Happy Frogs

Cape Henlopen State Park

Yikes!  Where did the time go?  I just spent the last week at the beach with Xing Fu & 2 of his kids.  I'm learning how to be "stepmom".  And contrary to what I've been reading & at this point, have stopped reading, things seem to be going quite well. Now don't get me wrong--it's not all flowers & butterflies all the time, & I did have moments of aggravation, but overall our beach week was a success on many levels. It was another test of a sort.  Not necessarily Xing Fu testing me, well maybe just a little,  always a question about how good the fit with his kids.  (Me too with my son--but I've long since decided that was not needed at all.)  But the grrr moments were very few & far in between & I think we all walked away feeling pretty good about the week.  Yay us!  I still think about some of the advice in the Stepmother books, & try to be realistic about it all. And recently I've been reviewing my own stepmothers' performances (my one stepmom is only 9 years older than me...HUGE issue when I was growing up--mega teenage 'tude, ya' know?) ) & my mom's stepmother performance to sorta bounce the way I'm doing the step thing off of theirs.  My mom has told me how impressed she is--great--the true test is how Xing Fu's kids feel & he says that they felt it was a great week so there it is.

Xing Fu wrote me an email this morning telling me that he's a Happy Frog.  One of our sailing friends dubbed him a Happy Frog a few months ago--we now talk about that--I've asked him at different times if he's a "Happy Frog".  At Screwpile, our skipper bought a smiling frog wind whirligig thingy & we tied it to the backstay where it grinned down at us until the first gybe--blew off his whirligig.  Actually, the whole frog was left & he continued grinning at us the rest of the regatta. So I must be the princess who kissed the frog--a reference to kissing a ton of frogs when I was dating--lucky me--it took a while but good karma is good karma.

It's continuing to be a good summer--now to get through the next two weeks until my kiddo comes back from camp--he was definitely missed on our beach trip but there's always next year.