Dear Roger: Parenting Once Upon a Time

I make my eldest son nervous. Its not because I tend to be a bit temperamental and grumpy in the heat, its because he knows that the one chink in my armor, the one thing that moves me to be protective beyond all reason and that turns even my hard heart to mush, is kids, especially babies. I don't know how he knows that other than the fact I have 5 of them and I worked in education and was a cop and I have given up everything time and time again to keep my kids safe, and that pretty much any little kid,(or even a bigger kid in need), can motivate me to try to move mountains. Having my baby girl almost killed us both and my health has never really rebounded from it, and while I claim to not want anymore because I am actually looking forward to the day when I can go off duty and relax a little, he has caught me more than a couple times perusing the Foster Care website and even the Special Needs Adoption websites and he has had to almost drag me away from cute babies when we are out in public. I adored my little nephew Rowdy, and I miss him quite a bit, in fact, besides leaving my sis, leaving him was the heartbreaking part of leaving Texas.
I have always tried hard to be a good parent and while I don't know and wont know for years if I have succeeded, I do know that I have have been fully invested in it , physically, mentally, emotionally , financially, spiritually; in every way you can think to be invested in it. I've made mistakes along the way and some of them my kids have called me on pretty quickly, but I never made some of the cardinal ones. I never drank or smoked when I was pregnant and I never smoked around my kids at all or allowed anyone to smoke around them. Some of the worst fights I had with my ex were because of his smoking around the kids.
He is my big regret. I wish I had left sooner. I wish I had been stronger and I worry daily about my sons growing up to think that its acceptable to abuse the women in their lives or my daughter thinking that its okay for a man to hurt her or talk down to her. I like to think she wont because she has little tolerance for her father as it is and he complained to me over the phone the other day that she was,"Abrupt, snippy and rude" to him and even hung up on him when he told her he wasn't sending any support because he was broke. She reportedly said, " Oh, that's a shock!"  and went on to say,"Whatever, fine!" and then told him she,"Had plans with Jackson",(her stuffed monkey), and hung up the phone. So I am hoping with balls that size she will be strong and never fall into a situation where she puts up with it.
I talk to my sons constantly about their behavior and how to treat people, and its my eldest son who will be the litmus test for the entire situation as he was the one who lived through the worst of it, endured most of it along with me and though he is a giant prude and very reserved and serious, he is also very strict on his sister, prone to snark and even being snide to the point of driving both me and her to the point of wanting to either cry or lose our minds. I am hoping that most of his rudeness is due to his age, but I do call him on it and tell him when he is echoing the worst aspects of his step-fathers behavior.
Babies do get me feeling all mushy and I enjoyed my babies especially my eldest son. He was cute and sweet and seeing Stevie's favorite boy with his new baby reminded me of when my son was a tiny lil thing and how much I relished that new baby bonding time. My boyfriend at the time loved my son and he was very invested in him, and we were, initially a perfect little family. Those first few months were probably the perfect time in my and my sons life, when I spent time just listening to him breathe as he slept and all those soft little baby sounds he made, and his cute little smiles and how he looked so angelic and the way his little foot would fit against my cheek and he would gurgle at me until Bear would grab him up in one hand and cuddle him to his chest and we would lay on the couch together watching movies or just being together, and how he blew little bubbles in his sleep or would hold onto our fingers and the way his hair was  pink in the sunlight.
That lasted until he was about nine to ten months old and started getting his teeth. Then he began screaming for HOURS on end, he would develop diaper rash for seemingly NO reason, weird rashes and he began saying things that Bear taught him including little phrases like,"Bye bye asshole" and he developed a fondness for streaking. He would strip off all his clothes and take off out the front door of my apartment as fast as he could either toddle or cruise and he would usually be shrieking,"NO!!!" at the top of his lungs and painted in poo. It was at that age I had started wondering if maybe I should consider sending him back.
By the time he was two, and the near kidnapping incident at the store had occurred, I had sometimes debated if maybe I should have let those fools get a taste of just what they were messing with, especially since they had seemingly missed the screaming, stripping incident a few moments prior to their attempt. He was an adorable toddler though, all big eyes and long eye lashes with wavy ginger hair and cheekbones to die for and peaches and cream skin. Yeah, he looked like and angel but his cat and I both knew he could be a Hells Angel. I loved him unconditionally though and I got my revenge for his screaming nudist tantrums and poo flinging by dressing him like a small,gay fashion victim until he was close to 14. Parental payback is like that.
I was telling my son, who is now a hulking teenager, these stories and he was even laughing at some of them, patting me on the shoulder a couple times as I got choked up talking about how cute he was and how I regretted he had never really had a daddy to look at him like that young man looks at his son, but he said,"Well, I had you and you did enough, and when I become a dad, I will make damn sure I do it right so there will never be someone feeling this way years down the road. You did the best you could, mom, I know you did."
As much as we butt heads and tease and harass each other, we both know we are all in as a family and while he may never have had a daddy, he has drawn a line in the sand and decided to make sure it doesn't happen again and that is one lesson I have successfully passed onto him.
We sat on the couch talking for quite a while and he asked me if I regretted not being able to have any more kids and I admitted that sometimes I did regret it, but I didn't want to leave the rest of them orphans. He said, "Well, at least I know you will be an awesome grandma when it comes that time, though I have a feeling you will be one of those diving out of airplanes and bringing the kids musical instruments and other crazy crap, but I also know you will be the fun kind of grandma that actually wants them around to spoil and show off and thats pretty cool." Yeah...just give me a decade or so before we go talking the "G-word" okay?