It’s official: Anna will finally meet her dad

OK, so I guess I shouldn’t call it “official” until he’s pulling up in our driveway and stepping out of the car, but he DID get almost two weeks of leave. He’s flying in on Saturday (August 2), going to his niece’s baptism on Sunday, and then coming to my house on Monday morning. He plans to spend Monday, Tuesday, and part of Wednesday with Anna and me, and then he’ll take Anna with him to his parents house until Friday. (He still has one more week after that before he flies back, but we haven’t talked about how much more he’ll see her before then.)

After he takes Anna on Wednesday, my best friend arrives. That’ll give us two nights to ourselves! Well, unless I can’t handle more than one night away from Anna… but having my best friend here will hopefully keep me from freaking out. Alex said he could take Anna to his parents’ place a day earlier if I wanted some time completely alone, but I said no. If I were at home with nothing to do, I’d get so worried about how she was doing (and three nights would be too much anyway).  

And then my best friend leaves on the 13th, Alex leaves on the 15th, Anna starts daycare on the 18th, and I start school on the 25th. 

August is going to be CRAZY!

Being a single mom isn’t too bad after all

So, I only saw the first half of Must Love Kids last night. Anna started screaming, so I decided I’d just catch the last half another day (and from now on I’ll just TiVo it. Should’ve done that in the first place, but only the upstairs TV has that capability, and I just didn’t care enough to walk up there.) From what I saw, I really liked it. One of the moms, Vanessa, had her oldest child when she was close to my age, which really hooked me into the show.

It also got me thinking about a realization that I had not long after Anna was born — one of the most amazing things about being a mom is that age doesn’t matter. 

I started going to a parenting group sponsored by the hospital when Anna was 3 weeks old. I’ve been meeting up with those moms every week since. They’re all married and older than me, but that’s never been an issue. We’re all parents, and we’re all going through some of the same things with our babies. 

Of course, the same holds true among single moms. I’m one of the youngest single mom bloggers (there are some others, but there aren’t many of us), and that fact doesn’t matter when I’m reading other single moms’ blogs. No matter where we are in life, we understand each other and we’re here for support. And in my case, there’s so much to learn from all of you who are older than me and have been through so many more years of this single parenting thing. 

Another thought/feeling also came over me while watching the show. All those moms were so together and confident; they seemed to fully embrace their lives as single moms. For a moment I actually thought, hey, being single into my 30s is not a horrible thing. My 30th birthday is still 8 1/2 years away — which is a lot of time to fall in love and get married — but I finally started to feel a lot more comfortable with my singleness. I even thought about how much better it would be to not find love until I’m in my 30s. I’ll be growing so much emotionally over the next several years while I’m in this “finding myself” stage of life. I need to be where I want to be in life before I start thinking about marriage.

So many happy, confident vibes running through my body. It feels great

P.S. There’s a teenage mom blogger out there somewhere. She was linked in a post on another single mom blog, I think, and I forgot to bookmark her. If you are this single teenage mom and just happen to be reading this, please let me know! I want to read more and I can’t find you :( 

TLC’s “Must Love Kids” and other unrelated thoughts

Just a reminder: “Must Love Kids” is on TLC tonight at 9! I’ll probably just catch a rerun later. Anna’s bedtime routine starts around 9, and I prefer to keep the TV off. 

Now for a hodgepodge of other random thoughts:

• Earlier today, my sister asked me to take Anna outside or go in the basement because she “need[ed] to rest.” It was almost noon. I had stayed in the basement all morning because I knew Anna would be too loud and would wake up my sister. I’ve even had Slimfast shakes for breakfast the past few days just so I don’t have to walk upstairs and disrupt my sister’s sleep. (Usually my dad will come downstairs and watch Anna for a few minutes while I make breakfast, but he’s been out of town for the past couple days.) 
• Speaking of my dad being gone… I commend any mom who went through (or is going through) the first couple months of her baby’s life completely alone with no support network. I don’t think I’d survive if I was around Anna 24/7 with no small breaks to have time alone. Those few minutes my dad watches her while I make breakfast or lunch really helps me keep my sanity during the day. 
• Anna is doing great sleeping at night (8-9 hours on average), but she is HORRIBLE at napping. She enjoys sleeping for no more than 20 minutes at a time, but only if she’s in my arms! If I try to put her down, she’ll either immediately wake up or be up within 5 minutes. I’d really like her to be able to sleep in her crib for a couple hours in the afternoon, but right now I can only battle it out with her for so long before I give in and pick her up. I just keep reminding myself that she’s at least sleeping through the night, and that’s good enough for me.
• My best friend will be here in 20 days, and school starts in about 40 days!

Douchebag

Need I say more?

After graduation, I’m moving someplace where I don’t need a car for transportation. Maybe I’ll even move out to the middle of nowhere and be self-sustaining.

Relationship/Love Therapy for Myself

Anna’s dad might be coming up from August 1-11 (well, that’s the plan if he gets permission from his staff sergeant… according to his mom, since he hardly talks to me these days.)

I keep thinking how things need to be different between us this time around. We’ve been “friends with benefits” since the day we met, and it’s never become more serious than that. (Well, we attempted to take it to another level at one point, but it was a complete failure. Never make decisions when you’re both intoxicated!) Before I got pregnant, short-lived flings and the whole “friends with benefits” concept didn’t seem like a huge deal. Now, as a new mom, I don’t want to be like that anymore. It may work out fine for others, but I know that it’s not right for me.

Saying I want things to stop is one thing; actually doing it will be very difficult. Simply put, I love to feel loved. Any sort of physical intimacy makes me feel very appreciated and cared for. It doesn’t matter if the guy I’m with is only in it for the sex — I just don’t think about it — I feel loved, and that’s good enough for me. I can’t just be patient and wait to meet someone who truly cares about me. Deep down, that’s what I want, but — and this is going to make me sound like a slut — I’m just too easy sometimes.

I’ve told myself that being “friends with benefits” with Alex stops NOW. I’m afraid that the longer I let things go, the harder it’ll be to stop. Might as well nip it in the bud now. It’ll be tempting to fill that empty spot next to me in bed, but if I can make it through this time around, it’ll be a lot easier to resist any urges in the future.

Patience. I need to remind myself to always have patience when it comes to love.

A little spring… err… summer cleaning

I’m cleaning up my room — one of those big cleans where you sort through every piece of crap and decide whether or not to throw it away — and I’m amazed at how much random stuff I have. Actually, I can’t believe that I continually have junk no matter how many times I go through this major cleaning/organizing phase.

For instance, if you’re interested in working in advertising in the Detroit area, I have business cards for people at Doner, Young and Rubicam, Leo Burnett, and McCann Erickson. Or, how about someone from BBDO Atlanta? USATODAY.com? (All of these cards are several years old, so I doubt that many of these people are in the exact same position. And Young and Rubicam, as well as a few other companies, is now part of Team Detroit.) I used to be interested in advertising, you know, “back in the day” (meaning, two years ago, haha).

I also packed away Anna’s 0-3 month size clothes, and now I realize that I don’t have too much in the 3-6 month range, and I really don’t have much for 6-9 months. (I think I sense a shopping spree when Anna’s dad comes to visit…)

I also have two countdown widgets going on my computer — in 43 days, 20 hours I will be at my first day of work (which would mean 44 days, 20ish hours until my first class of the fall semester!), and my best friend will be here in 25 days! And, Anna will be 4 months old in two weeks!

Now back to cleaning… I have to get these piles of junk sorted out.

Hope for single moms who want to get married one day

I just got a text this evening from Alex’s older sister saying that she’s engaged! She’s been a single mom for 7 years, and she also had her daughter at a young age (20). She’s the only single mom I know outside of the online world, and it’s been great to have someone like her around in my life

I hope the next few days go well

My grandparents are coming to visit for a few days, and they finally get to meet Anna! Last time I saw them, I was 6 months pregnant. (They live in West Virginia, which is about 8 hours away, so we usually only see them around the holidays.) Actually, now that I think about it, the last time I saw them was kind of awkward. Both sides of my family are devout Christians (my grandfather is actually a retired pastor); I’m a young, unmarried mother. I think that’s all the explanation needed to be able to imagine the awkwardness.

Normally, we go to WV for Christmas, but this past year they came to us. My great grandmother is still alive and we get to see her as well when we go to WV, and since she’s even more conservative than my grandparents, they didn’t want her to see me pregnant and “make herself sick.” Yep, she’s a great great grandmother now and she doesn’t even know it.

Anyway, on to the awkward part: They asked me, multiple times, if Alex and I were going to get married. My answer of, “I don’t even want to think about marrying anyone until I graduate from college” wasn’t quite satisfying enough. I hope they don’t ask me this question again!

The only thing that could make things more uncomfortable is if my family knew that I don’t identify myself with Christianity anymore…

The smell of a new school year is in the air

47 days until school starts!

I am PUMPED! (I never realized I would miss school so much after taking a semester off.)

My schedule:

MONDAY: work at the Writing Center from about 9-3ish. This is the best job I’ve ever had (I’m basically like a writing tutor), and I’m going to miss it so much when I graduate.

TUESDAY/THURSDAY: I got all my classes on these days!

• 9:30-10:45: GEL 230 - Prehistoric Life (getting in another random science class for my B.A.)
• 11:00-12:15: PSY 383 - Learning and Memory
• 12:30-1:45: ENG 236 - English Literature (some more modern stuff, I think)
• 2:00-3:15: PSY 340 - Studies in Personality
• 3:30-4:45: ENG 375 - Intro to Linguistics

That’s 15 credits right there, even though I was only planning on taking 12. I was going to drop PSY 340, but I just can’t get myself to do it yet. I think I may just go for it and keep all five classes. I should know early on if it’s going to be too much for me to handle, and as long as I drop something within the first week or two, I can still get a full refund.

But if I don’t take 15 credits this semester, I run a higher risk of needing to squeeze in 18 credits during my last semester if I want to graduate by December of 2009. If I study for a couple hours every night after Anna goes to bed, and add a few extra hours here and there over the weekend when my parents can watch her, I think it should be doable. I also hope that at least one of my professors puts a syllabus online before classes start so I can get ahead a little bit and take some of the pressure off. (Man, I feel like a dork!)

And what am I going to do with my life after graduation? I have no frickin’ idea! (Well, I kind of have a vague idea…)

Because I love my Writing Center job so much, I’d really love to continue working with college students’ writing — like teach the freshman composition courses — but that requires grad school. And grad school, of course, means lots of $$$$! But if I really want it, I can do it. I briefly mentioned the idea in a conversation with my mom a while ago, and she and my dad decided that they’d go ahead and help pay for it if it’s something I really want. I think my decision will ultimately depend on my chances of getting a job afterwards (and if I can handle the possibility of living in my parents’ basement for a few more years).

Other than that… maybe a copy editor for a newspaper or magazine? Last I heard, there’s actually a shortage of newspaper copy editors. I’d love to get some experience at our school paper, but since it comes out in the morning, the copy editors work at 8 p.m. the night before. (Kind of hard to do when I have a baby and a 40-minute commute).

I’m sure I’ll figure all this out in the next three semesters, so for now I’ll just focus on how awesome this fall is going to be

The best thing that’s happening this summer

It’s finally official: my best friend is visiting August 6-13!

We have a few things planned already — Mackinac Island, running through Hell (which I mentioned a few posts back), bridesmaid dress shopping — but the best of all will be our “middle school night.” We’re going to buy Cosmo Girl, Seventeen, and whatever other teen mags are out there now and pretend we’re 13 years old again (which was also the age we became friends).

In a way, her visit will almost be like a “last hurrah” for the two of us before she gets married in January. (Well, there will also be a bachelorette party to mark the end of her un-married life.)