday. Unfortunately, it was a double-edged sword; We’d get a lot done on the weekends so that we had a little bit less to do the following week, but our exhaustion would also carry over to the following week and that would take a toll on everything from how well we did our jobs to how much enjoyment we got out of each other by the end of a long twelve-hour Monday.

I spent most of this weekend in my pajamas doing what I love most: redecorating the house! We worked out the agreement that we hired the lawyer to write up for us that will allow us to keep the house. To celebrate, we got rid of the playroom that we’d been using our dining room for since Matthew was a few months old. We downsized his toy collection to something more manageable for his bedroom size, got a new, bigger toybox from my mom and we took our dining room back. We set our kitchen table up in the dining room, and bought a few new bamboo placemats, a new dimmer switch and some decorative outlet/switch covers to complete the new look. Taking the kitchen table out of our kitchen gave us an enormous amount of new space to utilize in our kitchen, so we bought a small island with cutting board top and a stool to take it’s place. The new island takes up much less space than our kitchen table did and provides us with more cabinet, drawer and counter space. It even has a nice, little rack for our dishtowels so that they aren’t always having to be folded up just to take up more space laying on the counter. The most exciting thing about the new dining room is that it got Spencer, Mary and even Matthew excited about eating dinner around the table as a family. Everyone was always more interested in snuggling up in our bed so that they could watch T.V., relax and eat at the same time. Because I work later most nights, it actually felt more efficient to do it that way so it was tough to change the routine even though I knew how unhealthy it was. Friday night we had an awesome steak dinner with homemade mashed potatoes, and Sunday morning Spencer and I had a nice, relaxing pancake breakfast with our coffee out in the new dining room. But the best meal so far was last night’s fried chicken dinner with the kids. We assumed Matthew would have no interest in sitting in the “big boy” chair (since his high chair is much too much of a mess accumulator to move into the carpeted dining room, he had to fed before us in his high chair) but we were wrong. Spencer, Mary and I were all sitting eagerly around the table in our new dining room laughing and joking about our weekend and talking about Mary’s week in school before we even realized how much fun we were having! It was like a commercial for Hamburger Helper…. When Matthew toddled on over, reached his little, baby hand up for me and said, “Mommy, hep me up.” I “hepped” him up into the fourth chair and Spencer and I took turns feeding him spoonfuls of mashed potatoes, green beans and a banana. Then I plopped my fork down on the table and said, “Oh my goodness, guys, look at us! This is exactly what I’ve been…” and Spencer and Mary practically finished my sentence for me saying, “I know! It’s like we’re a real family or something!” a little sarcastically. It was just awesome.

Mary spent the weekend with her mom which gave Spencer and I some time to work things out with the lawyer and discuss economizing for the holidays. But it was so nice to get her home on Sunday and to be able to hang out with her like that before bed.

Today is Mary’s first day of DSTP testing so I’ve got to get her up and get a good breakfast in her belly. And I am definitely wasting valuable time on here.

house

Pin It Count this as another lesson learned.
We’ve been fighting it for a year and a half. We were on our last leg, the house was up for sale, a buyer made an offer that Jen had already agreed to and our real estate agent was hounding us to not only make a decision - but to have that decision be a resounding “yes!” so that the sale of the house could be set in stone and there would be absolutely no turning back. We had no other options, in fact we had to end things with our real estate agent because we were wasting her time and recourses in our last efforts to just buy ourselves a little more time to come up with one, last strategy before throwing in the towel. I finally took the matter up with God the other morning in my car. I usually pray on my way to and from work everyday; It’s a quiet thirty minute commute so it serves as a good time to just give thanks and to get worries off of my chest. Well, there was no bigger worry I’d ever felt in my life besides this… Spencer and I hadn’t slept in days. I’d wake up at three in the morning with my head reeling only to look over and see Spencer just as wide awake and just as anxious as I was. Spencer had so much invested in this house that would be lost if it was sold right now, much less before the two of them split the profit down the middle. The market had taken such a beating in the time that Jen spent refusing to accept our real estate agents (or to hire her own) that the house was now worth twenty-five THOUSAND dollars less than what it would have sold for when the judge ordered to have it sold. We were also raising two children under the roof of this house - one of which belongs to Jen… Jen only sees her about twice a month now and doesn’t even have a room for her where she lives… It just seemed so unfair that we would have to sacrifice our whole livelihood over a profit of seven-thousand dollars that would come out of the sale of the house now. It would take our whole savings - but could GIVE that to Jen straight out of our savings if she would agree to just let us continue living in this house. But she wasn’t budging. She only cared about knocking Spencer down to her level -- She chose to sacrifice her marriage for a forty-year-old boyfriend who’d never owned a piece of property in his life and who never got his life together. And she wanted to even the playing field. She admitted many times that her only objective was to get us out of the house; The seven thousand dollars that would come to her from the proceeds of the sale was just icing on the cake. How do you reason with someone like that?

I’ve told God a few times that we needed Him to be with us through this tough situation and I’ve asked Him to give us signs to guide us in the right direction as we weave in and out of court hearings and custody mediations. But for the first time I finally asked God to help Jen see that selling the house was making Mary relive the whole divorce all over again; that it was taking Mary away from her school and her friends and her home when she’s already had to sacrifice so much in her parent’s separation. I asked God to give Jen just enough understanding to let us keep the house and to see what Mary’s going through -- And in return, the fighting would be over; We’d agree not to collect the child support arrears she’s already built up to 1,300 dollars, we’d agree to unofficially “throw-out” the visitation agreement… She wouldn’t be restricted to only Thursdays between 5:00 and 8:00 anymore, she could pick Mary up whenever she had the chance and we’d never have to go back to court again. There would be no more throwing stones and no more revenge, no more keeping score, no more fighting.

That day Spencer called singing, “Gooooooood Eff-ing Neeeee-eeeeeews!!” And it was done. Just like that she agreed to what we’d been offering her for the past year and a half. We’d have to wipe our entire savings account clean (and right before Christmas, too) but it was an investment that was worth all of the money in the world to us. And we were ready to do it as soon as humanly possible. To make good on our promise, we got Mary’s homework done with her first, explained what time to drop her off and pick her up from school and we let Mary spend the night with her mom on a school night - contradicting the visitation agreement - for the first time since it went into effect. We have the lawyer writing it up as we speak.

Sometimes I think God just gets a kick out of setting the stage for a good story; He has a tendency to really test you first, to really watch the way you handle yourself when your backs against the wall and every sign you see is telling you that you’ve already lost… Before handing out a miracle just in the knick of time. This has certainly made an interesting story -- but all the same, I’m glad that it’s over. And I’m glad that I’m finally HOME!

The plan

Pin It We’re trying to get a court case together; It’s our one, last shot at trying to keep the house -- even if only long enough to get the money back out of it that Spencer put into it. Spencer took the judge’s order to his mom’s office where she works as a paralegal. Apparently one of the lawyers she had take a look at the order said, “Oh yeah, we’re fighting this.” That was uplifting to hear, but Spencer only casually mentioned it to me as we were getting into bed… which told me that he wasn’t getting his hopes up about it. I don’t blame him. We’ve been fighting this with everything in us for almost two years now and we haven’t gotten much of anywhere yet. There’s only so long a person can drag something on for. At this point, whether we “win” and get to keep our house, knowing it’s ours and that we don’t have to keep our bags packed just-in-case, or we’re forced to give in and start over somewhere new, giving up the thirty-thousand dollars worth of profit that went into the house because the decline of the housing market won’t allow us to get it back when the house is sold -- we’re just ready to have our feet on solid ground and know where we stand.

Right now, we’re in Limbo. We can’t plan on staying but we’re not ready to get up and go yet either. We’ve already begun cleaning out the basement and garage in preparation for the move. We’ve even started looking at rental properties and put our house up on the market. We cleared out every drawer, closet and shelf of anything we don’t absolutely need to take with us. Spencer was holding onto a few hundred dollars worth of scrap metal that he was collecting in the garage to be able to take it to the scrap yard when the price they were offering for it went back up again after a huge drop… It never did go back up, but we got rid of it anyway, and he was able to come home with about three-hundred dollars from it. Our storage room was packed with all of our “someday” project ideas; craft & scrap booking things, appliances we hoped to be able to fix or just get use out of someday, baby & nursery items, cabinet doors, even a sink and toilet that we were hoping to put into the extra bathroom we wanted to build… It’s all garbage now.

We had so many projects that we were ready to work on in our house that probably won’t ever come to fruition. The major one was finishing off one half of the basement in order to make the main living area down there our new master bedroom. The walls are already finished, but we were planning on putting a new coat of paint on the walls, laying down remnant carpet, and putting up a door at the beginning of the hallway so that it would be closed off from the less-finished portion of the basement. We also have an office connected to it that is finished nicely but doesn’t ever get used simply because the basement doesn’t get much traffic since we expanded our family with Matthew. But if we turned the basement into our bedroom, that would open up a new room upstairs. It would be turned into a playroom for the kids at first - which would give us our dining room back, and shortly thereafter become a new nursery for the next little Stucky baby in line.

The worst part about settling for a rental home, even if only for a couple of years, is that we can’t put any imagination into it. We can’t paint the walls, we can’t put up a fence, we can’t knock down walls or put in our own flooring. We can’t look at it and see it’s potential - we have to look at it and simply be satisfied… That’s the hard part.


Our plan is this:
We took the house off of the market. Jen says that she’s already in the process of filing a petition with the court accusing Spencer of being in contempt for it… But we’re filing with the court, too, to have the order reevaluated because of the drastic change in the value of the housing market since the order was made. If that goes through, than we hope that will mean that we get to keep our house until we can get a little more out of the sale of it - which will satisfy us.
If it doesn’t work, than we’ll have to sell the house. We’ll try to price it high to get as much out of it as we can (though it still won’t be much) and that will give us around ten grand to put away into savings. We won’t be able to get another mortgage right away so we’ll have to rent for about a year or two. But we won’t settle for an apartment or a townhouse…. If we’re going to have to rent, it’s going to be a respectable, detached house - hopefully with a fourth bedroom.
In the mean time, we’re going to apply for the rental properties that we like, just to see where we stand with our ability to even be approved. Then, I’m going to contact a mortgage lender and see where I stand with getting a mortgage in my name alone; how long before I’ll be able to qualify with my particular income and debt, where my credit needs to be at if it isn’t already high enough for me to qualify, and what I can expect to be able to qualify for when I reach those criteria. When we move into our rental, it’ll be with a specific plan for getting out of it as soon as humanly possible.

Back and forth

Pin It

4 bedroom, 2 bathroom rental house with 1.5 baths and a finished basement; huge fenced-in backyard with professional landscaping + trash removal included in rent; new carpet and hardwood floors; brand new kitchen; wonderful neighborhood seconds from everything we love living close to now (even shorter distance to wawa than we are now, which is one of our favorite things about our current house). We're going to see if we can even be approved, and if nothing can be worked out to have the order changed, than this is where we'll be retreating to when we throw in the towel on staying in the house that we currently own.

We’re back and forth.
Spencer bought this house for $190,000 about five years ago. The judge ordered that it had to be sold in his divorce. Jen refused to put it up on the market for almost two years because she refused to work with any real estate agents that we chose, yet she never chose any on her own. (Then she even tried to have him held in contempt for it!) We literally had to hire a real estate agent to get in contact with Jen and PRETEND that they got her name off of some imaginary reference list somewhere and to give Jen the impression that she’s never met The Stucky’s and that she was hired to work for Jen; not us. Because Jen thought that she was hiring the agent (and even bragged about it, like an idiot) we were finally able to get it on the market. Only now, the market’s dropped so drastically that although it appraised for $195,000 two years ago when the judge first ordered the house to be sold, it is NOW only going to sell for around $170,000!! If the house is sold now, Spencer loses about $25,000 worth of profit that was supposed to be in the house when it was originally ordered to be sold. Jen playing that whole “I have to be in charge of EVERYTHING” game lost her the same money it lost him - but because she never paid the mortgage or even held a job at all during the short time that she lived here, she has no concept of what that even means. We were so close to getting it sold… But we just couldn’t let go without giving it one more shot with the judge. It’s impossible to get an appeal approved or even a step past the filing process - trust us, we’ve already tried. But maybe we can file something with the court on the basis of how much circumstance have changes since the order went through. It’s a ridiculously long shot, but it’s worth one, last try. After that, if nothing else works, we’ll pack it up and settle for a rental property until I can buy a house on my own. We wanted to wait for Spencer’s bankruptcy to clear, but I’m not sure we’re prepared to wait that long.

Twenty-four hours to make a decision

Pin It The showings have finally stopped. Someone put an official offer in on our house. We’ve been buying ourselves time (and by time I mean one day) by countering their offers but our Real Estate agent told us that we had until yesterday to make a final decision. We told her that the only way we could feel comfortable accepting an offer (therefore locking ourselves into being out of the house in one month) was if we were able to at least physically walk through a few rental properties first. Before we decided to work with this Real Estate agent, she promised us that she would do two things: 1.) Help us to find a suitable rental house and 2.) Help us to get our house sold. She busted her ass to get the house sold but never helped us to find another place to live. Now she wants us to commit to being out of our home in a month without ever having even given us so much as a listing of available properties; Nothing. She wants us to just trust that we’ll find something because she doesn’t want this buyer to lose interest in our house. I told her that I was firm in my decision; That if she could get us in contact with the woman in charge of rental properties at Keller Williams within the twenty-four hours that she wanted us to give a concrete decision - than we would accept. We didn’t have to find the house that we would definitely move into; we just needed some indication that they cared at all about that part of their deal with us. We left four separate messages for the woman between late that night and as early as seven the next morning, our real estate agent promised that she would contact the woman via her cell phone and explain the urgency of the situation, we even got up at 4:30 in the morning and looked online for four hours, making phone calls and sending e-mails trying to set up appointments to just LOOK at some rental properties.

We were able to look at ONE house, which we set the appointment for ourselves. We never got a hold of the rental person at Keller Williams and we never heard back from anyone we contacted ourselves. Oh yeah - and the house we looked at was basically a piece of crap.

When I finally got back to the real estate agent, feeling very frustrated by this point, I told her that she already knew my stance on our decision: I told her the night before that if we were going to be rushed into a decision, that we needed to at least be shown some properties before I committed to having my family out of this house in four weeks, and that if no one was willing to give us that time or that HELP that we were already promised, than our answer that they were so desperate to rush us into was going to be a denial.

I told her that we were so fed up with the situation that we were at the point of being perfectly happy with taking the house off of the market altogether; fuck the consequences of disobeying the court order. At the very least, maybe we could switch agents. By the end of the conversation, everyone was annoyed. We wrapped up the conversation by saying that we’d think about where we wanted to go from here and call her back last night. We never did.

We helped my brother move which ended up taking all evening, then we took the kids to Old Country Buffet for dinner and ice cream. Spencer and I woke up at one in the morning and talked it our for about an hour. We decided that if Karen could get us in CONTACT with the woman in charge of rentals today than we’d just accept the fucking offer.
Let’s see what happens.

Mapping out a plan

Pin It This week has been insane with the number of showings we’ve had for the house. They’re happening nearly everyday now. I never thought that we’d be able to keep the house spotless enough for a showing as often as we’ve had to, but we’ve gotten so much practice keeping the house in a constant state of perfection that I don’t think we’ll ever be too busy to pick up after ourselves completely again. As it is, I work fifty hours a week, typically about ten hours a day so there are a few nights that I don’t get very much winding-down time before I have to be in bed myself, much less get the family fed, homework done and the kids to sleep. Now, with having showings about twice a day - once while we’re all out of the house in the middle of the day and then usually again about an hour after we get home - we’re starting to feel like strangers in our own house. We rush home, make a mad dash around the house, tidying up every little detail, get the kids together, make sure Mary has a book to read and her homework to work on in case it’s late when we get back, and we have to be out of the house by the time the potential buyers arrive. It has been kind of nice getting things like light grocery shopping or short trips to pick up little extras at wal-mart out of the way in the middle of the week when we normally wouldn’t bother. But it’s been a major pain having to eat out as much as we’ve had to since the showings all happen around dinnertime and we can’t make a mess or clutter up the kitchen cooking when we’re trying to make our already small kitchen look as appealing as possible. Spencer and I are literally starting to feel the extra, unhealthy weight on us just from the past month or so of having to eat out three or four times a week. Mary’s had to start doing her daily reading aloud to us at restaurant tables while we’re all waiting on our meals to be served. Once in a while is fun, but that’s no way for a kid to have to get used to doing her homework.

We finally decided to put our foot down and start declining a few of the showings because they’re just becoming way too inconvenient. We literally don’t even have an evening routine anymore. Today Spencer called me to let me know that the last showing left the house with the door wide open. We decided then that we weren’t going to have anymore showings until at least Saturday afternoon when we’ll already be out of the house -- absolutely NO showing anymore that evening -- it was Friday night and we just wanted to relax in our own house…. Especially because Spencer got an extra run (FINALLY!) and would have to leave for work at 8 that night to work all night long. But of course, when someone inevitably decided to request a showing late that night we HAD to accept it because it was the same people from earlier that day. They were bringing their parents back with them to take a second look at the house before putting in an offer. Our relaxing Friday night turned into doing an even deeper clean than we normally would for a showing because these people were seriously interested in making an offer…. Then it was spent (somewhat embarrassingly) waiting out front of the house after the couple arrived to wait for Mary’s mom to pick her up a half-an-hour late, then going to the park with Matthew for a few minutes before picking up dinner at McDonald’s.

If this couple decides to buy the house, they’re requesting an October settlement and move-in date, which would mean that we’d have to aggressively begin looking for a new house.

Our moving options are pretty open right now. Our plan is to find a nice single-family house to rent from for a few years; probably two but possibly as many as four. Right now I make most of the money for our family and my credit isn’t in bad shape. The problem is that I get paid cash every week and until I can prove my income with tax returns, I can’t get a mortgage on my own. Spencer’s bankruptcy will be over in about three years. In the mean time, as soon as he finds dependable, full-time work then I’ll be able to afford to claim my income (plus make money on the side with a start-up business I’m creating) thus qualifying us for a decent mortgage in both of our names -- or possibly only mine depending on what’s more equitable for us. We looked into the option of claiming my income right away and trying to buy a house in only my name, which we found out from a lender that we could actually do in as little as six months - but neither one of us wants our first home-buying experience together to be a hurried, frazzled, obligatory experience -- so that’s why we’ve decided to try to find a house to rent from first. When we do buy a home together, I’m looking forward to it being the absolute happiest day of my life, and that’s something worth waiting for.

Right now our favorite option is actually in Wisconsin; Milwaukee Wisconsin. 850 miles away. Spencer has a guaranteed job there making at least $750.00 a week, with a constant potential for overtime, driving a tractor-trailer! This is a huge deal because driving a tractor-trailer has always been a dream of Spencer’s… It’s what he’d been planning to spend the next few years of his life working toward! This job would train him for his Class A CDL license and land him a job doing what he’s always wanted for an amazing amount of money. The best part is that the friend of his that’s going to give him the job also has his real estate license and is confident that he can get us into a rental house well within our price range up there. I did a little big of research and found that for the same amount of money that we’d spend on rent in Delaware for a three bedroom, we can afford a four bedroom in Milwaukee with an extra bath in a better neighborhood. We would start out renting, like we’d planned to here, but chances are, we’d probably wind up buying property there when the time came because we’d already be settled into the area. Of course, there’s also the issue of finding work for me, daycare for the kids and severing Mary from her mom. Plus, Spencer would be working nights. I’m trying to remember that I’m excited while being entirely petrified about how everything is going to come together. I think though, that if this is truly a guarantee and that if we are approved for a house that we like, that we’re going to make the leap. We’re planning to take a week without the kids to fly there and check out the area. Before we go I’m going to line up appointments to meet with a number of daycares, schools, landlords and potential employers so that we can spend the week seeing what opportunity Milwaukee has to offer us.

Upsides to a big move:
1. Job opportunity for Spencer
2. More money (plus more taxable income to help us buy a house sooner)
3. Nicer, more spacious houses available
4. Less fighting with Spencer’s ex-wife
5. I shouldn’t have trouble finding work
6. We would have the money/space to begin trying for another baby

Downsides to a big move:
1. Uncertainty
2. Much more planning involved
3. Leaving my job
4. Taking Mary away from family & friends in Delaware


It’s still just an idea right now. We’ll just have to wait and see how everything pans out.

A gamble

Pin It Spencer’s been looking for a new job since long before starting his current one. He took this one because (1.) he needed something; we didn’t want to have only one income for more than a few months and (2.) it was in the field that he wanted to get experience in: driving. He’s always wanted to get his class A CDL license which would enable him to drive tractor trailers and things of that sort. Right now he has his Class B with a few endorsements like passenger and air breaks. The more endorsements you have added, the more better paying jobs are available to you… But also: the more your license is to renew which makes it a gamble to do before such jobs become available. It would be a shame to have them added, only to have to have them taken off because he couldn’t find a job that would allow him to put them to use. In the mean time, the bus company that he works for joined the Union. Now he makes about fourteen dollars an hour, which is fantastic. When he first started working for First Student, he worked more than forty hours a week, plus a ridiculous amount of over-time that he had the freedom to accept or deny at his will. This school year has been drastically different though. He isn’t working half as much as he was before.
He finally found a driving job that he’s qualified for which would give him a solid forty hours a week. The dilemma is that it’s about three dollars less an hour. After taxes it works itself out to be about four hundred dollars more a month. Even though he would be actually bringing home the most amount of money from this potentially new job, he’d be giving up the potential to make MUCH more money if the hours pick up at his current job. But then again, what’s to say that even if the hours do pick up, that they won’t drop drastically all over again after a few months of us getting used to the extra income.

There is LOT that we could do with four hundred dollars a month that would make a huge difference to us. We would more than likely put it all into savings which would get us into the house that we really want sooner. But, (just to put things into perspective, an extra four hundred a month…)if we were to put it all into our monthly payment, it would mean the difference between this kind of house….


And this kind of house...