The One Where I Mention My Ex

 I decided to send Little Man up north to his dad's house to spend the week, since I have a temp job where I have to be at work at 7:30 and am not home til 4:45.  I feel fine letting him stay with his dad, but its really a pain to set up anything long term with him.  His dad hasn't really gotten his life together since our divorce, still has no job and now has no car... he lives in his mother's basement and I'm honestly not sure how he pays the bills.  We have no formal child support or visitation arrangement through our courts since our divorce was pretty simple and uncontested.  I got full custody.  Child support is iffy with his lack of work, but we keep visitation to every other weekend when we can. 

While it is always hard to be away from my little guy, and I often get frustrated with his father's lack of responsibility in arranging support or visits, I think I'm one of the lucky ones.  I consider myself very fortunate to have an ex who really does adore his son, and tries very hard to be a good dad when he does spend time with him.  His positive attitude towards me and our son have enabled drop offs and pick ups to be a relatively smooth process and he has no problems interacting with Hubs or feeling like he has to prove himself as the 'real dad'.  He just goes with the flow and does not try to disrupt any of the parenting or therapies that Hubs and I work very hard on.  Of course I'm not perfect and neither is he, so occasionally he annoys the hell out of me and I'm sure I do the same to him.  But I try to remind myself that without him in our lives Hubs and I would have to pay a sitter or ask for much more help from our parents to do so many of the weekend activities we plan on our "days off". 

So this week Hubs and I going to bed early (before my Daily Show and Colbert are even on, which is awful!) and waking up even earlier.  While its nice to have a rest from the bed war, I don't think I'll be taking any more day jobs for awhile.  We get the Little Man back on Sunday after a long weekend of helping my little sister change apartments and visiting family, and things will go back to the status quo.  I'm kind of hoping that the Little Man has forgotten how to climb out of his crib when he gets home... but that might be a long shot.