Hello, folks.  I haven't been on much in the last few months. Thought maybe reading everyone else's dilemmas was making me extra sensitive to my step life. Nope. My step life is making me sensitive to my step life. 

And like others who have said not to expect it to get better when the skids are adults, I must add the same warning. 

I mistakenly thought that the intense time together during this pandemic had brought us closer together. Nope. Cue the holidays to prove to me that nothing has changed. 

I won't go into everything. The summary is that I again knew more about the skids than DH and offered suggestions for presents when he was at a loss (at this point I hadn't realized yet we were back in the same cycle), he got laser focused on everything to make the holiday special for the skids (uh, oh, fear hit that nothings changed), even got DS a gift, completely forgot/ignored about the agreed gifts we said we'd get for each other (yup, right outta the old playbook), and blamed me for OSS not wanting to stay over after I was nothing but gracious (and even thanked the skids profusely for the shitty gifts they got me) when the real reason was that YSS took OSSs bedroom and he didn't feel like the other bedroom was his spot in the house anymore.

And the fun of step life and adult skids is that it's likely you see them only on holidays so it's almost a certainty that something will tarnish the holiday.
 

PS The skids do nice gifts for DH because he was upset a few years ago by how little effort they put into stuff for him that I read them the riot act. DH won't do the same for me.