Author Archives: kari

It turns out that I might accidentally be turning into a mommy blogger. I mean, I have this blog and everything, and I’m steppers to two boys now, semi-officially. And! no offense to mommy bloggers! but I really just didn’t think I had it in me. I mean, I am lacking that whole “I diapered these kids, by gum, so I can write about them” imperative. I was introduced to the boys at the very healthy ages of Five and Nine. OH GRACIOUS. They have had some mild boy-typical hygiene problems but nothing that involves me seeing their butts. Where would I ever find transparency? I’m a steppers, for pete’s sake.

And then there is the whole “it’s easy to hate on women, especially those who write on the internet, and even more especially those who write about natural conflicts such as children.” Like, there are a zillion mommy blogs out there. They get supportive comments and they get heinous comments. There are blogs set up to make fun of the mommy bloggers, for the most part anonymously. There are pundits on cable news shows who will throw down lines like: “This is terrible for the child to be exposed like this,” and “what a horrible mother.”

Plus there are already a zillion stepmom blogs. There are good stepmom blogs and evil stepmom blogs. They are, for the most part,  painful for me to read. I have a mom, a dad, and a stepmom in my life. There are things about stepmoms that I don’t want to read, you know, JUST IN CASE IT’S TRUE. And OH the horror of the endless discussion about the whys and hows and ifs of stepparents truly loving their stepchildren: is it possible? is it right? is it too much to ask? And the true awfulness of the statement: you can never really truly love a child unless you have given birth to it yourself.

And then there are the articles like this one on salon.com, with the provocative title “Am I ready to be a stepmom at 21?“, which gets endless comments along the lines of: stop projecting, princess. stop being so selfish, you’re damaging the child. you are too young, everyone knows you will bail, stop stop stop stop. I felt so sorry for the author, and then I realized that the number one rule of scary conversations is don’t ask a question you are not ready to hear the answer to.

(Here is my awful question: if I fully appreciate the motorcycling time my partner and I have while the kiddles are with their mom, does that make me a bad steppers? Am I behaving as expected and showing my true colors?)

But on the other hand, Seven and Eleven live with us for almost nearly exactly half of the week. They are sweethearts and we all love one another. And I wonder sometimes where the voice is of the young new steppers who is engaged in the lives of her new sorta-children and who feels supported by her partner and gets along OK with the kids mom? is it just too boring? Maybe so. maybe that’s for the best.