Hi all. Haven't been around much lately - things have been pretty hectic.
Eldest stepson is still pretty hard to deal with. We will be making him sign
both home and work conduct contracts if he wants to keep living here and working
for us. He graduated last Sunday ( YEAH - GOOD JOB KIDDO!) but now his rebellous
attitude is even worse. Yesterday he took the afternoon off and used our
warehouse and tools to fix a friend's mom's truck brakes. He was supposed to be
cleaning out the bay from his car that took two weeks to fix and he just
finished in the am. We get home from 9 hours on the road to find the bay still
a disaster area, a truck in it and someone's Cadillac blocking the end of the
drive. Good thing we have a 4x4 Dodge Ram 3500 or we'd have been stuck in the
road cuz the woman just stood there staring at us like she was in a trance while
we drove up the hill and through the swail in our front yard to get around her!
(Sorry - bunny trail. It's just really annoying cuz every time her daughter
comes over to visit stepson, she does
exactly the same thing! For pity's sake, we live 1/4 mile off the road and our
driveway opens up into a 1/8 acre parking lot. Whaddya mean you weren't sure
where to park?????????!!!!!!!!?????????)
Anyhow, so it's been a bit of a trial with him lately and the other kids are
starting to pick up on it and talk back/push the boundaries quite a bit more.
Plus we usually have every other weekend with only the oldest home (we both
have joint custody of kids with our ex's) but for one reason or another we've
had all the kids every weekend since the middle of May. And it's going to be
that way until about the middle of July. Normally this would be fine but with
the increased rebellousness going around the house like a bad bout of the flu,
this has been very stressful.
Hubby and I had our first fight this year Sun eve after my three went back to
their father's for his week. Hubby had been so stressed out by my girls that he
ended up doing nothing but complaining about them and my ex all day Sat and Sun.
It was very frustrating for me to hear him praise his 2 younger sons and my son
(my youngest) and be so on edge with the girls all weekend. They're 5 & 6 and
both severly ADHD on no meds cuz their dad & stepmom refuse to give them to the
girls when they're @ his house. DH is an amazing father, stepfather and partner
- he's just so tired of the double standards all the kids deal with from having
two homes. Both our ex's love the kids and put them first (minus mine and the
meds, and that's more their controlling stepmom than their dad). They just
don't have the same rules that we do and it's hard on the kids and us.
Hubby is still having a hard time understanding the girls but he just went out
and got a couple books on raising kids with ADHD and one on raising STEPkids
with ADHD so hopefully he'll gain some insight from those.
And to make things even more crazy, my fybromyalgia and lupus have been almost
out of control lately which is making it hard to keep my ADHD in check. It's
been a challenge around here the last month to say the least. But all the kids
are happy despite it all, healthy, we have a beautiful home and food on the
table. And most inmportantly there's more than enough love to go around. Small
rays of sunshine in the storm, right?

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