You know that saying “You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t”? Well, my experience as a stepmom has led me to quoting that line way more times than I care to admit. Pleasing my stepdaughter is never a problem. It’s her mother that seems to never approve.
My husband is not only a great husband but he’s a fabulous dad. He loves his child so deeply and talks about her constantly as if she is the reason he breathes. We don’t get to see her but every other weekend and the two weeks in between are sometimes hard on him. The time we do get with her is always quality time. He takes her to the skating rink which is her favorite thing to do and they spend all day there. He plays video games with her and takes her to the park. He reads to her and plays Barbies with her. We enjoy going to church together and visiting her grandparents. SD is an only child and usually plays at home by herself so having someone to do something with is a treat. She just adores her father. With a dad like that, who wouldn’t?
The two weeks in between our visits are long but we make it through all the while dealing with constant text messages from his ex-wife. It has gotten to the point of what I would call harassment. It’s constant nit picking and complaining of how terrible of a father he is and she states all these bogus things he supposedly doesn’t do.
Two weeks ago, SD was with us over the weekend and complained about her head itching. She said her mom has been giving her Benadryl to sleep at night. She figured it was irritation from the chlorine in a pool she went to during a pool party. I looked closely at her head and saw a big louse in her hair crawling around. It was all I could do not to scream and jump six feet in the air. I quickly motioned for my husband to come over to me as I slowly started backing away and I whispered “your kid has lice”. This was our first time dealing with it as adults. As kids, we’ve all had it at one time or another. But being on the other side of it and knowing we have to treat her long thick dark hair, I instantly sighed inside because this was not how I wanted to spend my weekend.
I questioned whether BM knew about this and purposefully sent her to us untreated out of meanness. Do you think terrible of me for thinking that? Go ahead. But it’s not the first time she has used her daughter to get back at us for whatever reason she has built up in her mind that month. So, my husband texted BM and she never answered. He called a couple times and couldn’t get her. He called a third time and she finally answers. He tells her SD has lice. What does BM do? Guess. Seriously, guess!
She starts balling like a baby. I can hear her nonsense coming from the phone all the way into the other room…and it wasn’t on speaker! Then I hear DH trying to console her. What?
Y’all, when I talk about my husband being a good man, he really is. But sometimes I see how she does him and I instantly have this Ally McBeal moment of slapping him up beside the head and saying WTF is wrong with you? She was crying as if this was all about her. And to her, things are usually always about her. Just ask her. No, don’t really ask her. She’s awful.
Anyway, there he was trying to be nice and telling her that kids get this stuff from other kids all the time and that it doesn’t mean she, as a parent, did anything wrong. It’s okay, blah blah blah. Okay, maybe for a moment I felt sorry for the crazy witch because maybe she’s never really dealt with this sort of thing and doesn’t fully understand that it’s easily caught by other booger eating kids. Fine. And for a moment I felt like we were appreciated because we did the dirty work in treating her head with the EXPENSIVE treatments all weekend and BM didn’t have to. I said to myself “Self, this is probably what co-parenting is like”. For once, I felt like we were valued as parents and hero’s and there was no way she could find anything wrong with how we fixed the problem. Surely she will stop her meanness for awhile and appreciate the help we provided with that nasty infested head. And BAM! Not a week later she’s back to her witchy self telling DH what a terrible father he is. The dude CANNOT catch a break. Oh, and let's not forget I don't know what I'm doing. I'm so glad she reminded me of this. I almost forgot what a worthless air breather I am. Thanks BM.
This is what it’s like week after week. Take one step forward and sixteen steps back. But we're not giving up...
