Sunday, April 20, 2008

Mennonite Moms

Today I spent the day hanging out with Mennonites. It was quite a fascinating experience. I had recently met one at my school who has three boys similar to my son's age. They invited me over for lunch and to attend a service. I've always been fascinated by sub-cultures and couldn't resist the opportunity to learn more about them.
While their dress may make them look overly conservative or unapproachable they were actually one of the friendliest groups of people I've met. The thing that I liked the most was how kid-friendly their entire setup was. Since Mennonites tend to have large families the place was flooded with kids. No one minded if my son blurted out or rustled around in his seat a little. It was quite a welcome change to be somewhere that kids were able to be kids.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

My advice to single parents returning to school:

Recently some of my friends who are single parents have also decided to return to school. Since most of us are in our 30's (or 40's, or even 50's), we tend to want to rush through the program as quickly as possible. A lot of mothers try to work, take care of the kids, do the shopping, clean the house and go to school full time. In practical reality this is next to impossible. People who try this approach tend to get overwhelmed pretty quickly.
As a single mom who went back to school two years ago I highly recommend a slower approach. It's better to pace yourself with a schedule that you can realistically maintain then to try to go on five hours of sleep for the next two to four years. Remember that finishing your degree will take a large chunk of time and in the meanwhile your kids are growing up and their childhood is passing away before you. We should always be careful to make time for the things that are really important in life, such as our children and our sanity. If that means it takes another few months to finish school, so be it.

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Why I love my Shop-Vac....

Yesterday I was talking to a friend of mine whose vacuum cleaner had just died. She had been having some of the same problems I had with my previous vacuum cleaner - hair getting tangled up in the brush, etc. This prompted me to start giving her a spontaneous commercial about the wonders of my shop-vac. People often have the misunderstand that shop-vacs are just for garages, but I disagree. I'll venture to say that a shop-vac might very well be the best friend of any parent with a toddler. My shop-vac has cleaned up messes made from play-dough, easter grass, candy wrappers, breadcrumbs, cereal, torn paper and those little plastic pieces that break off of toys and bury themselves in the carpet waiting to stab your feet in the middle of the night. My shop-vac has rescued me from countless messes that I would have otherwise been on my hands and knees picking out of the carpet. It far surpasses any other vacuum cleaner I've come in contact with and I highly recommend it for anyone who perpetually has little ones making messes around them.

Friday, April 11, 2008

Human Contact

As moms, we always hear about the importance of making time for ourselves. That can be done in different ways. It might be taking a bubble bath, going for a walk, working out in the gym or going shopping. Personally, I find that the most important thing I can do for myself is to have at least one adult conversation on a daily basis. As much as I love spending time with my son, and getting to play with him, if the end of the day comes around (as it did today) and I find that I didn't actually get to speak to another adult, I start to feel like something essential is missing. I'm not sure if it's the need to just talk to someone who's in the same plane of reality as me (as opposed to someone who spontaneously morphs into a monster while we're grocery shopping), or if it's just a want for intellectual stimulation. Whatever it is, I've personally found that part of surviving as a single parent is to pick up the phone and find that adult human contact, even if it's only for five minutes.

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Wonderful ex's....

This term at school I have to take two night classes. One of the classes that I need is two hours away on another campus, but I have to take it if I want to graduate in time, so I'm making the commute. Conveniently, I was able to schedule both classes on nights that my son is supposed to be with his dad, so the evening classes shouldn't have been a problem.

However, in making my plans for school I made one dire mistake: I actually told my ex-husband that I was counting on him to take my son because I have class. Now I realize that a lot of father's would be happy to help out and take their son anyway, especially if the classes are on nights that they normally have the child. My son's dad, however, takes a different approach to these things. He decided to wait until the day of my class, right around the time I would be leaving to tell me he was too busy to pick our son up. That was last week. I ended up calling him on his bluff and he was "stuck" taking care of his son for two days (which he's whined about repeatedly since). Then he just tried the same thing again today. Fortunately I didn't have class this week, so it wasn't such a big deal.

Now I've found myself having to resort to elaborate plans to simultaneously give a babysitter sufficient notice while also not being in contempt of court by declining to give my son to him during his parenting time. Kind of annoying. Does shared custody really have to be so complicated?

Monday, April 7, 2008

Strep Throat

I swear my son and I have gotten every illness possible this winter. Not only have we gotten your typical colds, but two months ago we first took turns with ear infections and then were out for a week each with the flu, which my son ended up compounding it with a sinus infection. After the flu I had really hoped that we were done for the season. Besides that all of these illnesses weren't exactly good for my grades. When you're taking things like Calculus and Discrete Math, missing a lesson or two can completely destroy your grades. So when my son came home on Friday with a fever I was dreading what the result might be. Gradually the fever seemed to be going away, but still he complained about various aches and pains. So since I was off today I took advantage of the opportunity to bring him into the doctor and he was diagnosed as having strep throat. Seriously, could my son possibly have more antibiotics in a two month period?

Now I'm just hoping and praying that I can avoid coming down with it myself, though the chances of that aren't very high. I managed to pull off B's in Calculus and Discrete Math last quarter, but I had to work like a madman to get caught back up. Now that I've started a new term I really don't want to have to do the same thing in Linear Algebra.

Saturday, April 5, 2008

Christmas in April

For those of you who don't know, I'm a college student. When my husband and I split up, I found myself having to take care of a two year old son with no child support. At that point I realized that I had two choices. Either I could work in Wal-mart, or a similar job, and continually struggle to make ends meet, or I could go back to school to get a better job. I chose the latter. For the past year and a half I've been a full-time student and I have a little over a year to go.

Still, being a single mom in school is not the easiest thing in the world. Since I'm on subsidized daycare, I only have someone to watch my son when I'm actually in class. A lot of the time it works out because I'll have a couple of hours between classes to get my homework done. Right now though that isn't the case. I'm currently enrolled in 18 credit hours of classes squished into 3 days a week, (one day of which is an evening class that child care is not provided for). Because of that I have the perpetual problem of trying to figure out how to do all of my homework while I'm actually at home with my four year old asking me to play with him.

Then today I discovered the wonder of Christmas. For Christmas this year we visited my family in Florida and my son spent literally hours opening the presents. At the time he just threw one toy after another aside as he went onto the next package. I think he only remembers about 75% of what he got that day, and he's actually only played with about 50% of it. Now, at least temporarily, I've figured out how to get some homework time. Today we found a Scooby-Doo book with over 600 stickers that even I didn't remember seeing before. That was followed by a Batman LeapPad (that we found when looking for the Spiderman one) and an old video tape of children's cartoons from the early seventies (that my mother had given us from her VHS collection). Looking around my son's room today I realized that I could probably get a couple weeks worth of homework done just by dragging out old toys that he hasn't seen or played with for a few months. If I'm lucky it might even get me through mid-terms. After that I'll have to come up with Plan B.

Friday, April 4, 2008

When I was a teenager my greatest fear was being a single mom. For an entire decade I avoided getting pregnant at all possible costs in order to avoid it. Now at 32, not only am I a single mom, but I'm living in subsidized housing, and I'm on welfare and foodstamps. Part of me takes a step back and goes, "God, what has happened to my life?".

The truth is though, right now I'm happier then I've ever been before. There is absolutely nothing in the world like being the parent of a small toddler and having this beautiful little child always bright eyed and ready to spend time with me.

I decided to start this blog in order to get in touch with other single parents going through the same thing as me. I know I'm not the only one out here struggling to pay the bills, do the housework, and fufill the roles of both Mom and Dad. There's a lot of us going through it and we need to get support from wherever we can find it.