I have been stepparenting for 10 long tiring years. My step daughter would call me the evil step mother. And of late so would my step son. You see I have been the parent. Their BM has checked in and checked out..mostly out for the last ten years. I think during the last ten years she may have spent a total of 2 weeks with her children. And 9 days of that was this last summer. I have watched this mother abandon her children, not once but over and over again. I watch her tell them how rotten we are the BD and I. We have lied to them. But where has she been.