Yesterday was Sam’s 19th birthday and we all went out to dinner to celebrate. My girls, Eva and Sophia, were at their dad’s and did not attend, but Paul’s kids, along with Susie, his ex-wife, met up at a wonderful Chinese restaurant in Capitola called Canton’s. I highly recommend it.

It was a pleasant evening. We each had assigned jobs to order various courses, ( mine was appetizers) but desert was the usual fortune cookie. Sam went first to read aloud his fortune, but before he did he said, “I think I got Dad and Carol”s.” (Carol is me, those of you who don’t know.) It said: “You will be very happy with your spouse.”

“What a nice thing to say”, I thought, not only because he could recognize that his father and I are happy, but because he acknowledged my existence in the first place. You see, Sam and I have a very turbulent past, so to speak. There are times when he looks at me with such disdain I swear he hates me. If I had to list all the mistakes I made as a step mother,  most would  begin with Sam.

When I first entered Sam’s life he was coasting along just fine without me. Both of his parents worked outside the home and there I was working from home and therefore able to observe him not doing his homework, eating crap and playing too many video games. I felt it was my role to correct his behavior and made it my mission to do so. In hindsight, this was not such a great idea. It not only back fired in my face, it bred resentment. I hope someday Sam will look back on my “interference” as caring rather than an annoyance. Only time will tell. If I had to do it all over again I would simply leave his parenting up to his parents and stay out of it. I set myself up to be the bad guy, even though I was well intentioned. Perhaps Sam’s acknowledgement that I was  good for his father was the first nod in my favor. Maybe I am making way too much of this, but sometimes I just have to take what I can get.

Sometimes I look back on some of my posts and I think I paint such a rosy picture that maybe you might get sick of me and think that I am laying it on a little thick. I wax on about how I married the most perfect man and have the most perfect life. Well I don’t. I am here to tell you that I have snot on my couch. With five teenagers, it comes with the territory.  I have found candy wrappers under the couch, nail clippings, moldy sandwiches and now…. snot.

I did marry a lovely man. That part is true. But he did not come to me in isolation. He had three children and the blending with my two has not been an easy task. It was the hardest on me, truthfully, because I am a clean freak neat nick  as in, it bothers me if the butter knives in the silverware drawer are not facing all the same direction. Or the bath towels aren’t folded a certain way. And I cannot for the life of me understand why no one seems to do things the way I want them done. So you can see my challenges here. These days with grad school and all, my standards of cleanliness have gone lower than I ever thought they could go. But I have my blinders on. One must in order to survive. I’ve had a lot of practice. When I lived in NYC in my early 20’s the view from my apartment was a brick wall. I made it a point to never look out that window. My motto now is, “Don’t look under the couch.”

We had a bit of drama at the Shwanda house last week. My daughter Sophia and my husband Paul got into a big argument on Tuesday night over something as innocuous as the TV (he wanted to watch the Olympics and she wanted to watch a reality show) and she just had a hissy fit. She stormed out of the great room, starting slamming things around, claimed she ” JUST CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE!!!” packed her bags and drove across town to go live with her father.  It was not her finest moment and it wasn’t mine either. She screamed some expletives at her step father, which she later came to regret, and I allowed myself to get caught in the middle when I should have been backing up my hubby. I got defensive. I let my “I’m-so-sorry-for-getting-divorced-and-remarried-and-making-you-move-guilt” get in the way of reason. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m starting a new blog called Stepmoms Talk that I want to be a starting and on-going resource for stepmoms. There are lots of us out there and we all come from different perspectives and stepmom situations. Some of us have kids of our own, some don’t  and then have some or don’t. Some have ex-wives to deal with and some don’t, but we all have one thing in common and that is we are helping to raise our husband’s/spouse’s/parrtner’s children and we want to do it right. I am looking specifically for stepmom bloggers to be panelists on weekly videos, kind of like momversation, and every week there will be a topic for discussion that runs the gamut of our collective experiences. It will definitely have a positive tone because we are here to help people offering inspiration, advice and constructive criticism only. If  you are interested, please contact me at carol@shwanda.com.

The best part of the homemade dollhouse  project was that it was made in our art studio. Paul built it for me when we got married. It was a place for me to do my writing and seaweed art, but also a free space for the children to invent, create and make messes. We work on art projects, make candles, sew, have my Just Imaginate craft classes. It’s a fun room. When we lived at our old house, my girls had a play house that their father had built for them. They missed it terribly. This special room is for all of us and I love enjoying it with them. The photos below are of our studio.

art studio entrance

art studio interior

another view

Last week the kids had a four day weekend because of the semester break. Sophia had her wisdom teeth out on Friday, but was feeling well enough by Saturday to spend the rest of the weekend working on a homemade dollhouse. She came out to my studio (where I write this blog, among many other things) and told me that since she didn’t have any homework, she wanted to tackle a project she always wanted to do and that was to make a dollhouse out of card board boxes. She worked on it the rest of the weekend, enlisting the aid of her two sisters to help her. It was amazing what they came up with. They built, decorated and furnished the entire house all with found objects. The made bookcases filled with books, lampshades out of sewing thimbles and shower curtain rods out of bead wire. Everything was in miniature and it was a masterpiece. Here are some photos of their homemade doll house.

Our family was featured in the San Francisco Chronicle yesterday in a column called “On the Couch.” It is a series that comes out every Sunday in the Style section about how couples met. Our story was titled, “Second Marriage, a Second Chance at Love.” It was a really nice write up and we were all so excited that we ran out and bought four newspapers. Today I looked up the article online so that I could write about it here with a link to it and to also send it to all my friends and family who live on the East coast.

The interesting thing about reading an article on-line is that you can read what people comment about it. There were 14 comments and I was very curious to see what people wrote. Most were positive but some were so vitriolically cynical I was stunned.  There’s some pretty sick people out there. No one said anything bad about my husband or my kids, just me.  I was accused of being shallow, materialistic, lazy and stupid.  Some of the comments must have been so bad there were withdrawn because they violated the paper’s policy. It was really mean and totally uncalled for. My oldest daughter was reading over my shoulder as I recoiled in shocked disgust. She reassured me by saying, quite profoundly, “You know, Mom, happiness is boring to some people. Conflict is what sells. Whenever I have to write an essay about something in school, I always make it up because otherwise, the truth would just be too boring.” Well, said, my darling daughter and how true.

Now that I have officially started grad school I am much busier with my academics and classes and have less time for domestic chores around the house. Paul and I had a discussion with the kids and  told them everyone has to pitch in. From now on they have to do their own laundry, which they agreed to do (as long as I do the sorting). Since I have classes a few nights a week, the kids will need to cook a few dinners. The latter they are very excited about doing.  Our routine is that we decide together on a recipe, which I leave out on the kitchen counter along with all the ingredients.  While I am in my office on-line with one of my classes, they cook dinner. So far so good. Last night Eva made Pasta Puttanesca and it was delicious. She was very proud of herself. Sophia did the dishes. It is her turn to make dinner on Thursday. She plans to make quiche. Here is the link for the Pasta Puttanesca  recipe if you would like to try it. Some of the  ingredients she used were  products from Coeur d’Olives, my friend Les’ company that I am doing some marketing for right now.

I took all three girls shopping yesterday to Marshalls, a discount “labels for less” clothing store to spend their Christmas gift cards. We had gone to a Marshall’s in New Jersey when we went out to visit my sister Pam this past summer. We scored some great deals then and happened upon some awesome finds yesterday as well. Juicy Couture jackets for $30, marked down from $60. The girls went wild. And then they saw the most perfect pair of suede slouchy boots that all three of them wanted, but there was only one pair. First Cheryl, a size 6, tried them on and they fit. Then Sophia, a size 7, tried them on and they fit her too. And finally Eva, a size 8, tried them on and they fit her as well. They decided to split the cost of the shoes three ways and share them. Eva exclaimed, “It will be like the sisterhood of the traveling shoes!!” For those of you unfamiliar with the reference, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Sisterhood of Traveling Pants, Book 1) is a novel about four friends who alternate “owning” a pair of jeans that magically fits each of them perfectly. My girls have all read the book. I thought is was wonderful that they all came up with such a perfect solution. I can’t wait to see the schedule the come up with for taking turns for wearing the shoes.

In spite of my trepidations that things would go awry based on the pre-Christmas angst all the kids were experiencing, we ended up having a wonderful Christmas after all. Sophia and Eva woke up Christmas morning around 8:30 and I made breakfast for all of us.  Afterward Paul  lit a fire in the front room while we waited for his kids to return from their mother’s. The girls were a bit mellow and kind of funky, the excitement of “Let’s go open our presents!!!” was definitely not there. In a way they seemed kind of sad, but once their stepsibs arrived the mood elevated to joyous excitement. We all settled in the great room under the big tree and Cheryl was the self-appointed mistress of ceremonies and handed out the presents. Everyone took his or her turn in a very civilized fashion as we all savored the moment of giving and receiving. I especially liked watching the children open the gifts they bought for each other.  They have developed a genuine fondness and affection for each other and truly enjoyed sharing the excitement of the day.