I am literally at my wit's end over this.

DH and I have been married just over a year, but we've been friends for years and I've known his kids their whole lives. Their mother is a horrible narcissistic witch, who quite literally got pregnant with their now 5.5 year old without now DH's consent. Yeah, she's like that.

So their mother hates me and hates him and hates that we're together, a fact that she makes clear to the skids in all ways possible.

SD is 10. She's a "love the one your with" kind of kid, but her loyalty is with her mom. She's desperate for BM's approval, and to hell with DH or me. I feel like she's spying the whole time she's with us because literally anything said or done will be recounted to BM. And BM loves to collect grievances against us, of course.

SS is 5.5 and there's something wrong with him. His speech is bad, he can't hold a pencil correctly, his writing is terrible, he fidgets all day, he eats his clothes, etc. (We're finally going to see a developmental pediatrician this month to see what the hell is wrong with him, but getting there has been a battle!) And his loyalty is *only* with BM. He's openly nasty to me and my bio-daughter (9) and his dad. He's miserable every minute he's away from his mother--or his stepdad, for that matter. We're the bad ones, which is clearly reinforced by BM.

DH loves his kids. Don't get me wrong. But he also sees the reality of the situation. Which makes it so that he and I both DREAD having them in our house. We have them 4 out of every 14 days, and the time they're with us is torture. DH is waiting for them to say or do something horrible, and I'm doing the same thing the entire time. I don't really engage with either one of them, but it's like nails on a chalkboard the entire time they're there!

So why is it so awful? For one thing, they're always exhausted when they come, because they go to bed around 9 pm and wake around 6. That's not enough sleep, so they're cranky and they're often sick, to boot. For another, the boy, especially, cannot entertain himself *at all,* so he follows his sister or DH around the house the whole time he's there. Lately, he's been glued to DH and no one else is allowed near. Plus there's the fact that we honestly don't know if he understands anything that is said or happening around him. It's crazy making. SD is mostly innocuous, but since their mother wants them to be completely dependent on her for everything, she's needy, too. And the constant comparisons feel like constant put-downs.

SO our stress levels on the skid weekends is literally off the charts. We're both miserable the whole time, and both of us are wondering if we can keep going like this. We had a huge fight yesterday because DH is so tired of the constant conflict, and he keeps wondering if we can be happy if the skids are making us so miserable EOWE and 4 weeks in the summer.

Honestly, I'm fairly disengaged with them. I don't absent myself, but I don't deal with them, either. And DH and I are fine with just my bio-daughter around, but his kids make all the difference. And I know it's their horrible, horrible mother, but that doesn't make it any easier. How can we survive this?