...and now back to our regularly scheduled program...

It's been a while. The teenager is 14 going on 15 and the toddler is 2 going on 3. And my 20s are drifting farther and farther into the past tense. Still not how I though things would turn out, but not a bad ride either. So let's start again with some sharing about our situation. Presenting 5 fun facts about our mixed and blended family:
1. I'm no one's biological mother. Yes I'm a caregiver to a teenager and a toddler but have not yet had the unique pleasure (?) of squeezing big headed babies from my nether regions.
2. My husband is equally inexperienced in the biological paternity area.
3. We have custody of his teenaged sister and his toddler nephew.
4. We have been married just under 3 years and have had the teenager and toddler for 2.5 and 1.5 years respectively.
5. In our past lives we were both the sort of annoying upwardly mobile singles that spent most of their time working, going to the gym or thinking of ways to spend our discretionary income. Life is obviously different for us now but we still have hearts and brains deeply committed to yuppiedom.

Those are our most basic statistics. Our daily lives are much what I'd think typical families are like, an ongoing symphony of laughter and tears, supplication and demands, hugging and kissing and pushing and shoving, continual unrelenting mental and physical exhaustion peppered by occasional moments of astounding brightness and pleasure which lend perspective to the wider struggle. It's a whole new world for us :).

About Us

Until fairly recently I was a young, single, financially independent 20-something year old, whose typical workday would involve 12-14 hours at work, 1-2 hours in the gym, dinner or drinks with friends, frenzied towel folding and 6-8 hours of blissfully undisturbed sleep. I knew about kids in a blissful unconnected way - I passed by them in strollers in the sidewalks, in the swings of the kiddie park near the neighbourhood jogging path, in awkward pre-adolescent groups assembling outside of the movie theatre on a Saturday night. I had a niece and nephew with which I shared a properly aunt-like relationship - I showered them with age appropriate gifts and received an appropriate amount of affection in return. This, in retrospect, was a damn good life - there were spur of the moment overseas trips, clingy dresses that looked good from multiple angles, weekend nights that involved 5 a.m. bedtimes and 3 p.m. brunches...

And now? I live with my husband, a 13 year old girl and a 1.5 year old boy. There are spur of the moment teenage mood swings, dresses are often clingy not for the sake of exposing a slim waistline - but because the contents of a previously full diaper have been emptied on them, both weekend and weekday nights involve 6 a.m. wake up calls that come with diaper changes and an abundance of bodily fluids. Domestic bliss? Not so much...more like the sustained chaos of sudden parenthood... even without the bliss it is sure to be eventful.