Parenting through a Separation

Can't say as I have any real experience here.

I literally feel like I can barely keep my head above water between trying to field questions from William, work, recovering from surgery, packing and trying to sell what we can't take with us.

William has many many questions.

I don't have the answers.  Nor can I honestly answer most.

He desperately keeps asking me "Why can't daddy just pay attention and do what he is supposed to do and listen to you so you can stay together?" "Why can't he do things now instead of later?"

To clarify, this stems from him over hearing his father and I arguing.

Most of the time we are arguing about the fact that his father refuses to manage and learn to cope with his ADHD (diagnosed 8 years ago).

So there is a lot of dialogue that includes things along the lines of the following: "Why aren't you listening to me?" "Were you not paying attention at all?" "Why do you never do what you say you are going to do?" "No you are going to do it now, because later never comes with you!"

I glossed over that answer.  I don't know why his Dad isn't willing to put us first and work on coping with his mental disorder so that we could have stayed together as a family. I have been asking that for three or four years now. 

I focused on the fact that Daddy and I spend a lot of the time arguing and yelling and that isn't fun for any of us.  That it is Daddy and I who are the problem, not him.

I talked about the fact that we are still a family, but our family is changing so that we live apart from each other.

I pointed out the numerous people he knows who have Moms and Dads who don't live together which helped a lot.

I have ordered some books from Chapters to help.  Three story books, one you can watch on youtube:

http://youtu.be/AqMf6feCy7s (Thanks Kada!) called Mom and Dad Glue.  Then one called Two Homes and another called My Family's Changing.

I am hoping they can answer the questions I am struggling to answer benignly so that he doesn't know how hurt, frustrated and angry I am with his father.

Not all Home Day Cares are Evil

So recently here in KW a woman was charged with poisoning children in her care when she ran an unlicensed home day care.
article: http://www.therecord.com/news-story/3903862-two-children-allegedly-poisoned-kitchener-daycare-owner-charged/

This has led to a lot of comments in various groups I follow and even things said in people I know Facebook statuses, twitter feeds, google+ etc.
Derogatory comments about how horrible home day cares are and how could parents be so stupid to use them.

Now that being said a significantly smaller handful have pointed out that this is the reason why LICENSED home day cares are very important and that parents really need to stop skimping out and pay the extra money for a LICENSED provider.

Don't get me wrong, being licensed does not guarantee nothing will ever happen, but just as many things go wrong in licensed centres.
It is the unfortunate reality of our world.  Nothing is perfect.

I do take offence to everyone who has made derogatory comments against home day care providers.

One idiot psycho's actions does not give you the right to paint the rest of us with the same brush.

I am for licensing of all home day cares.  Too many people push the boundaries with unlicensed day cares, especially with regards to ratio.

The legislation on home day care is kinda useless in explaining how it deals with unlicensed child care.
How I understand it is, that it is not illegal to run an unlicensed home day care until something goes wrong.
Which is my opinion is wrong.  It should just be not allowed.

This is not to say all unlicensed home child cares are bad.  I know several wonderful providers, but I know just as many terrible, I can't believe people leave their children with them, providers.

Being licensed, I am monitored monthly.  I have to maintain the safety standards outlined by the Day Nursery Act.  I am required to fill out and keep an on going daily log book of everything that happens in my care.  So every time your child falls down and it leaves a mark or was a bad enough I feel it warrants being written down, I write it down.
I write down when a child arrives with bruises, scratches etc.
Why? Because then it is documented that those didn't happen at my house.
I took a school kid for back up once whom I picked up from school, who had scratched his knees there and I didn't write it down.
He then told his mom after she picked him up the cat that hid behind the couch the whole day scratched him.  This led to a battle in them trying to force me to keep my cats locked up.  I told them they could fire me, but I wasn't locking up the cats that weren't in the presence of the children that day at all and weren't responsible.
All because a 6 year old lied to his mother.
So from that point on I have always recored when a child comes with a mark on them that did not occur here.
This is called covering my ass in layman's terms.

Because we live in a world of paranoia.

Which is why it pisses me off so many of my friends and their friends have jumped on the band wagon that all home day care is evil in light of the recent reports in the news.
Because by making those comments you are directly insulting me and disrespecting me and painting me as a horrible, irresponsible person who doesn't have a fucking clue what they are doing.

I unlike most home day care providers am a Registered Early Childhood Educator.  This means I have my Early Childhood Education diploma and I am registered with the College of Early Childhood Educators.
This means I have taken classes in child development, curriculum planning, the Day Nursery Act and so forth.

The fact is most home day care providers have little to no training with regards to children.  The Licensed providers are at least given manuals to read and guidelines to follow and both the Region and Wee Watch provide example activities etc to do with the children.
Licensed providers have undergone both a Family and Children Services check as well as a Police check.
They must have the First Aid and CPR up to date.
They have set guidelines for meals and snacks, mandatory outside time and some basic guidelines for curriculum planning and child development.

Unlicensed providers don't have to do any of those things or learn any of those things  if they don't want to.  They can stick your child in front of the tv and do nothing with them all day.  They can also feed them anything they want and not have to provide balanced meals and nutritious snacks.

They have no one checking up on them and no one to hold them accountable.

And that is why I think home child care should be licensed.

But it won't happen.

Time and time again over the years children have died in unlicensed settings and the legislation remains the same.

Why?  Because neither provincial or the federal government want to deal with it.  They do not want to invest the time or money in to coming up with a policy or legislation that mandates all home day cares must be licensed and what that would look like.

You want to point fingers, then point them at the politicians who continue to allow unlicensed child care to unregulated and children to suffer.

Looks Like I am going to see another sunrise

Sleep hasn't been my friend lately.

Partly because it is incredibly uncomfortable post tailbone cyst surgery.

It is also in part because I can't shut my brain off.

Tonight didn't help with the thunder storms. I forgot how they set off my anxiety when I am entirely alone and it is night.

I know I have done nothing wrong, but I can't help how I feel.

Some small part of me had hoped that maybe this time would be different.

That he would want to put the work into making lasting change. Even if it would be slow going.
That he wanted to be a participating member in our relationship.

That he would fight for me.
Want to fight for me.

<this is my most recent livejournal entry. I think this one is okay to post here too>


I knew he wouldn't. Deep down I was not surprised in the least that he would continue on in the usual pattern. Nine years of almost no growth or lasting change with regards to our relationship made it pretty easy to predict.

But some tiny small part of me held onto a grain of hope that maybe this time would be different.

It is really really hard to fight that voice of self doubt that sneaks up and whispers that I am just not good enough.

Rationally I know that isn't the case. Except feelings aren't rational.
Love isn't rational.

This isn't what I wanted.

This wasn't what I dreamed.

But this is my reality.

After the past couple of days I have come to realize my heart broke a long time ago.
But it was easier to pretend.
Easier to keep hoping that he might prove me wrong.
That he did want to be in a relationship with me.
Because other wise I am alone.

No one wants to be alone.

I know that I am not really alone. I have learned just how an amazing group of friends I do have. I cannot put into words just how awesome and wonderful you all are.

I know it will be weird not seeing you all as much as I do once I move, but not to worry. I will visit. In some ways it has come full circle. I visited Waterloo regularly for a year once a month before I moved here. I don't expect to be able to maintain that regular a frequency past December, but as long as I have to bring William to KW to visit his father, I will try to get a visit in here or there too.
I also know I won't be alone in Orillia.
I will have my family. I have friends who I still talk to via the Internets.

I need to take care of me.
For too long I have been holding the pieces of me together while I took care of everything else.
And now I am crumbling at a rapid pace.
I just keep pulling it together, because I can't fall apart right yet. I made it this far, I can wait a little while longer.

In the mean time I fail to sleep. Instead I cry. My brain tortures me of replaying the past years with "what if"
and if it isn't playing "what if" I am plagued by nightmares from my past. Doesn't shock me, they have always crept up when I am under a lot of stress and when sleep is lacking.

It's like the lack of sleep invites the demons in.

I know I have been locking the comments to my entries of late.
The reason for that is right now I don't really need feed back. I just need to vent.
I just need to write my feelings somewhere.
I know people read the journal, and that is enough.
I have too much anger to discuss things sensibly.
It just leads to ranting.
And it isn't helping.

People used to tease Andrew about being bitter when we first started dating. It was a running joke carried over from the Ottawa crowd I think.
A few years ago I made a comment about the fact that Andrew was no longer bitter because I had taken it all.
They thought I was joking.
I wasn't.

I didn't want to become a statistic.
I didn't want a broken family for my son.
But I can't fix it. I can't be a parent to my spouse.
I can't be the one who does all the changing.

All my life I have been told I had to change.
Always something wasn't good enough.
I was too quiet.
I talked too much.
I had a temper.
I expressed my opinion too much.
I should try to fit in with everyone else.
I should be more like my sister.

No one really wanted me to be me.

Having to always apologize even when I wasn't the one who needed to apologize.

I am not apologizing this time. I tried. I was patient. I tried changing me and the only thing that worked was the thing that I loathed the most.
Parenting one's life partner is really not very attractive or appealing long term.

I gave up so many of my dreams over the past seven years.

Now I don't know what my dreams are anymore.

I don't have one anymore. I have become so lost.

A little shell shocked

So the lovely nurse lady came to change my dressing and check on things.

So I may be in less pain.  The cyst that was removed however was not all that much smaller then the first one.
It is a mere 2cm smaller.

So she has already put an order in for a Vac --negative pressure machine that speeds up healing in deep wounds.

That was not what I was expecting.

So here I was thinking I would be all healed by the beginning of September at the latest and I am looking at possibly October again.

:S

Pilonidal Cyst Removal Take 2

Well I had a lot of anxiety about being put under the anesthetic today.
The powers that be saw fit to have a different approach given to me so that I didn't have to have the same issues last time with the nausea and dizziness post surgery.

Everything went well.

They did a spinal anesthetic with a mild sedative to relax me.  Very surreal.  I was in that state of sleep where you can here everything going on around you but you are asleep.
Also I couldn't feel anything from the waist down.

The surgery took a mere 45 minutes instead of the nearly 2.5 hours the first one took (first surgery was August 12, 2011).
I was moved to recovery within 30 minutes of being brought out of surgery.  I was longer in recovery because I had to prove I could walk and pee without falling on my face.

The feeling coming back to my waist down was really really surreal.
Take that feeling you get when you have a cavity filled, magnify it by a thousand and then apply to your lower body.

It ranks second as the weirdest sensation I have every encountered to my body, bumping giving birth to third, and my knee sloshing post knee surgery holds number one.

Pain wise.
I gave up the Percocept about two hours ago (10pm).  The headache with each pill at each four hour mark was intensifying.  Besides I am in so little pain in comparison to the first surgery that I keep wondering if I had surgery at all.  It is slightly more painful then having a cyst drained, but that is easily managed by extra strength tylenol and the fact I have an incredibly high threshold for pain.

With luck since I was immediately referred back to my surgeon after the first sign of infection in the cyst area that we got it and it WON'T COME BACK this time.
In my drug muddled sleep I heard him comment about how insignificant this cyst was when compared to the first.

Unfortunately I have to have nurses come to me.  CACC has since moved from their central Kitchener location to the boonies out near Fairview Park Mall AND shortened their hours meaning I would have to stop working at 4pm in order to go to the clinic and only if I had a ride every time.
Well that isn't going to work for 2 of 4 childrens' schedule in my care.  Here is hoping they have gotten some more competent nurses with regards to pilonidal wound care in the past two years.

All in all I feel miles better already.  I was pretty sure I was days away from another flare up.  So relieved to have it done and over with.

Now to give my self a few days to heal and begin the tedious process of calling the million people whom need calling with regards to address changes etc.  In a week's time I will begin the process of packing more and sorting and selling more day care stuff.
Moving day is only a month and a bit away.

Public Statement

So that everyone is aware, William and myself are moving to Orillia on August 17, 2013.
We are moving in with my parents.

Andrew is staying in Waterloo to finish school.

This is occurring because Andrew and I are separating.

For those of you are close to us, this probably doesn't shock you as it has been pretty apparent that things have been difficult.

If you want to know more details you can contact -call/email/pm etc which ever one of us you are more comfortable talking to and we will explain the why.

I am hoping this helps with the awkward pauses that keep happening every time I have to answer the question why I am moving.

Will Andrew and I get back together.  I don't know.  There is a lot that needs to happen before that is even a consideration.

Am I continuing to work in home day care?  No.

I have missed the boat on getting hired in the first round of hiring of ECEs for up north and for Waterloo Region.
I am going to get on the supply lists of the centres in the Orillia area.

Then I am going to figure out from there if I want to continue in this vein of working with children or if physically it is time to move on.  My shoulder and wrist have definitely made work these past few months difficult.  Come on I am sporting the most oddest of tans because up until 1.5 weeks ago I was wearing my wrist brace all the time outside.