If you know one thing about me. It’s that I love my sons. I would give and do anything for my children. They will always come before me. Before the newest addition of baby Evander. There was my first mini me Skyler. When I met my then girlfriend (now wife) back in the day. One of my main concerns was how to introduce my son whom was begotten from a previous relationship, to this individual I was falling in love with? The next second was how do we address the cultural differences?

So long story short. I was married before and it didn’t work out. During the duration of that marriage. My first son was conceived. One of the things that I decided upon being newly single, was that if I were to get into another relationship, that there had to be a connection with that person and my son. Reason being is that this decision not only affects me but my son as well. So when I started to establish a new relationship. I didn’t initially bring my son around her. I didn’t want my son to become attached to someone and then they were no longer in our lives. I didn’t want him to be on a carousel of relationships because I was being selfish and trying to figure things out. I needed to know if this person was going to be the one for US! I had to be sure she was going to love my son just as much or more than she loved me.

When I met Emily. I didn’t paint her this Glamorous picture of myself. I didn’t put my best foot forward. It was that “do you want the good news or bad news first”, aww hell I’m going to tell you the bad first. This was my way of not wasting her time by sugar coating or fronting just to get her and then the real me comes out later. I expressed to her all my faults and issues. She chose to love me through all of that. That was a “whew! Aiight cool” moment. Now how do I move forward with introducing her to my son?

So once her love for me and desire to stick around for better or worst yadda yadda yackety smackety blah blah was evident. I asked my son would he mind hanging with myself and a friend. Now why did I introduce Emily as a friend? Well I didn’t want hit him with the girlfriend title off rip and cause some type of trauma. This was my way of easing him into the idea of daddy being in a NEW relationship. Oh yeah and on top of that “Hey son she’s white.”

I ascribe to the belief that love is love but there are those who don’t and they attached a title of color, ethnicity, religion etc to it. There are however some hurdles you may come into contact with in having a interacial relationship with kids being involved. That’s a whole nother blog topic in itself. Now let me rewind just a bit. My son’s mother is black. So this new relationship that he was to accept was going to be totally different than what he was accustomed to seeing. My girl and son however, navigated this very well. It was a beautiful thing to watch from my end.

A love not forced. I witnessed Emily love my son as if he were her own. I will admit that there were areas in which she was more observant and at times super over protective of him than I was. My son in turn began to develop a love for her. I had the talk with him of “your mother is your mother and there will never be a replacement” for that is a fact. I told him I want his relationship with Emily to be what he wanted it to be. If he would have said he didn’t want one. Well let’s just say that me and Emily would not be married right now. One of the days that I will forever remember where exactly I was on that date and what I had to eat (which was at Dairy Queen on Havens Corner in Gahanna Ohio and I ordered the vanilla chocolate dipped cone) is when I told my son how much I loved Emily and that I would like to ask her to marry me but not if he wasn’t okay with it. He told me “I was wondering when you were, I’d like that very much!” Fast forward a little bit, he soon began to ask us for a little brother. Well he got his wish of his little brother.

With our family. I make sure that my son is involved in various activities and decisions that we make in our household. I feel that this is important being that this was something new for him in many ways. So from what games we play, vacations we take, helping in taking care of his little brother to looking for a new home.

So here we are. Our nice little mixed in more ways than one family. One where I continue to watch us learn, grow and evolve and I love it!