Well, That was Quick

So, it's turned for the worse. Surprise, sadly enough.
M and I are still getting along wonderfully, after a rocky start, but it seems that J's bedroom passions surpass my own too much to be reconciled.
Which sucks, truth told.

I've mentioned a divide, albeit not very clearly, between her and I, and I've been meaning to talk more about it, except that I've only had hints and ideas and most of those were fueled  by my own intuition (I would say suspicious nature, but it turned out they were right, so it was intuition.), and I've been trying to pretend it wasn't what it was, but simply enough-- she and I weren't meant to be.

Which is fine, I suppose, sometimes relationships turn out that way. The biggest problem I have with this is that I've gotten fairly attached to L, and M and I again have basically no issues. Took us a while to quit being all guarded, but now we're comfortable, and the more comfortable we got, the less comfortable J was with us.
She claims that it's just us having sex without her that bothers her, but I've very deliberately been holding back my displays of affection in front of her, for fear of bothering her. (The sick sad part of me wants to see if she'll be mad at that, too...)
My mother said that a lot of it might have something to do with not feeling like she's number one in his life. And I can completely see that, but he's a father (as he claims, above all else), and I know for certain that if I ever had to choose between a man and my child, I know my child would come first-- and I don't doubt at all that he's the same way; so her feeling this way is not my fault.

I've been giving them space for about a week, and then I finally asked J what I could do to make things less.... pear-shaped about us, and she finally expressed a very key point, I think, that is driving the wedge between us.

I'm not a very feminine person. And I say person, because to say non-feminine woman either makes you think butch, or a woman that only has three kinds of shampoo and ten pairs of shoes instead of twenty of each. If those two aren't the same thing.
I'm basically a stereotypical man with a vagina. If I can't smell me, I don't stink. I barely wash my hair, I keep it short so I don't have to, I do good to get dressed at all, if I can get away with it, my definition of "clean" is "doesn't stink" and I've upped the ante to "can't see any awful marks on it".
It makes perfect sense to me that, if she wants to date a woman, she wants to date a fairly femme woman. Or at least one that shaves and showers more than twice a week. I hate shaving, by the way. I refuse to, unless I'm guaranteed some action in the bedroom, and even then I whine about it. And I mean armpits, shaving, not just bikini area shaving.

But ultimately, I'm a very.... Let's say 'confusing' person in bed.
She doesn't like that. Neither do I, honestly, it makes life very bleeding difficult, because every prospect requires a stupid powerpoint presentation of how I work and why I work that way, and then I have to answer stupid questions, because trying to explain that I honestly land under what is called the "umbrella of asexuality" is horrible.

So I don't give her the reactions she wants when we're "playing". Not that she'd know, she's only tried once and gave up since then (cough, depression cough), but because she's only tried once, I've pretty much determined that I'm not sure she was ever aiming to play with me at all. I don't even remember this try, I assume she was still pregnant at the time, and I might well have been drunk or that tired or something.

I'm disappointed, though. I can't figure out how to fix her and I, and I honestly don't think she wants to fix us, and M does, but he has no dogs in that hunt, so to speak, and even if he did, J would shoot them all for trying to get into the hunt.
More and more, I've gotten the impression that she wants me the hell away from their relationship. Except that she's the one objecting to my moving out of the place we currently share.

This is ultimately financially reasoned. And childcare, also finances, but simplicity.
This amuses the hell out of me, at the same time as annoying me.
Because I, now that I've faced that this isn't working and almost definitely isn't going to, now want to run away screaming and crying and throwing things.
I cannot express my disappointment, sadness, or heartbreak. I don't expect to be able to.

I'll miss L the most.
When I start on this train of thought, though, of leaving, I start humming to distract myself, but I always wind up humming the lullabye I've been using for him, and that just makes it worse.

It's in French, from Wolf's Rain. I can't find a literal translation for it anymore, or maybe the sentence structure in French is that backwards or something, but I rather like it. "No matter how difficult, I'll dance the path with the wolves"

So. I guess that's it. Six months.
I'm not going to delete this blog, though I want to, because I'm hoping that someone else will read it and learn. I should have included more of the negative, but, eh. Such is life.

This is probably going to sound horrible.

 Hi.
I shouldn't be writing this late, and certainly not while I feel like I do, but I really want to get it off my chest.

J has been either subconsciously or consciously competing with me.
You can nearly hear her tallying up how M treats me versus her. What he tells her when he tells her, when we've had what kind of sex, whether he's cuddling me or whatever. Just. She does it. I know she's doing it, and it's making me upset and angry and hurt because even when he does tell her things before he tells me, it's usually just a matter of presence or how well he's able to articulate at the moment or who's there when he thinks it-- and that's when she's listening, anyway. There are times she gets mad that she's been left out of the loop when in fact she just wasn't paying attention when the loop was totally right there.

She got mad the week before last because M was having trouble with Mj, and when she called he told her he didn't want to talk about it, and when I asked via text rather than calling, he simply said Mj's name.
Both of these can be attributed to time factors, seeing as the trouble was his throwing a fit about not wanting to go and not getting in the car like a normal three-year-old, and I imagine being on the phone didn't help. That five minutes would have made the difference between the door and the car and actually being strapped in.

Today she quizzed me, I mean third freaking degree (or fourth or whatever number it is) about what he told me about some super complicated bullshit that's come up with his ex, just in case she'd been left out of some communication.

And got mad later today because she forgot something he'd said when she was in the goddamn room and she thought she'd been left out.

I do not know what she wants, but I am not competing. I have never been competing, and if it becomes a competition that is outside her head, I quit and I'm running away, because their relationship is first and foremost in my mind, and I know for damn sure that he treats us equally. If nothing else, he married her and running away with me would be a horrible idea because I kind of need them both to ground me because splitting my attentions has probably been the best thing for me.

 There is not only no competition, but most of the time, no one's deliberately leaving out anything, no one's deliberately not saying, no one is intentionally not telling anyone anything. If something gets unspoken, there are two people that know what's up and can correct this matter, if someone feels like asking.

But instead, she wants to make it about her and decide that M's deliberately not telling her and prefers to tell me instead. Why? I don't fucking know.
She thought he was deliberately not having sex with her, too. And deliberately not sitting on the couch with her.

I don't know how much of this I can attribute to her postpartum, but it's making me want to strangle her.

TV show J's been watching lately, a couple hadn't been having sex for a year and a half, and she said she didn't know what she'd do if they went a year and a half. I (rather bitterly) said that she'd blame me.
She asked me why I said this. I don't think she's noticed the accusatory manner. So I don't know what to do. Especially since I've been calling her on a lot of her bullshit lately, because she's got these habits she inherited straight from her mother like yelling at you for asking a question she thinks the answer's obvious (like whether her cell is connected to the wi-fi), or getting mad at us for asking a question at all.

There. Said it. No problems solved, but I figured it fell right into the "troubles of the relationship", probably more than anything else has. Part of why I decided to do this blog was specifically that, to talk about the troubles of the relationship, because I know anyone else in our situation might appreciate someone else's slice-of-life on the matter, know they're not alone. 'cos you're not. Jealousy is totally a thing, and an ungrounded one, and my anger in response to it is bitter and unfair.

I got a headache while we were shopping, yesterday, and I requested that we make the window-shopping in the baby section quick, because I was wishing I didn't have my left eye in, 'cos then the pressure would have somewhere to go, and she got mad at that, too. Stomped around and left us behind to go grab something real quick without saying a word.
And said that if we didn't want to go shopping, we should have said. Like I knew ahead of time I was going to want to take my eye out or something. Or wouldn't have said. 'cos I'll say. Oh boy, will I say. I did say. And she got mad.

I don't know what to do. She's making communication more and more unpleasant, and then getting mad at us for not communicating, and then refusing to talk to us because she thinks we're refusing to talk to her. I don't know what to do. I'm getting frustrated, now.

I'm also getting very deep impressions that she doesn't want me in the relationship. Or here at all. She can't really put me out, but I'm wondering if the desire to break up with me isn't just something that's part of the postpartum.
It's making me want out. M doesn't want me gone, but of course he doesn't. He's not competing with me in his head.

I could kill her for that. That's so unfair. That's so unfair, to make everything a fight that I don't want to participate in, that I don't even think she knows she's fighting, and she wins by default, every time, because if it EVER came to that, I forfeit and run away. Simple as that.

Thanks for listening.

Jealousy Mistaken and Post Partum Depression

So, a few ages back, I said that J was jealous of me, right?
Well, it turned out that she was misunderstanding. She was, indeed, jealous, but not why we originally thought. We thought it was some deep-seated territorialism over the father of her child, or perhaps some weird female drive from before she really considered the poly. We were wrong, of course.
Mostly, she just wants M's attention, and doesn't like when I get it.

Not that he's not paying attention to her, 'cos he is (although she and I have both agreed that he could do it more and better, and told him such), nor that I'm stealing his attention from her (I'm not, she is not home when I'm recieving most of his attentions, thus the reasons I'm recieving most of his attentions.), it's just that their work schedules conflict and they almost never see each other, and he's got plans for when he's not working already in place so that she feels like she can't butt in edge-ways.

Now, he and I had to have a very long, long conversation about how to handle it.
Because this has been going on since he started his current job, and she's gotten less and less okay, and has felt more and more like she was being whiny and naggy and bitchy when she was asking him not to go (which, in fairness, she started to act, so she was justified in feeling that way, but her causality was off), and he felt more and more like she was being one of those impossible-to-please naggy whiny bitches, and I was kind of watching, because what happens on weekends is really not a lot of my know anyway (I'm working then), but I do get to see the wrath during the week.

Ultimately, the only night they can possibly have together, kid-free, is Saturday. Maybe Friday if they start late, but not too late, 'cos kids will still be up in the mornings.

Childcare, by the way, is a bitch, when you're trying to find for three boys and one's and infant and the family's kind of.... mrrph about one of them for reasons that shall not be discussed right now but make me grind my teeth in irritation.

Anyway. Saturday. And M has a permanent plan for Saturday.
J has no plans for Saturdays, but she wishes he didn't have a permanent plan for Saturday, because she wants him home spending it with her.
I'm always home Saturdays, so they can bring the boys home and as long as they get back before I leave for work, all should be well. (Our house is never empty, and I don't sleep well on work nights) So they can make plans.
But he completely misinterprets what she wants out of this, because the only hints he's been getting are when she gets mopey while he's on his way out the door.

A part of this miscommunication is because of her post partum. That shit is a nightmare. I know how it is, too. When I was neck-deep in my depression, I would get sad when people would leave the room. To go to the bathroom. Even if I wasn't talking to them.
Another part of this miscommunication is the fact that it is emotionally charged. And a third reason is due to his irritation at her and the topic at hand and the situation itself, and those all lead to subconscious sabotage of your reading of the situation, and he wouldn't have any room to try and see it from her point of view.

At one point, maybe a month ago, he told her that if she wanted to come up with anything to do, to let him know by Wednesday so that he could cancel or confirm his normal plans.
This is, of course, fucking annoying on his part. He gives her two days to come up with a reason to get herself, but not him, out of the house.
It was at this point that I suggested (lightly) that maybe she wanted to spend the time with him? And that's part of why she's upset?
The idea hadn't occurred to him, I don't think.
I was trying my best to be all cuddles and kisses and stuff, but I think it was his attention more than anything else she was craving, and I could never have substituted that.

It took me a while to work him around to the idea that it was him she wanted.

Took longer to get him to consider that maybe he was messing up, a little, just accidentally, in that situation. And then I had to translate that he had basically told her that she had two days to come up with date plans or else. And that his handling of the situation was nearly as bad as hers.
While she'd wait 'til he was nearly out the door to tell him she wished he wouldn't leave, he would only get angry and keep doing it, telling her why he was always going to.
I finally, last week, suggested, why not set aside every other weekend? Or just one weekend out of the month?
He tried to get out of it, using work as an excuse, but I pointed out that when that doesn't happen, it'll be okay, and if it does, we can work around it.
I think I probably also threatened his life, 'cos it's starting to annoy me, having to be the middle man because they both get hyper defensive/offensive and fight rather than solve anything. This is both of their faults, and I spend a lot of their fights refereeing.

So, lately, she's still unhappy about it, because of the scheduling thing, but now she's overjoyed 'cos we might get to fix that.
But she and I are on hiatus, because she's accidentally friendzoned me, I think (I honestly have no idea.), but if nothing else, she has not been well, she has not been herself, and I know and respect depression enough to know that added pressure basically just makes you wanna curl up into a ball and not do anything ever again for fear of messing it up beyond repair.

I think that's probably the worst part about it right now.
See, we founded our relationship on the principle of open communication. You must speak to one another. Even, and especially, if you don't want to talk about it. You must. It's important. Vital.
She hasn't spoken much to either of us.
Part of this is because she feels like when we talk, it's about work or money, and it stresses her out, and she doesn't handle stress well. Part of this is also because she wants to talk to M and not me as much because of the aforementioned attention thing (and that big-strong-man part of the equation that I will never make up), and part of this is because she's got that wheedling little voice in her head that tells her that there's no reason to bother talking about anything ever because it doesn't matter, and even if it does matter, it doesn't matter that it matters, and even if it did matter that it mattered, nothing good will come of any of it anyway.
So she mumbles, we say what, she mumbles, we say what, she yells nothing, nevermind, we never listen.

I've asked her if she's considered suicide. I know I do when I'm in the worst of my pits of angst (I suffer clinical, take meds for it, lovely little pills. Named it to separate it from me, too.), and I would like to take care of my woman as best as I can, and she said no, and sometimes I wonder.

She has been doing remarkably better. She still has her days, and her moments, but lately, either she's gotten better at faking it (Hope not, fear so), or it's coming less often. I'm wondering if this is because M is on vacation from work.

She did get to take care of us while we had "the plague". (I think it was just the flu, but I don't think I've ever been that sick in my life. It was terrible.) She got to make us chicken soup and get us medicine and make sure we were taking it and helping me use the thermometer, and just overall got to be needed and wanted and helpful in ways she knew how. She seemed to like it.

Alright, thanks for reading. Have a good evening.

Merry Christmas

Insert general apology for failure to update before now here.

So, what's up? I'm going to start with Christmas. I'll get on to the New Years bit later.

The boys had a good Christmas. (We don't do any religious stuff, I'm atheist-leaning agnostic, M is agnostic and prefers not to think too hard about his place in the cosmos, and J pretends she's non-practicing Catholic 'cos her mother said she would raise her daughters Catholic 'cos yay Catholosicm. Or however you spell it.) Great haul for people without a lot of spare cash. My toys were the cool ones, 'cos mine were the simple ones.

We did have to do it on Christmas Eve, firstly so I could spend it with them (I was planning on visiting my mother's side of the family on Christmas), and so that Mj could spend it with us, because he was going back to his mother's family on Christmas, too. So we woke the boys up around seven and dug out the toys.
I do remember that we had good food, but I cannot remember what it was, because it's late, and I'm resorting to Thanksgiving when I think of food.

Now, I said I was going to visit my family for Christmas. This is because I was planning on going alone. This has its practical side, of course, but it also has its painful truths and reasons and they make me angry.

See, I can't take my family home with me.
Sadly enough, not because of the polyamory. Though that's pretty odd, of course, but my family is not one nearly so discriminate against someone dating two people at once, even if those two people were dating.
But those two people would have to be male and white, and they're not. One fits one criteria, and the other fits the second, and between the two of them, introducing them as my dates would be bad, and even letting M show up would be.... It would not end well.

See, my grandfather and my uncle are horribly racist. My uncle more than my grandfather, 'cos my grandfather's more classist than racist, but those lines didn't used to be too far from one and the same. If you worked well and paid your bills, you were a man, but my uncle...
He told me a long time ago when he was helping me with my car that if I ever dated a black man, he'd take the car from me. And said a series of nasty things about darker complected human beings. (Get this,) said they were a curse upon Noah for having sex with one of his daughters, because of the incest.
There are several things wrong with this, to me, the least of which being Noah's lack of a daughter, the necessity of incest to repopulate, and the whole myth in the first place.
I do not approve. I do not agree. In fact, I told him at the time that I'd date a black man without any problems. I thought he was gonna hit me. And I also said that if he was gonna choose hate over love, that was up to him. And it is.
I'm not ashamed of my family. I'm just afraid of my uncle letting his stupid get in the way of Christmas. I have rather a large family, and the place we all meet is my grandfather's house, which is next door to my uncle's, and it just seems like a horrible idea to go provoking people there when I've got twenty people to see.

I caught a little flack, being honest about this, and most of the response is "Fuck those racist assholes". And I completely agree. And I have. Because I'm dating him anyway, aren't I? If they had their way I wouldn't be. If they had their way, I'd probably be married by now. And, like I said, don't wanna upset the hosts of the party, even if they're not the ones I'm there to see.

I told everyone I hadn't told yet. I didn't realize I hadn't told one of my sisters. Mom's still uncomfortable. I wish I could talk to her more about it, but I got baby brained while I was there (speaking of which, I need quiet alone time. I haven't had much since.... forever.), and I started talking about L and milestones, and talking about J's post-partum depression, and slowly but surely, she's getting more used to the fact. Now that she knows it's less... weird, I guess.

So far, my dads have dealt with it the best. They both just nodded and said, "Okay."

(Really, I didn't expect this to feel so normal, either. It's just so easy. I have no basis of comparison, but it really is just so easy. For me. It has its moments, of course.)

The boys are still too little to really get excited about Christmas. I can't wait for them to start grasping bigger concepts and getting more excited about stuff. Not looking forward to the shouting, but it's going to be so cute.

I wish I could talk more about our family's Christmas together, but honestly, it was really downplayed, really simple, and really easy. Simple introduction into Christmas with little kids. I know it'll get more.... enthusiastic, but honestly, it wasn't the reaction I was hoping for. I'll wait.

On Fluid Bond and Triad Relations

Hello. Again, I assume.
Things have been pretty normal, pretty quiet, all things considered. I have had a few thoughts, and a coworker asked me a question that inspired about ten seconds' thought before I answered correctly. And it seems that our love J has been having some difficulties with her head. We're thinking it's post-partum depression, but it's definitely a form of depression. I'm also trying to unspoil the L midget, because this is damn ridiculous.

The coworker asked me what would happen if I were to become pregnant. I said, immediately, that he would be delighted. And coworker asked if J would mind, and this is what brought on the ten seconds of thought-- and then I figured out that she would laugh her ass off. 'cos I don't want to give birth. Or even have kids, which is funny, seeing as there are three between the two people I'm with, but I still have the ability to step back and away and call for the biologicals. The exception to this is L, who is simple enough to care for. Ish. But I constantly, when there are troubles with the parenting (as M reminds himself, "the joys of parenthood"), like when K decided to smear poop all in his room or when Mj and K fight and I have to interfere, etc.-- I singsong the phrase, "never having children". Which I think annoys M, because he's been trying his damnedest to get me to feel all included in the parenting thing, while I'm keeping my distance, not so much on purpose as by a reflex that I don't really want to work my way through at the moment, for various reasons, the chief of which being a sense of being out of my territory and edging into someone else's. I also have a list (that doesn't actually have a number system) of reasons I don't want to have children. 'cos kids are hard and rely entirely on you to explain and demonstrate and are going to fuck up (I know, I was one.), and really? Playing with your poop? Really?

Speaking of children being awful-- L is spoiled rotten, right? "But how can a five month old be spoiled?" I pretend to hear you ask. Well, let me explain.
You can totally spoil a five-month-old. By carrying it around constantly from the minute it's born, and never setting it down. After a while, it gets used to this, and then refuses to be put down and quiet simultaneously. J and I have blamed this on M. Because it is totally his fault.
So what the child does is cry. Non-stop. Despite having been fed, changed, burped, empty of poop, and all other things that could be wrong have been established fixed or non-existent, and the only way to make him stop is to pick him up and carry him around. He won't let you sit down, he won't let you stand still. He loves being put into the baby carry-thingie that works like a front-backpack, but I'm not a particularly tall person, and therefore my arms are not long enough to do things with him there, except, sometimes, laundry. And the little bundle of joy and spit-up is heavy, after a minute, and I already have an upper back problem. Also, I am completely out of commission for this indulgence for him after I've worked, and even the day after.
So I'm unspoiling him, slowly. Not by letting him cry, though I've done that before, because it was that or punt the little shit through a wall, and I would miss him if I did that, as well as be horribly murdered by his parents. He has a mobile in his crib that has a light that circles a little picture against the umbrella of the mobile, it plays music, and of course the dancing animals. I put him in the crib, I turn on the music, and he lies, transfixed, on the bed and watches the pretty colors and listens to the music. It's working, somewhat. He also hates being alone, and if he can't find one of us adults, he gets upset.
He also likes to talk to us. He makes screaming noises and squeaking noises and just in general doesn't shut up. It's so cute.

J has been suffering an awful depression, lately. I've actually got the chemical chronic kind, but hers kind of happened around the birth of the baby, and hasn't really buggered off. There are a lot of little elements in it, but at this point it's kind of chicken and egg, trying to tell which is happening why. Like, she doesn't go out and go do stuff with friends anymore. Part of this was because she lost a lot of contacts during the pregnancy, as several of them were players in a shared sport, and also couldn't go out partying due to pregnancy; another bit has become, lately, money, since even with three working adults in the house, between us attempting to save money for her classes, paying bills (of which the other two have several individually and I have a couple of my own, but that's related to lifestyles and spending habits before we formed our little family), we don't really have much to spare. In addition to making her feel stuck in the house, the idea alone stresses her out.
At the moment, both M and I are trying to figure out what to do about it. We're not entirely sure. When we try to come up with a way to help her out, when we suggest it to her, in true depression-suffering fashion, she finds six reasons that it's not an acceptable option and shoots it down. I know that she has no idea that she's doing this, nor how often she does it, because I've been there, I've done that, and I've driven many people to distraction behaving that way. I told M that he was just gonna have to tie her up and gag her and drag her out and make her have fun. I'm only hoping that she's not too far gone to enjoy something, 'cos I've been there and done that, too. 'course, as aforementioned, mine's chronic-chemical, and I'm pretty sure hers is just a bad patch. She's even said as much, when she hears other people talk about theirs. As it is, she shuffles around and mumbles a lot and sighs heavily all the time (been there, done that, too.). I've suggested St. John's Wort (didn't work for me, but it's OTC, and a good way to eliminate zoloft from the list of options of medicine when we can get her to a doctor.), and I've considered sharing my knock-off paxil with her (worked wonders for me, where three others [prozac, zoloft, celexa] have failed.), but a, I kinda need that, and b, since hers is situational, or at least apparently so, she probably doesn't need so much medicine as sunlight and exercise, and c, she might be one of the ones that needs the month to feel the effects, and I can't share like that. (I felt mine same-day, but again, different chemistry.)

So, I was asked by someone else, after I'd told said someone about the wedding, if I wanted a boyfriend on the side. I turned him down, of course, but couldn't quite make it clear to him that our relationship isn't open. I mean, yes, we're polyamorous, but we're closed. When I tried to clear it up for him, I wound up asking him if he understood quite what I meant when I told him that I was dating two people, and he said he sort of understood-- like a mormon polygamist marriage. I sort of agreed with that, only the exception is that J is not my 'sister', or my fellow bride; she's my girlfriend, in the same sense that M is my boyfriend. I'm their girlfriend, is the way I explain it to people who are only sort of familiar with polyamory. I usually start off that bit with the "they're married", and sometimes it confuses people, but sometimes not.

I then tried to edge around the idea of fluid-bond without being gross about it, or insulting, because telling people that you're refraining from having sex with them because they might get someone's genitals sick is rather insulting, and I failed, but I do feel that it's kind of necessary to explain, so here is where I'm going to do it.
A fluid bond is basically agreeing to not have sex with anyone else outside the relationship/circle/whatever your group happens to identify as. There could be ten people, or three, or fifty, but basically, everyone gets declared clean and doesn't have sex with people outside the other nine, two, or forty-nine people. This is for several reasons, the chief of which is to avoid unwanted infections, and also so that if there are any children that crop up, you can identify whose (unless you're in the group of fifty, in which case, it's either of vital importance, or fuck it, we'll all raise it as our own.). Having been on the unfortunate side of a broken fluid bond, I'm a little titchy about the idea in general. (My ex slept with an infected woman. I'm clear now, but paranoid.)

So, that's what's been going on in our life.
You know, I don't often update, but that's actually because I've forgotten that our relationship is unconventional, except when I go about telling other people about it, and kind of have to knock around the bush for a moment to explain, but even then, people catch on fairly quickly and understand pretty well, even if they think it's a little weird. Most of the reactions have been "I would be too jealous", and while J was for a while, I never have been. Mostly I just feel lucky to be involved. J didn't have to share if she didn't want to, and has tried to anyway, bless her heart. (It's probably another factor in the depression, but we haven't talked about that. I'm wondering if we're all going to need relationship therapy before long...)
But I've gotten to where I feel completely normal about it. It's just a relationship, same as any one with two people in it, only there are three of us. (Of course, I've only got one monamorous to go on, and that was dominantly online, and one other that was only ever online, so I've got kind of a skewed standard, and this is my third relationship ever, sooo....) I did, in the beginning, tell both J and M that they could update the blog, but neither of them has indulged in this. M reads it, I think he checks it fairly regularly, to see what I've got to say (and, in fact, my last posting was met with a question as to whether or not I keep a second blog where I complain about 'us', too; I do have a second blog, but I don't really bitch much about us, because I'm too busy bitching about my issues with my ex and work and the like, slice of MY life, rather than OUR life, and this blog is distinctly about US.), and to see if I've got any complaints or reports that he doesn't know about, I think. I do communicate better in written form, but still.

Oh. It was J's birthday a couple of weeks ago. I know what I want to do for her birthday, but it's looking like that's going to have to wait 'til effin' springtime. M's got my gift-idea ready, but I don't really want to, especially considering how little we did for J. Hers should really come first, and after that we can diddle at mine (despite my requests otherwise. I'm perpetually disappointed with my efforts at a birthday. Eighteenth and nineteenth were pretty good, I think.).

L is hitting his milestones about perfect. His motor function is a little (but not much) slower than suggested it could be, but aside from being unsure how to flex his elbow, he's right on cue with everything.

K's potty-training has been rather hit-or-miss. He has pooped in the potty of his own accord, completely independent of us and without even telling us a few times, but then he'll also go squat behind the furniture to hide from us, or go in his pull-up and then act like he's going to the bathroom to potty. We're currently trying the "you get a treat when you go on the potty" bribery, which works to an extent.

I had a nigh-on argument with M about Mj and how and what we're teaching him. M was trying to give him a little extra responsibility regarding K, and how he would get into trouble if K was up to something and M didn't stop him. I completely disagreed with this, at this particular stage, partly because I've gotten familiar with M and his ways, and partly because I don't think a three-year-old should have any responsibility over any other person ever, because three and four year-olds aren't all that good at discerning good reasons for their own doings, let alone someone else's, and it annoys me even when adults get pissy because they can't figure out why someone's doing something. M had a few good points, being that we needed to teach him early and a sense of responsibility, but I argued that dressing himself would probably be his best bet for a next step, rather than giving him permission to boss his brother around. (He does that enough already.)

Alrighty. That's about it for now. Take care.

Bonds of Matrimony

Hello again.

J and M got married! Hooray!
They picked the date, like, a week and a half ago, and they said their vows and did their thing yesterday. It was cute. J's parents brought her a bouquet and wrote "just married" on her car windows. The minister doing the ceremony was this tiny old guy that rambled for forty-five minutes, I swear. Which got to be hilarious, 'cos J started getting impatient and dancing in place. And I laughed, because I already have a special place reserved in Hell, I might as well earn it with a little more specific blasphemy.
Of course, the clothes were simple and casual, but appropriate. The little room we were in was set up real cute, real simple. No arch, but a carpet on the floor. They held the flowers between them, and the rings on each others' fingers, and M's stomach made a loud grumbly noise right at the beginning.
Overall, simple, beautiful, and adorable. The only problem now is that if it doesn't work out, I'm going to be the one to help hide the body. Or if it's J's body, I'll have to do it myself. (M is a necrophobe.)

The baby is three months old, now, and is hitting all his milestones perfectly. He watches us enter and leave the room, he gets distressed when he can't see anyone, he can get his hands to his mouth and suck on then with reasonable skill.... He curls on his side, and can scoot on his stomach across the crib, etc..

K has learned to take his diaper off. And does so with a frequency. But still doesn't tell us when he's pooped, and prefers to sit in a poopy diaper rather than let us change it. And, in fact, at one point, he pooped in the floor, because apparently, this is what toddlers do. I know this because when I looked it up, the first entry on helping getting poop out of the carpet wasn't, in fact, a pet site like I expected, but was the blog of a woman whose daughter had done the same thing. (The answer is hydrogen peroxide, by the way.)

I keep wondering how on earth parents without three adults around do it. I am always impressed by single parents, but I used to think that two would be enough, but even with two kids, it's just so handy to have six hands. From having someone to drop the one off to so that you can go handle the other one, to being able to stomp away and glare at the wall in the next room while someone else handles stuff, to when someone is screaming and you've still got to untwist the damn seatbelt because shit happens and that's how it goes.... Like, last night, we were trying to pile everyone into the car, and the baby was screaming for god knows why, and K was being annoying about getting into his seat, and J was getting mad 'cos the seatbelt strap had twisted into the seatbelt, and I couldn't get to the seatbelt buckle in addition to being unable to shut the baby up (because for some reason, all of us start losing our minds a little bit when the baby is crying. It's like the sims-- everyone in the general vicinity suddenly has a twenty point detractor from their mood bars when the baby is screaming. And because of that, we all get a little crankier than we were, and we're trying to get something done, and we just want everything to get quiet and still so we can finish.

And yet there are always still problems with the relationship itself, of course. You'd think with more people to fight, there'd be more fighting. I've been a referee once, because in the heat of the moment, a lot of things get lost in translation, and they start getting loud and angry without really understanding what's going on. That, and J's got rage issues, and I tend to duck out of the room when I detect them coming to the surface, because I know how I get when someone around me is angry, and I do not make anything any better.

Poor J, though. She's a very emotional person, in general, and they tend to manifest first as anger, and then as sadness. Even happiness, though I imagine that yesterday it was her nerves in general, and excitement and so forth, that eventually manifested and was why she got upset. 'cos, see, we were gonna have sushi (I spelled that as "suchy" first, because my hands hate me...) as a celebratory dinner, but almost no one wanted to come. Or, if they did want to come, they couldn't, etc., and it upset J rather a lot. I wound up cuddling her on the couch before she passed out. (we were also gonna do a celebratory drinks and game sorta thing, too, but she fell asleep way too early for that. Long morning, long day, with a lot of excitement and running around, I don't blame her. I passed out early-ish, too, but that's my tradition on Monday.) The day was good, but she kept trying to plan, and the plans kept getting harpooned, and it upset her. She does that.
And last week, when she was on her way out the door for work, the door started making a funny noise, and she still swears it was someone trying to get in, and she's requested being walked to her car every morning since then, with M's nightstick.
I'm not entirely sure how to handle the emotionality. I'm never sure if my cuddling her is enough of a sense of security, or if I should get M to do it while I go take M's spot in whatever task he has at hand (except when he's cleaning, because that's precisely what I do, 'cos I am sure that I'm better at housekeeping than I am at comforting an upset woman, and he's better at comforting his upset woman than cleaning.). A lot of the things when I express confusion, I get the same answer, which is "do what comes naturally". Still sucking at this. Out loud.

But I finally did get M to watch some Doctor Who with me. Old ass episodes, from like the seventies and stuff. He's being slowly won over to my British television, though J has remained steadfastly hooked to her Teen Dramas and stuff.

One thing that did happen a lot about the wedding was that when I told people at work, they asked me what was going to happen to me in our relationship. I think the clearest I could get on the matter was telling one girl that I couldn't very well marry them, I'd only been with them for four months (or five, or something.) and we'd get there when we got there. As things stand, I am still their girlfriend, we are all still in the same relationship, but now those two share a legal bond as well as an emotional and spiritual one. I can't seem to make it clear that legal marriage isn't my ultimate goal, and that their bond getting legal doesn't make our emotional one any lesser.

M did suggest "marrying" me in a year, but I don't want to share their anniversary (and possibly cheapen it somehow) and I'm not sure how I feel about marrying them even non-legal-like. It took me four years to get to that point with my ex, and having had my sense and reason forced back upon me, no thank you. We'll have to see.

Parenting by proxy. Whee. Infant needing attention, now. Wish my partners luck! They'll need it!

Catching up!

Oh, jeez, I'm sorry!
Ages have passed, and I've not posted! I'm sorry. It's not even like I didn't have time, I just buried myself in my Sims game (though I'm pretty sure that it displeased J....), and between that and childcare and work (I do disappear totally during worktimes, which are weekends,), I have failed in my duties to update.

So, since I last posted, a few things have happened. L has noticed his arms and legs, and begun to smile. He likes to watch his feet as he kicks them, and he's stopped hitting himself in the side of his head, and likes to try to suck on his fists (he's getting better at it). We're also trying to get him to stay asleep at night, by keeping him awake during the day. Not all day, obviously, but at least six or seven hours during the day, keeping naps down to four hours or so. This has been fun for him-- he rather likes the freefalling sensation and turning flips like we've been doing. (It messes with his inner ear, and scares him enough that he wakes up real well. He loves it.)

So, it turns out that J has been unable to quash the feelings of territorialism, and she doesn't like it when M and I sleep together without her. This does have a couple of complications, like we generally need at least one person to be out of the "loop", so to speak, so that they can take care of the baby, so this is a little unfair, but I completely understand. Like a dog barking at the other dog across the street-- no threat, but still inspires horrible irrational feelings. I've been in the same sort of spot, and it makes sense to me.
Also, I can use the excuse to stop shaving. Bwahahaha. (I hate shaving. Even my legs and armpits.)
I'm not real clear on how M feels about it, though.

I've been studying the dynamic between K and Mj, lately, too. Mj is about a year older than K, and is a completely completely different person. Think Garfield and Odie, kind of completely different. K loves Mj and wants to play with him and thinks he's great and is always wanting to get in on whatever Mj is doing, and wants to do stuff with him-- and Mj is only interested in playing with K when K has finally given up and gone to do something by himself.  K is a people person, Mj isn't.

The baby has cradle crap. (J calls it that, and I find that extremely appropriate.) We managed to get it off his head once, last week, but it's returned since then.

Oh, money. Jeez. We've been having such a problem with it here lately. Not too much, but just the matters of when what bills are due is hard! J has determined that she's giong to need a job between now and when she goes to her EMT training course. The book studying has been going well, of course. It's very interesting, of course, and we're nearing completion of it. I think we've got terrorist attacks and seven kinds of reviews left.

So, K and Mj only watch Caillou and Curious George on  Netflix. We are sick to death of these shows. And they will not be deterred. They'll watch other things after we force the issue, K was totally into Sonic the other day, but once it was over, "Caillou, Caillou!"
Argh, kid!

So, with the kids, I'm beginning to realize I'm in a little over my head. I've got the lightest set of rules between the three adults,  and I'm never sure what to do when they just make me angry as opposed to doing something actually wrong, and determining how to punish is always kind of confusing for me.... I tell them off in the big loud angry voice, and that usually works, but when it doesn't, I don't know what to do. K, especially, doesn't do anything like standing in the corner very well, he's too young and too much a mover and wiggler.
Oh, and Mj is a conniving little turd. He has a big sister at his mother's house, who has apparently trained him well in the arts of ratting to get someone in trouble, rubbing one's toys in the other's face and other general unpleasantries, and I dislike this very much. I tell him off. I do have to tell him off regularly, because he'll act as though K has hurt him, and then I turn his own rules on him. Eventually he'll catch on, he's pretty smart like that.
K, of course, also needs to learn how and when to leave Mj alone, and that Mj isn't necessarily a people person and won't want to play a lot of the time.

We're also working on weaning K off his binky (I still call it a paci), and potty training. He's got a pretty good idea as to how it works, and what to do, but he doesn't want to, so he doesn't.

I'm sleepy, all of a sudden. It's been a lovely catch up. Take care!