• TokenBoomer@lemmy.worldOP
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    9 months ago

    Just advice. Spend less time on here and enjoy your time with your toddlers. Take extended videos of their daily lives. You really only get about 7 to 8 innocent years with them until they spend less time with you. And it goes by so fast. I know it’s cliche, but it really is true.

    • theangryseal@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Oh trust me, I know. My son just turned 26 on the 30th. The next one turned 21, the next one turned 19, the next one turned 15.

      I ended up with a woman a lot younger than me and she wanted children so I started over.

      It’s absurd, I’ll have 7 children when the next one is born. Two of my older kids are adopted (well one of them is, the other I just raised).

      I fully intended to stop with my 15 year old, but I felt it would be unfair to enter into a relationship with a younger woman who wanted children of her own and say, “Sorry babe, I’m done.” Besides, I love raising them.

      My son was a neighbor’s kid. He kept coming over and asking if he could play my video games. I told him no like 30 times (all the local kids knew I had an insane video game collection and talked about it with him). I let him in one day and he never left. He was 7 when he first came, he was 18-19 when he moved out. I always worried that he’d disappear on me when he grew up, but we talk almost every day.

      After about 3-4 months with me, I finally told him I needed to meet his mother. She told me that when he came asking to play games, his father had thrown the kids out and they were sleeping on a little backroad that had recently closed to traffic. She asked me if I wanted to adopt him, I said yes. We never made it legal, but he was my kid from then on. We played WoW together every day. He was my whole world.

      I wish I had the ability to record videos so easily then. I have some, but not many of my older kids. I got an iPad pretty early with my 15 year old and I have several videos, but not like I do with the little ones. Her mother passed from breast cancer and she’s been through hell. She’s a great kid. She really is. By the time cameras were in our pockets, my son was camera shy. I was too so I didn’t press the issue. I wish I had.

      Thank you so much for caring enough about a stranger to make that comment.

      I hope rest of your life is wonderful.