Once a single mom, Lynnwood woman now enjoys a full family life

Published 10:27 pm Saturday, May 8, 2010

Her Mother’s Day flowers came early. A pretty assortment of pink blooms arrived Friday at the Early Learning and Development Center where Paris Loutsis-Maddux works. Shortly after the delivery, which also included chocolates, the 24-year-old Lynnwood woman posted this on her Facebook page:

“I am so loved, and love my family! Thank you Rob!”

The early Mother’s Day gifts were sent by Rob Maddux, her husband of five months. They were married Dec. 5, 2009, at Lynnwood’s Martha Lake Community Club. The bride’s son, Kyden, now 4, carried a red rose down the aisle.

Loutsis-Maddux is a newlywed, but two years ago she was featured in this column as a single mom with a history of overcoming hurdles. In 2008, Paris Loutsis was a recent Edmonds Community College graduate with an associate of technical arts degree in early childhood education.

As EdCC’s student commencement speaker that spring, she talked about her struggles even before discovering she was pregnant at 19. “As a foster teen, I stayed in nine different foster homes and a number of teen shelters,” Loutsis told graduates.

Out of foster care at 18, she slept on friends’ couches. While pregnant, she earned a high school diploma. Knowing she’d soon be the sole provider for her child, she went on to EdCC. She worked several jobs and kept up college studies while caring for her baby.

“It is really hard,” she said in 2008, when she and Kyden shared a small apartment in Everett. Her plan back then? “Figure out how you’re going to deal with it in the most independent way.”

My gift to readers this Mother’s Day is a tenacious young woman’s never-give-up story. It’s a reminder that wonderful, surprising things can happen.

A beautiful bride in December, Paris Loutsis-Maddux is now blessed with the fullness of family life. Rob Maddux, 25, manages a storage facility and is studying computer science at Cascadia Community College.

They rent a spacious two-bedroom apartment in a gated complex in Lynnwood.

Loutsis-Maddux commutes to Seattle, where she works as assistant director of the Early Learning and Development Center’s Greenwood facility. Kyden goes to preschool in Edmonds.

“Everything has changed so much,” Loutsis-Maddux said Friday when we met at her workplace. “It’s so rewarding, to go home and see my husband.”

Early in their marriage, she was so used to handling all the parenting responsibilities that her husband had to speak up. “I was doing everything. He had to say, ‘You can let me help,’ ” Loutsis-Maddux said.

He now takes Kyden to school and picks him up, she said. Her little boy now has someone who enjoys watching cartoons and eating pizza at Chuck E. Cheese’s with him.

The couple met online. Loutsis-Maddux said they took time getting to know one another, and met each others’ families. She had dated as a single mom, but said most men had little interest in Kyden, and expected her to get baby-sitters. It meant the world to her when she first heard Maddux tell her son “I love you, Kyden.”

Her wedding was an extended-family affair.

Both her mother, Gina Peth of Lynnwood, and foster mother, Margaret Delacey of Kenmore, were involved.

“I really felt I was never going to get married. Who would take on this baggage? That’s how lots of guys see a child,” she said. “My son kind of scared them.”

She hasn’t forgotten what it was like to shoulder it all. It meant studying for finals while Kyden was sick with a fever. “Lots of times I was really tired. I’d feel like giving up,” Loutsis-Maddux said. “My son helped me through it. You’re always thinking about your child.”

She still sees education as the best hope for success. She’d like to earn a bachelors’s degree in early childhood education and continue working with children.

There’s no work today, though. For her first time as a mom, she’ll relax this Mother’s Day.

Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460, muhlstein@heraldnet.com.