Short and Sweet for the day:

Learn to appreciate your step children.

You may not yet "love" them, and in some cases, you may not even like them. Hopefully that will improve with time, but at first the relationship is more work than fun. I have heard that inheriting teens can be a nightmare for some, so I suppose I got lucky that mine were so young. Either way, you have to find some common ground or neither of you will survive. What helped me was putting myself in their shoes...

How would I feel if my world was ripped in half, my mother was no longer there for me, and my dad replaced her with this new mom, with different rules, a new house, new brothers, and no idea if my opinion even mattered in any of it. I would act out a little, to say the least. I would fight this lady, and assume she is the bad guy, the reason my world is in disarray! Now, imagine if this new woman in daddy's life told me no, didn't do things the way I was used to, and didn't really seem to get what I liked, what I needed, and what I thought was fun. Pretty overwhelming, right?

Well, my two were 1 and 3 when I inherited them into my brood, their level of needy was off the charts, and here I was taking their daddy away from them. So, I had to take a step back and realize that as hard as this whole transition was on me (and believe me, it was), it was just as hard on them. The only thing I could do was find one thing...just one small window into their world, to join theirs with mine. With Noah (he is our autistic soldier), it was drawing and writing. I would sit with him for hours and write the alphabet, draw pictures, and build with blocks. With Elijah, it was just cuddling. He is a clingy lovey-dovey type, so he was content to curl up on the couch and watch cartoons. It was small, and simple, but most importantly, it was on their terms.

Left to Right: Elijah (now almost 4), Me, Noah (almost 6)

Every journey starts with a step, right?