being a GiGi

So I'm 43 and with my partner for life. I absolutely love children and was not able to have my own. He has 4 children and 12 grandchildren. His four children are between three to 9.5 yrs my junior. Long story on that one, but here we are as a modern day blended family.

We both work and not even close to retirement and I have all these dreams of having his grandkids around in the summer; rotating each set for a week at a time, but we work full time. Now a 13th is coming and I skipped mommy stage and want to devote time to making sure the grandkids do spend time with Kevin. We find ourselves battling our time off doing all our family duties and it' coming to the point we even have to split our duties to accommodate the highlights of their lives.

I absolutely want them to remember their grandmother and no one can ever replace another special person. Kevin and I have been very open about us being together for the rest of our lives, but all of a sudden, I am the "other" woman replacing mom and grandma. All I ever wanted is to give the grandkids an openness to their PaPa and added feature of having another person to share special moments with them. There has never been any other alternative. I just love Kevin.

So the dreams I openly share with Kevin about having the grandkids rotating to be with us in the summers will have to be on hold until the parents figure out time is passing us all by and it will be too late in the next five years because life goes on and the grandkids will be adults and just too busy to take a week with PaPa and Gigi.

At least two of the kids are embracing Kevin's happiness. They came up with GiGi.