WHG: Chasing that rabbit with the pocketwatch

[workinghardguy]

Thanks Hope. I am trying. I know she's scared and putting on a brave face. As much as our WASs seem foreign to us, we still know them better than maybe anyone else. I know my W's short temper, anger, and frustration of late is a symptom of her fear and insecurity. This is how she has always been when faced with fear and insecurity.

I am trying to put on a strong front, though it's hard. I still question whether the child care arrangement is the right strategy. At the same time though it's the only way I can envision seeing my SS and SD more than once or twice a month. But I fear I will make life too easy on my W as well as create too much interaction.

I just sat down and looked at the first week we will be in separate houses. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday I will have SS, SD, and S from after school until almost 10pm. Part of me is really happy about that. It means three days with SS and SD I normally would not have. But part of me is concerned that wouldn't this all be so much harder on her if she had to find child care for those days? And then part of me says that if she has to do it, it will end up being one of her sisters... and I know I can provide a much better role-model and parenting than either of those two. Argh... just frustrated. At this point I am still coming down on the side of spending as much time with the kids as I can.

Tonight was a good night. W is still in "getting stuff together for the house" mode. She keeps asking my opinion on how she should allocate the money I'm giving her for her half of the stuff in our current house. I keep telling her those are her decisions to make. XBox or dining room table? Your call. Big TV or smaller TV? Your call. And so on.

We ate dinner as a family again. Kids are excited about the move. It hurts to hear that, but I keep reminding myself that they are kids and to them the new house is a grand adventure. We've assured them that the parents in their lives won't change that dramatically, so why wouldn't it be a great adventure?

This evening I was going to take S to the high school wrestling tournament since it was "youth night" where all the youth wrestlers get in free. It was just going to be S and I. Then at the last minute my W tells me she's coming because her BFF's daughter is on the dance team and performing, so her BFF will be there. So now we all went, W, me, SS, SD, and S.

It went fine. Early on SS sat by some friends and S sat there too, so I sat by my S. Then S moved over to where my W and SD were sitting. I sat with SS for a while, not sure if I should move closer to my W or keep my distance. Finally after a little while of that I decided that this was stupid. I'm here for my son. So he can watch high school wrestling... and he's 20 feet away from me because I'm worried that my W will not appreciate me being near her... but she invited herself. So I just went and sat by her. It was fine. She kept leaning over to me to tell me things about the different wrestlers and their families, to share a funny observation about S, or to ask me a question.

I am grateful that we can still have moments like above. I don't know if it's good in the long-term or in the terms of DBing, but I know the kids like it. But it's still darn confusing.