The Con of Single parenting

No matter how altruistic your plans are....when you date, even when things are awesome, even when you shield  your kid from too much of the other person, your kid still breaks your heart and reminds you of why single parenting is hard.

Tonight Tigger was asking me about S.  I told her S doesn't live at the house and he was at work....that maybe she will see him on the weekend for a little bit.  She sat down and cried and asked me to open the door so that "S" could come in.

Sigh, as much as I try to keep it cool, she "knows"...and now Tigger likes S a lot and S really likes Tigger and is fun to be around when Tigger is with us even in a group.

Prayers for our family please!

From my house to yours

I hope this Thanksgiving brings about warm memories.  Tigger and I are doing well and just enjoying time together with family.

Poor S gets to spend Thanksgiving with my family and he is a big football fan and my folks aren't and usually have the TV off so we'll see how it goes.  Ah young love, he is sucking it up and coming anyways.  What a guy.  I told him he could go out with my cousins and check out game scores if he really gets antsy.

Hopefully you all are enjoying some great food by now or later in the day.

Peace and Joy from our house to yours!

And then life got interesting....

Hello friends out in blogosphere!

If you haven't noticed, my posts have been far and few in between.  I love this blog.  If I have any thoughts about parenting or adoption I still think about bringing it here, especially single parenting by choice.

Starting and maintaining the blog was easy.  I had thoughts, I was able to write in the evenings after the little one was in bed.  Life was smooth and uncomplicated.

I have been incredibly happy and complete!  I also made the choice not to actively date and to focus on my child  until she was older....and if by some reason some guy literally fell into my lap then ok I would consider but the possibility of that happening was very unlikely and I was very ok with that.

Can you guess what I'm about to say?  Yes, a guy literally fell into my lap.  I was secretly set-up by a mom friend and was invited to a lunch after church along with another friend of this family.  No expectations, they were hoping we'd be friends.  Well, we are friends.  The dating kind now.  It complicates life.  My Tigger is first and foremost.  After she is in bed, my new friend calls and we are slowly getting to know each other through the phone at night (when I usually was busy blogging) and we are able to see each other on the weekends.

Juggling parenthood and now dating is sometimes complicated.  I don't want to be one of those single moms that have guys coming in and out of a child's life.  My Tigger didn't sign up for that, heck she didn't sign up to end up with me either, and I am not willing to bring instability to Tigger's life.  I have already had the chat with my gentlemen friend about his intentions and that if he just wanted to play....he could look elsewhere, I have no time for it.  He received the message and has decided to stay in the picture.

Life is good.  Life is complicated.  I never thought this would be a turn I would be taking at this point in life.  If any of my readers especially the single mama's have any experience with this (ahem  MAMA MARGIE......I NEED YOUR SUPPORT AND ADVICE....E-MAIL ME) please feel free to offer any advice and mentor me!

Now that things have settled into the new normal of parenting first and dating second....I plan to continue my blog, however, I am still hoping to post about single parenting and adoption/foster care mostly.  That is how I started my blog and that's how I'd like to continue it.  I just thought I'd let you all in as to why I've been absent lately.

Cheating a little

Digging up an old post from last year....in honor of November and National Adoption Awareness Month

Journey to Tigger.

National Adoption Awareness Month

November is National Adoption Awareness Month.  Now some people automatically get all mushy and hearts start flying in the air and violin music and all that.  Others are more quiet about it, mostly meditating on ethics surrounding adoption as a whole.  Like most things in life I'm a middle-of-the-road gal.

I care about adoption happening the right way especially through foster care since that is my arena of interest.  I also get sentimental as November of last year was when Tigger was finalized and officially a member of the family--my family.

The truth of the matter is, foster care and adoption from foster care should be a topic of interest as it impacts our society.  Whether or not children in foster care reunite with family or are adopted into a new family, they are our kids.  We interact with them, they go to school with our kids, they are part of our future for a better place. It's high time we got involved in making sure ALL of the children in our community have a good chance at life for a future.

What are some ideas that we can do?

• be more mindful/helpful with the neighbors....especially the neighbors you think are struggling
• be mentors to your children's friends
• be mentors in the community
• Get involved with the department of family services in one way or another (donating, mentorship, contemplate being a foster home or an adoptive home if you feel that it is something you can do no matter how little (or not) gratitude/give back there is
• support families that have adopted from foster care
• be respite homes
• offer services or financial support if a family needs to pay for therapeutic services for their child 

Adoption is not all roses and butterflies, however, with AWARENESS, my hope is that we all can help our kids, our community find their place....a better place in this world.