This is my first blog post...After all these years of suffering in silence (not completely silence but not voicing all my concerns), I finally laid it all out on the table for my Fiance. The past two days have felt like a huge black hole and now, I feel some relief. I did so much reading about step families / blended families and everywhere I turn it says to RUN...Run as fast as you can. But I have invested too much of my love, time, energy and money into this relationship to not give it a chance. So, after years of voicing some of my concerns I finally just laid it out and said enough is enough. I put everything, every single thing that is bringing us down out there. Things need to change. The kids aren't 2, 4 and 6 anymore. I can not work full time and be their maid and his. I am overwhelmed and if things don't change I give up with the house. I realized through all my reading that my fiance and the way the kids are being raised is the problem. The more I read, the more I came to the conclusion that the problem isn't the kids, the biggest issue is their dad. When I have the kids alone, they can be really good. They don't even give me attitude, they do what I ask without question. It's his permissive parenting that has caused such a rift in our house. He seems to be on board with changing the way our house is run and I'm hoping that my next blog entry will show some of the changes.

When I first started reading about stepfam's a few months ago I started by disengaging. I used to be the one to discipline my stepkids but that wasn't working. So, I took a step back and stopped doing things for them including the discipline. I still do the majority of the housework but I don't cook for them and I don't clean for them. Cooking for them was really bad because they never wanted to eat anything I made and all I ever got were nasty comments about the way the food looked so I had to stop cooking for them, for my own sake. Now, the bad part about not cleaning is that my BD spends every other weekend with us, so her room is always a mess because she shares the room with her younger stepsister.

The changes will start with their rooms and sleeping habits. As of right now, the girls share a room and his son has his own room. We bought a bigger house just for them to have more room in general but their rooms have become more like storage areas and they never sleep in there. Now, I make my daughter sleep in her room even though the other two sleep on the sofa. They sleep there because their dad does not enforce the, NO SLEEPING IN THE LIVING ROOM rule. I have tried to get them to sleep in their rooms but I am not the one who should make them follow the rules, so I stopped trying to get them to sleep there. They always give the same excuse, I'm scared of the dark. This is a blatant lie because they sleep in darkened rooms when they are with their other parents.

They have their own bathroom which I clean and pick up all their stuff up off the floor. I had a hamper in there but they wouldn't use it so I took it out. But that situation will also need to change. There are many, many things that need to change but these two issues are the ones we will tackle first.

I have also spoken to my fiance about spending alone time with the kids as a family and as individuals. Since my BD lives with my mom because of her school, I see her during the week for a few hours and then every other weekend she is at our house. When I see her during the week we usually take all the kids to the park for an hour or two and then I drop her off and we go home. We do this with the kids atleast once a week, all of us as a family and the other day or two I go to my moms house and I visit with her and my mom. My BD needs to spend time alone with me for her own well being, so I have made sure that my fiance knows that this will be happening when the kids are with us on the weekends as there is no other real time for me to do it and it would be good for the kids to see that even though we are a family, we also value them as individuals. I also told him that Friday's will be movie night at our house and we will watch a movie with all the kids. This way we do it as a family. We used to take the kids hiking and fishing when they were with us on the weekends but the kids started complaining so much that I ended up feeling disappointed every time we took them and I gave up on that idea. It also was very expensive since we would end up buying stuff for picnics. We would spend at least $100 just doing that.

I really do hope things change because my fiance is an amazing guy. He's the best guy i've ever had in my life and he is a good dad despite his permissive parenting. We'll see where this road takes us...