Category: Kiddos

Thursday, September 25th was a hectic day for both Jorge and I.

He had their yearly Expo at his workplace and I had to run around all over the place and try and make it on time everywhere.

I left work a little early to pick Jaylen up at school after football practice. I was earlier than he expected (to which he said, “I had just gotten comfortable and sat down to watch a volleyball game *insert sigh*”) LOL. We picked up Eenan and waited about 20 minutes for some pizza (they’d been wanting to try the pretzel crust one) and then Jorge and I met at the house with all the kids, we practically tossed paper plates out like frisbees and had them all sit down to eat. Jorge changed, left to work, then I changed as quickly as possible. I made it to the Expo by 7 and was taken on a tour by my Love :), where he showed me his latest creations.

Michelle, EZ and Ivan showed up a while later, as did Jenna. Jenna and I’d never hung out other than the Expo the year before, or comments here and there on Facebook and she really is such a sweet girl :). We walked around, ate, looked at the latest techie things and then the guys and Michelle left. Jenna and I stayed behind, eating and chatting and then headed to Roosevelt’s, where one of the Reps was taking us. Jorge didn’t want to be rude and decline so we went. It’s one of the very few occasions we stay out while we have the kids.

We ran into Jenny and her hubby, John, there and said our hellos. Then I tried my hardest to stay awake. I didn’t even want to order anything. I always feel like we’re taking advantage of the poor Reps =\. But we did have fun, and chatted and reminisced about the Expo last year and all the Shenanigans that happened. We said our goodbyes since we had to be up super early to take all the kids to school the next morning.

We got up, quite reluctantly, woke the kiddos up and got ourselves ready. I realized again that morning that feeling as groggy and tired as I did is exactly why I don’t like going out on a work night. I knew it was going to be a looong day.

I knew it was going to be an even longer day when we realized we’re all running late. I didn’t even get to make some coffee. We’re on our way, I pick up Gatorade for Jaylen (and Big Red gum for Eenan) and drop them off still on time, thank goodness.

I stop by the new Starbucks that I’d still yet to visit. There was only one entrance and exit and I wasn’t fond of the $4 I spent either, heh. Am I a cheapskate? Yes, yes I am, but I knew I couldn’t function without a coffee or latte.

The morning went by pretty fast, thank goodness. I was meeting Thelma and our instructors for our entrepreneurship project at Hobby Lobby to buy the supplies they’d need for the class on Wednesday. By the time I knew it, it was lunchtime and I met my love at Tacos Kissi. Such good sushi!

The afternoon went by fast, too, but not before Jorge and I got into spat by text. How I dislike those .

I picked up my boys and girls (Mario took the girls home with him so I picked them all up together). Dina, Briana and the kids were waiting for us at home :). We ordered in pizza and just chilled out at home. I think we were all exhausted and we all went to sleep earlier than we usually do when they come to visit. We all had an early morning the next day, since the 3 boys had football games!

I always wondered how it would work; like, would I make it on time the days Jaylen has games back in our city after dropping him off in the city he goes to school in. The first time we were presented with this type of morning was when it was storming and the game ended up being cancelled. So this was the first official time I’d attempt to accomplish this.

I dropped him off, drove alllll the way back, came home, got the girls ready and packed a bag of waters and snacks, then we made it to the school down the road where Jaylen would play. He was a bit disappointed the week before because he only played once but this time he was a receiver for the entire game! He did really well, although their team unfortunately lost .

We left the game after they played and I came home with the girls before we had to drive back to pick Jaylen up. Both the girls watch all these doll videos on YouTube and Alaethia had been wanting to do a project for a while. This one was baking breads and pastries for dolls. It was pretty neat :). We just mixed:

1 tablespoon of corn starch
2 tablespoons of baking soda
1 tablespoon of water, although we used a little more since it wasn’t mixing well.

Then we microwaved the mixture for 1 minute, let it cool, and kneaded it.

We shaped the pastries and let them air-dry while we picked up Jaylen:

When we got back home, we baked them for a while, let them cool, then painted them with acrylic paint:

Alaethia recycled a Prego lid to use as a pastry tray .

Briana, Dina and the kids returned from the boys’ game and we chilled out the rest of the day :). Emily started feeling under the weather. She’d mentioned that her ear felt weird the night before, so I asked her several times throughout the day if she felt okay, otherwise I’d take her to the doctor. She said yes each time, so we stayed home.

She woke up the next day feeling worse, so we’d be visiting the Urgent Care that night. She got a fever, and once she gets a fever she pretty much goes downhill. It’s pretty scary, so I didn’t want to take any chances.

Dina, Briana and the kids left that morning. It always feels like we don’t get to spend enough time together and it sucked because I was so exhausted this weekend .

I made everyone breakfast; well, the ones who wanted bagels with salmon and cream cheese:

It was a few hours before Urgent Care opened, so we did a few things around the house, like replanting things and setting up the birdfeeder, now that it finally stopped raining.

Even though she felt sickly, Emmos played football with her bro:

She got tired and Justin came out to play with Jaylen. The kiddos later helped clean up. Eenan was caught in the act:

We had a late lunch of fish tacos, which, thankfully, the kids all liked (except Emmos. She had soup).

We got ready and left to the doctor around 5:30. And were there till 9pm, for them just to tell us she was fine and prescribed congestion medicine. That’s what I get for giving her Motrin for her fever, I guess. She didn’t have a fever when we arrived, and they said that supposedly her throat and ears were fine. I knew I’d have to take her back to the doctor later. Grr.

And sure enough. She woke up feeling even worse. I kept her home from school, gave her Motrin & her congestion medicine and made plans to leave work early to take her to her actual doctor. When I picked her up, Mom gave me a run-down of their day. Emily tells me, “I love my grandma, Mama. ‘Cause she takes care of me when I’m sick.” Aww!

By the time we got to the doctor, she was clearly showing signs of infection in her throat so they prescribed an antibiotic.

I got home and talked to the boys. Had a conversation with Jaylen. It was music to my ears :). Something I’d been wanting to hear for a long, long time . Now to get it all to fall into place .

As you can see, I changed the theme up a bit. It’s not exactly what I imagined; I wanted to throw a succulent in there somewhere, but I don’t have the proper tools for illustrating on this laptop and it’s late, etc, etc. I also need to figure out how to make my non-Wordpress pages work with the CSS/tables, but that’s a whole other day, heh. Oh well, at least the blog works!

It’s been pretty low-key the last 3 days.

My love and I spent the morning being lazy on Sunday and had breakfast at Taco Ole.

We picked up some stuff we needed for the pets (namely the fish) at Petco and then we picked up Jorge’s boys to spend the day with us.

They watched football while I did some cleaning, lazied around, cleaned my bedroom and organized my desk and then it was time to start the week. Meh.

The girls have been wonderful. They helped with dinner yesterday after John and I got back from grocery shopping:

They’ve been super polite and helpful and willing to do their homework and brush their teeth and go to bed without whining about it. Tonight they didn’t even watch TV or play on their iPads; they spend their time playing Teacher and Student. They would call me every-so-often to pretend I was picking Emily up from daycare and checking her folder, heh.

Poor Jaylen hurt himself in football so he didn’t practice today. I hope he’s better tomorrow, and definitely 100% for his game on Saturday.

Eenan’s into his art and tonight he showed me some of his earlier stuff, from middle school (through Facebook, of course). He’s come a long way :)!

As much as it pains me to do so–because I’d rather be painting, or reading blogs or working on the scrapbook page I never got around to doing…

(It’s been like that since Sunday. I at least managed to CUT the photos today, heh.) …I’m going to go ahead and get in bed. Hopefully, Jorge will keep from stealing the covers all night like he did last night and I won’t wake up every 30 minutes >_

I contemplated clicking “Move to Trash” several times as I typed this, but I think I’m okay with putting this out there.

I read this article on what kids with divorced parents think earlier. It makes my stomach turn. It makes me a little sad.

The boys and I have had endless conversations, usually on the 30-minute drive home from picking them up after work the weekends I do have them.

I know we shouldn’t bad-mouth the other parent–all the articles and people tell you this–but it’s hard not to when I think about everything that happened, how it happened and how the boys aren’t physically with me everyday, and WHY they’re not with me: to spite me.

When we have these conversations it’s almost like verbal vomit; a desperate plea from me for them to understand that if I had $10,000 to go to jury trial they would be with me.

Eenan thinks about it, I know he does because he’s verbal about it. Jaylen, not so much. He’s more reserved in general. He’ll input his thoughts when we’re having one of those conversations once in a while, at least.

I know that back then when we first separated he and his family would talk crap about me to the kids. They told me so themselves. That I was the reason everything fell apart, that I was the one who abandoned them, when I never did. They took them from me. They planned it perfectly.

But I hope the boys know the truth; I mean, they’ve told me themselves they do. They remember what our life together was like. Yes, there we good memories, but at the same time there was a lot of resentment and regret on his part, which eventually led to the marriage dissolving.

And on Jorge’s end; it’s hard to be nice about the boys’ mother when she does things like she did yesterday. When she wastes away their child support in bars. When they need things for school or clothes and she can’t afford them ’cause the money is gone. It’s hard to “be civil” when you know that goes on. When you know they’d be better off with you.

I know she does it; the kids have mentioned it in passing and, hello, even goes on social media to get pity/pats on the back from her supporters, by bad-mouthing Jorge. Sometimes, like yesterday, we get pissed off and stoop to that level. You can only be the “better person” for so long.

I’d read this other article–I almost wanted to send it to the other parents–about how teenagers and adults needed long-term therapy because of their divorced parents and them bad-mouthing each other. I know I, myself, need years of therapy to get over everything. I tell Jorge about it all the time. I don’t want our kids to go through that; what the people in this article have. They’ve been through enough, and this article really opened my eyes. But when you just can’t see eye-to-eye with the other parents, it’s hard to come to that peace. When you want all the kids to live with you and they don’t, it’s hard to come to it. When you have the history that we all have, it’s hard to come to it. But, for the kids’ sake, maybe, hopefully, one day it’ll happen.

Maybe.