Vacation...ugh
Sooooo... CO gives each parent 2 weeks of uninterrupted vacation time during the summer, or you can split it into 2, 7-day vacations. BM has made some pretty poor life decisions over the past 4 years, including sitting at home without a job (seriously, 4 years, while kids were in school and at our house 50% of time) while her home (DH's house that she refuses to allow showings on so a sale isn't possible) goes into foreclosure and the only plea she has for the judge is "you cannot let him allow my house to go into foreclosure, MY children LIVE there!!" She's a peach.
Aaaanyway, she intentionally used the vacation in the way that keeps them from our house as much as possible. In a 14-day period, they're with us most of the first week, and her most of the second week, so she took the two separate week-long vacations on the weeks they would be with us. At the end of the day, they'll end up with us like 4 nights total over the next 6 weeks, which sucks, and in my opinion couldn't be more telling about her inability to foster a positive relationship between the kids and their dad. Oh, and they aren't going anywhere - they're packing their house and going to daycare during the day.
What's worse is that the kids have swim lessons on Wednesdays. The first week of their vacation will end Thursday so she emailed DH telling him not to come to their swim lessons because the CO says the vacation is uninterrupted. Besides the fact that she has balls bigger than any guy I know for actually saying that, she came to daughter's figure skating lesson on the first day of our vacation a few weeks ago because we have to plan to start our vacation the day before any flights or scheduled items because she will make certain we miss our flight if not.
Am I crazy or is it her? What the hell? It never even occurred to me to ask that she not come to the kids activities during "vacation" time. It's not a vacation from the parent - it's time for you to do special things.
Yup you are dealing with an
Yup you are dealing with an effing bitch. Remember this. You are here for the long term and can make her life hell.
I agree wholeheartedly. She's
I agree wholeheartedly. She's a raging waste of space. And she does the PAS thing, per the Child Family Investigator that WE paid $17,000 for because she requested it to try to convince him DH was an alcoholic and he saw right through her act, but she was a SAHM so didn't have any money.
Anyway, DH is seriously like Dad of the century and I have no idea where he gets his energy for it, but he would never miss one of their activities unless he genuinely had to be somewhere else. Aside from wanting to be there, he is his children's own personal superhero and I think it really does a lot to combat the bad things she does and says without him having to say anything. My hope is that, one day when they're old enough to understand what she means when she says "your dad is a drunk!" they'll think of the bigger picture and how he's been a part of every important thing in their lives and realize who the bad guy is.
What I really don't get is why you would want zero help with a 7 (next week) yr old and 9 yr old while you're packing and moving a 3000 sq ft home completely by yourself. She hasn't even found a new house yet and she has less than 30 days to get out. Why would you not want to let them see their dad for a bit so you can get some things done besides make snacks and put on band aids?
I would still go. You're not
I would still go. You're not taking the kids anywhere or interrupting her parenting time .. you're simply observing. Let her go whine to a judge that your DH had the balls to show up and support his children at swim practice!
As for the move .. she's an idiot. The one time DH and I moved, we made sure to do the bulk of the work while skids were with BM. The little packing/unpacking we did with them around was just a headache.
Our BM tried some BS with DH when she recently moved back to our state. She tried to get DH to pay half of hers and the skids' airfare to fly them here since they were coming for his summer visitation. DH's visitation didn't even start for another week; she wanted to fly them early so she didn't have to deal with them during the move. She just wanted DH to share some of that cost with her.