So about five years ago, I became a mother to two bonus babies.

Truth be told, I had been dating my Gregg since 2015, but they knew nothing of me for a solid year into meeting him. We did that on purpose, to make sure we would be lasting.

Once I met them, with the assumption that if they liked/disliked me, they would have the final sway of opinion on our “us-ness”, since Gregg and I were marriage minded. Being in our forties and fifties at the time, we were not messing up this time, as we had in our former unions.

And that meant that all three of our collective kids would have the final say. My child, the eldest, was an easy sell. On their way out to live with a partner, L was pretty happy as long as I was happy. I got a green light from my side, then it was on to Greggs kids.

His son was eight, and his daughter four. These would be the tough nuts to crack, as all they’d known up till that day of introduction was Mom and Dad.

On the appointed day Gregg and his kids and I had a casual dinner at his house, we played some board games, and the littles (as they have come to be affectionately known as) fell asleep to a movie right before bedtime. All in all a pretty picturesque and predictable evening. I was introduced as a friend, S (his son) was shy and shook my hand wearing a sly little grin on his face, and G was sitting in a chair.

In timeout.

We laugh about that now, her offense that required punishment permanently forgotten, but I’ll always recall her grinning from ear to ear, sheepishly asking her Dad, “Daddy can I be done now?” And extending her tiny hand to mine while still sitting in timeout.

Gregg of course relented and I became fast friends with the littles that evening.

Fast forward a few months, and we decided to hold hands (first PDA in front of the kids!) on a walk at the local wildlife preserve. S and G were about fifty feet in front of us, repeatedly running back and forth on the trail, and as thry came back seeing our hands clasped together, they both were unphased.

Blah blah blah, yakety yak, walk walk walk. Look at this bug! What is that flower? Can I pick it? Why do we need to go back now? I’m hungry and where is the potty!!!

2017 rolls around and we all decided to shack up together. We squeezed the five of us in the tiniest house we could find (thank you seedlings of the housing crisis and restarting our lives and the credit hits from divorce and financial ruin) and we were settled in. To quote Gregg, “this place is either going to kill us, or make us stronger.”

Thankfully, the latter has happened!