Finding a Place of Our Own- My Story Part 7

*Note- I have learned how to add pictures to my posts- and I think it will really add something to them. I will be going back to my earlier blogs over the next week to add other pictures- of me as a teenager, of our first born Hailey, etc. so if you’d like to feel the feels again, check back on those earlier blog posts!*

Carly was perfection. She was squishy and pink and gorgeous. She was a great baby- breastfed well, slept well (through the night at three months old!) and was just the biggest blessing I could have ever hoped for.

Carly Joy at 4 weeks old.

She was the light of my life, the best thing I had ever experienced, and I loved (and still love) being her mommy. My parents taught me how to raise Carly, when to take her to the doctor and when to just give her Tylenol, when to give her baths (doesn’t have to be every night when she’s a newborn!) and when to start brushing her gums, when to start feeding her solid foods, how to comfort her, how to change her diaper, how to clip her little nails, there is SO much that goes into being a mommy and/or daddy that people don’t even think about. The sleepless nights, the exhaustion, especially when you are doing it on your own. It was necessary time at home for me to truly understand how to actually be a mom, even though I loved this little angel with all I had, but I just wasn’t sure, as most new moms must think, how to do it right.

After a few years though, it was time to start thinking of moving on to our own home together, just Carly and myself. Now, during this time, because I know you’re wondering, Chris was not really in Carly’s life all that much. He would come in and out of our lives, whenever he’d feel the need to come by. We even took a family photo when Carly was around six months old.

Chris’s 2003 lemon-juice died hair, and my first “mom” hair cut.

Isn’t she beautiful? Look at that amazing little thing we made. I still have to laugh and smile and cry all at once looking at her sweetness. She is awesome.

Back on point, Chris was only around at times when it was convenient for him to be. He loved his daughter, and I would dare say he loved me, but he had given in to drugs, and had let it take him over. He did not pay child support, or help us in any way. He lived his life of partying, doing drugs, and occasionally coming by to check on Carly for the first year or so. Life was not about him any longer anyway, it was about Carly. So on with life we went.

Carly and I went to the park, we had adventure days, we read books every night, I tucked her sweet tail into bed every night (okay, sometimes she snuggled up and we slept in the same bed). Life was good at mom and dads.

My mom holding Carly, her first smile we were able to get a picture of. 

I eventually had to get a job and did so when Carly was about six months old. My mother helped get me a position at her dental office, helping file paperwork and do data entry. It was my first real job in the actual job market. We celebrated Christmas at my parents, then had Carly’s first birthday on January 8th, 2004. We had a second party at Chris’s families’ house, and their entire family celebrated with us. Carly’s Aunt Amy made Carly a beautiful bear shaped birthday cake, and Carly took her first steps by herself ON her birthday! It was an awesome first year.

Carly’s first birthday at my parent’s house, eating her birthday cake.

It’s a natural thing to want to move out and become and adult, but an entirely different thing when you have a daughter and you still feel like a child. Little did I know, I still actually was a child, but you couldn’t have told me that.We lived with my parents  until Carly was about 18 months old, then I decided I was old enough to start living on my own. My first try at living alone was in an apartment complex behind a church in Decatur, I want to say they only charged me around $700 for the entire six months that we lived there. Looking back, that’s insane and awesome. Thank you Calvary Assembly, for giving us that blessing. We had a roommate, Carly called her “Kappie” and boy she loved her Kappie- you know who you are!! She is one of the sweetest, most Godly women I have ever met in my life. And it’s true that the company you keep is what you will reflect. While staying with Kappie my life became centered once again around church and God. She doesn’t really know the impact she’s had on my life, because those six months I felt closer to God than I think I ever have. I woke up and worshiped, prayed, and read my Bible. I learned to love Carly in an entirely new light. And yes, Kappie, I apologize now, I was absolutely the messiest housekeeper (not that you could even have called me that) you’d ever run across. I am naturally a more messy person, they do say we are smarter, you know. But, if she reads these blogs, she’ll attest to the fact that I was actually kind of gross. I don’t even want to discuss that time I left the dishes in the sink that one time you were away for a few days….. YUCK. I had never lived on my own, and really wasn’t accustomed to picking up after myself, or doing anything really. I was a kid with a full time job and a child, and used that as an excuse to be lazy. I am so sorry, girl, for putting you through that. I have since gotten MUCH better. Although my mother may not agree (she’s a bit of a clean freak, I can still leave the dishes in the sink until the morning and it doesn’t bother me). Sorry to you as well, mom… but I am much more organized and less lazy than I used to be….maybe?

In our short-lived but well-loved apartment.

So after that small grasp of freedom, we moved back in with mom and dad for a while longer. I really couldn’t afford anything else at the time, and my job as a barista wasn’t really going to allow me to pay any rent anywhere. So we moved back home. I had a few different jobs, I was a shampoo assistant at a salon in downtown Decatur for a couple years, and it was while working there that I decided I just could not live at home any longer.

I need to mention that at this point, Carly was going to her grandparent’s house every other weekend to visit them, and if Chris happened to be there, so be it. If he wasn’t, that was fine too, at least she got to visit with her grandparents and various other cousins and family. I also need to mention that at this point, when Carly was around 18 months to 2 years old, that’s when I started dating again, and pretty heavily, I’m ashamed to admit. Because I had two weekends a month now to be an “adult” without having Carly with me, I was again looking for love.  I wanted a father figure for Carly, someone to be there for us, someone to love me. I wasn’t confident in who I was as a person, and I suppose a lot of that comes with age and maturity, and so even though I dated some really amazing guys (and some not so amazing) over the years, I never truly appreciated them. Even with all I had gone through, Chris was still the one in my head, as idiotic as that sounds. I could break up with the most amazing guy, and not really feel much of anything. Chris tugged at my heart. I think a lot of it was that we had been through so much together, and another part of it was my dumb childish brain wanting the drama which I misinterpreted as passion. Good guys can be considered “boring” can’t they? Boy do I wish I could have appreciated the boring. I look back at how crazy my thought process was, how I couldn’t be confident in myself, and therefore be confident in a healthy relationship. Perhaps it just wasn’t the right time, or who really knows. There are a lot of stories I could put in here about each of them, some of them not so great, most of them just fine people, and a couple of them were really extraordinary guys, men I couldn’t see the potential in because I was just young and selfish. There isn’t much more to say about this, except that I do regret not taking some time when Carly was younger to truly find myself as a person, and just enjoy being her mom, and I regret treating some of the guys I dated the way that I did. I’m sure at some point I’ll have a few blogs and funny/sad/memorable stories about some of these, but for now- suffice it to say, I dated a lot.

In 2006 I decided that it was time to move out of my parents’ home, and I was going to move in with my best friend at the time and rent a place, but dad said it was senseless to pay rent when you could get a house for much cheaper and actually own it. So, after the very first house we looked at, I bought it, and dad co-signed with me. In October of 2006 I bought my home. The yard was huge, there was a pear tree out back. 1600 square feet of MINE. I was 21 years old. Carly was almost 4 when we signed for it. We had our very own 3 bedroom, 1 bath sanctuary. It was heaven.

Carly in our new home. 

We painted rooms, my dad fixed a lot of the house up on his own dime, all to help us create the life that we wanted. The A/C was busted up by some hoodlums before we could move in, so dad bought me an entirely new unit and installed it himself- that’s right- himself, because he’s amazing. The bathroom had to be gutted and completely redone, including floors that had rotted in. Dad purchased me all new cabinets, and tile for the floors- he even replaced a paneled room into sheet rocked walls. He did so much work for us, I owe my dad so much for helping us get started out in life. We have laughed, cried, had pets, had friends, family and neighbors over to that house. It’s been a great home to raise my baby girl in.

So the years passed, we enjoyed our friends, pets, family and our home. Chris would come again in and out of Carly’s life as he deemed fit. Sometimes he would show up, other times he would not be seen for days at a time by anyone. He would go to rehabs, get clean, then fall off the wagon again. His parents would help me out monetarily sometimes when I asked, but mostly I didn’t ask. I was strangely okay with our arrangement for the most part, because Carly got to see her dad at her grandparents house, I didn’t have to see him all that often, and life was pretty normal. He would even bring his girlfriends around sometimes, and I would bring mine around too…. Until January of 2014, and Chris had been clean for the last two years, as he put it. I decided since he did seem completely normal again, that he could be a normal part of our lives again. We could co-parent again, we could be together with Carly as much as possible and give her a normal childhood. That’s when I invited Chris to come help with Carly’s 11th birthday party….and things took a different turn.