Moms I Need Some Playdate Ideas!

So my lovely blog readers.  It is official.  It was official in my mind last week when I posted about it, but it's finally official between me and boyfriend both.  I officially broke up with him tonight.  He has not been fully on board with all of it.  He for some reason thinks that we should stay together and continue to be unhappy and perpetuate this forever and ever I guess. 

But... I am putting My Best Life and my happiness first and knowing that although it will be a very hard transition and they will be very sad about it, I am ultimately putting my kids' happiness first.  I'm sure that won't make sense to some of you, and I'm sure that it will make sense to others.  I know that there are a lot of people who believe you should work things out for your children no matter what (we weren't officially married but we may as well have been, and he is the father to my son and my daughters consider him a step-father) but I feel like I tried and tried and tried probably way longer than I would have to make it work because of the kids, and now at this point I feel like it is going to be better for my kids to have a happier mom who isn't arguing all the time.  I'd love to hear your thoughts on that little conundrum, ladies!  :)

OK I need to talk about something happier.  I am very excited about something else going on in my life!!!  I have (I think... crossing fingers nothing changes between now and Saturday!) successfully planned a playdate activity outing between my 2 daughters and 1 friend each.  This may sound like something goofy to get excited over, but I promise you, it's exciting to me and will be sooo exciting to them!! 

Because of Liv's ADHD she has always had a little bit of a problem in the friend area (she's only 6... there's hope for her yet... but it's what we've dealt with up until this point.)  She is friendly to EVERYONE but has trouble understanding boundaries and with impulse control so she can sometimes be a little off putting to other girls her age who tend to be more reserved in their playing together.  This in addition to the fact that we've never really lived near a lot of kids her age so she hasn't had the chance to meet neighbor kids and that kind of thing have prevented her from having too many playdates.  And the ones she has had have been just a few random last minute things at my mom's house where she gets off the bus from school and where a girl in her class lives near.  And she and this girl fight like cats and dogs most of the time.  LOL.

Ava has the total opposite problem.  Everyone LOVES Ava at preschool.  Everyone wants her to be their best friend, wants to sit next to her, wants to come over to her house or her to theirs, etc.  It's a little hard because Liv of course notices that and I know she wishes that kind of thing happened to her more often.  My fingers are crossed that it yet will... But I digress... Anyway... Ava is closest to one little girl in her class and the two of them are always asking for playdates.

So because my girls are only about a year and a half apart there is a lot of sibling rivalry there.  Although I could plan separate playdates I really don't feel like dealing with the fallout of only letting one of the girls invite someone over.  (Neither of them have ever actually had an official playdate at our house now that I think about it!)  So I thought I would invite Ava's best little friend and the girl that Olivia sits next to in class who appears to be the one she plays with the most over for a playdate.  And then I started worrying about the sets of 2 arguing with each other or worse still, Livs friend glomming on to Ava (which has been known to happen) and Liv getting her heart broken.

So my solution to that was that we are going to have an "outing" playdate!  I haven't fully decided yet what we're going to do.  I know going out for pizza is going to somehow be involved.  :)  Aside from that I'm still undecided.  I am debating on what we should do... either a movie, or possibly bowling, or possibly some sort of arcade type thing... or something else all together?  I'd LOVE to hear your suggestions, blogger!

I am really excited about the playdate no matter what we end up doing.  I'm so excited to do this for the girls and I really hope that it is only the first of many fun friend activities and playdates that we have in our future.

Obviously things in my life are going to be harder from now on, but I'm ready to take on the challenge (I think!).  I've been a single mom before with a 2 1/2 year old and a 1 year old and it was nearly impossible.  Now I'm a single mom of a 6 1/2, almost 5, and almost 1 1/2 year old.  It seems like a task too daunting to even try to figure out how I'm going to do it at this point.  But we'll muddle our way through it until we get a new groove going in our life.