A Change of Focus

So I've been sporadic as best in my postings for the last few months. Truth be told, I've gotten a bit bored with the whole thing. Not bored with the rest of your lives...I still love reading what's going on with each of you and seeing how your single parenting days are working out. It's just that (hopefully) I seem to be through the "crisis part" of the separation and divorce. Ex and I don't have much contact except for arranging drop off's and pick up's. Honestly, most of that is by design from me: I've realized that the less contact with her, the happier I am. Things still come up occasionally of course, but after having our Child Therapist establish some ground rules for us, we've managed to stay mostly within those lines and when we don't a quick "remember what CT said about..." email seems to do the trick. I'm SO grateful for that.

My major sadness that remains is that Ex still doesn't seem to spend a ton of time with M and M does express this to me. When drop off time comes, M will say things like "Mommy not home, Mommy's at work" or "We're not going to see Mommy, we're going to see (insert Nanny's name here)." This makes me sad but I guess I've realized that there's not much I can do about it. The nanny or babysitter Ex uses is great with M and while I'd MUCH rather have that time with her, arranging switch times around Ex's ever changing schedule is more trouble than it's worth. I have a backlog of nights where I've stepped in to have M and to date, Ex hasn't offered any reasonable nights to make them up; only nights which would make me not see M for longer stretches which I'm not willing to do. So, I continue to play Mr. Mom which I LOVE and M and my relationship just keeps getting better.

So, when I started this blog I did so with the purpose of putting my problems out there and seeing what all of you who have more experience at this than me can do to help. I am SO grateful to all of you who offered support, advice, or just a kind word when I was in the middle of of the muck. Granted, Ex is Ex, so I expect more issues occasionally, but my "toolbox" is more complete now and I've learned mostly how to deal with her. Again, that is with the help of the online single parent community. You guys are AWESOME!!! Kind of like my sobriety program, I think I'm now in a position to help more than "take more" since I've been doing this for a while. I have always found that the most rewarding relationships I get are ones where I'm "on the give more than on the take."

So, in an effort to not let BDC's blog die, the Change of Focus will be this...the subject to whom I am writing is going to be different. As M keeps growing, discovering, and changing, there are SO MANY things that I want her to remember or that I want to remember because they're cute, funny, huge milestones, etc. Why not make BCD's blog FROM Daddy TO my Little M telling her all the great moments and memories that might be forgotten otherwise? When she's older, I can compile them onto a book with pictures so that she can always look back on her childhood from Daddy's eyes.

I'm really excited about this. Nothing I wouldn't do for my little girl...