Busy and Blended

When most people hear that we co-parent they immediately ask about all the messy things... arguments, custody, schedule arrangements. The things that make good gossip 😳 What people don’t see is the upside to co-parenting. Have you ever seen the show on TV about sister wives? Jordan will tell you that I’m more than enough for him to handle - no way he needs four wives. But...these ladies on the show have something really cool... a built in group of mom friends who understand them. 👯‍♀️ Co-parenting can be similar. Once you get past all the raw emotion and work through all the messy stuff, and there will definitely be messy stuff, there’s the potential to have that “sister-wife” experience without sharing your husband 😉 Working as a team to be cohesive parents for our kiddos means we spend a lot of time discussing the kids. Their grades, their teachers, their needs emotionally and physically, pick-up/drop-off, book fairs, hair cuts, illnesses, medical bills, and just LIF...

Ever have a conversation with someone and they are upset at you but all you can think of is, “well how was I supposed to know that; they didn’t tell me!” Then you find yourself wanting to claw your eye balls out from sheer confusion 🤪  That’s what happens when you don’t communicate your expectations!!! Mind blowing right? 🤯🤯 We have lots of parents involved and the kids spend time at each of our houses and, like I mentioned in the first tip of this series, communication has to happen, but it doesn’t stop there! You have to make clear what you need to know or what you EXPECT to know! I was awful at this at first because my thought was, “hey I’m their Mom so as long as I know that’s all that matters”. Let me tell you that theory doesn’t work in co-parenting There was an expectation in my head that I expected to be told. For example: where the kids are, who’s around, how’d they sleep, insert whatever expectation you have. But, then you magically expect people to know tha...

When Jessi and I started talking about doing a series on our top 10 “tips” on co-parenting it took me a while to put together my half of the list. 📝 🤔 I thought about our entire co-parenting journey from beginning to end... the good, the bad, and the ugly. . What I realized on my trip down memory lane was that those memories that are in “the ugly” category didn’t make me cringe anymore. They didn’t evoke anger. They didn’t make me want to re-hash those events with Jessi. They didn’t create any emotional at all, really and then the light bulb turned on 💡 . . Forgiveness I had forgiven Jessi I had forgiven Jordan I had forgiven myself I had forgiven the situation . . There was a time when a friend innocently asking how things were going with the kids’ mom would lead me on a trip reliving each transgression and triggering all the emotions.  . Anger. Hurt. Sadness. Regret. Vengeance. Fear. Pain. . It triggered me to have those strong emotions again and woul...

My first tip for this series I definitely thought needed to be the thing I was the worst at...communication!!  Most people aren’t effective communicators when it’s something emotional to them, am I right or what? We don’t say what we mean, we dance around the topic, we word vomit, we explode when maybe all we mean is to have an effective convo.  Me personally, when I feel attacked in a conversation, I will attack right back and I will make sure my attack is another level of crazy you can’t match back 💣💣 Am I still like this today, not really. I actually have a hard time getting super angry in conversation 🙈🙈.  But, despite the emotion you have, you have to talk to the other co-parents! I know, I know, I just mentioned the unspeakable... you HAVE to figure out a way to talk.  What worked for us, at first Jordan and I had to stop being the ones who mainly talked. We still had the emotion fresh in our minds and we knew where and when to jab at each...

We’ve been co-parents for five years. How do we make it work? Check out our 10 tips to a successful coparenting experience.

Jessi's Perspective:  If I had a penny for every time someone made the comment to me, “you let your kids call her mommy”, I could have retired on a yacht in Fiji at the age of 27. Seriously, I am not even exaggerating.   People and their opinions, never get old right? (insert eye roll). I can tell you exactly where I was standing and what time of day it was the day Heather told me that Boo has started calling her “mommy”. I can honestly tell you in that moment I wanted to scream at Jordan as to how he could allow this to happen, how could he allow betrayal to the mother of his children to happen,   and what was he going to do to fix it. It was obviously his fault right? Like he forced our 2 year to call her that, I just knew it! He wanted me replaced, he hated me and he wanted the kids to love Heather more than me. Come on divorced mommas, I know you’ve told yourself that same sentence to yourself over and over again in different occasions throughout your di...