Reply to S/o designations. What should my kids call my horrible step mother?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Just curious, what other things did your stepmom do over the years to create this issue?  My stepkids didn't attend our wedding (it was destination with no kids) but I would hope that this wouldn't scar them.  [b]They only saw DH a couple of times a year at the time[/b].  Now that we have our own child it is a struggle to balance our everyday life and the times that they are with us - things to include them in, things that we can do on our own, etc.  I am constantly looking at the calendar to figure out what dates work for visiting my family or things we can do while we're all together.  Getting invited to events for our toddler during their weekends with us is also a problem as they're 10-11 years older and either aren't invited or wouldn't want to go.  Struggling to include them as it can't always be done.  [/quote]

Well you sound like you are not an evil step mother, but you did sort of start off on the wrong foot by excluding them from their own father's wedding. Surely you could have picked some other venue that accommodated children. As for now, just simplify your life when they are with you. Your toddler does not need to go to "events" that would require excluding the older kid. Or you go with the toddler and let your DH have alone time with his kids.[/quote]

Definitely don't want to be an evil step mother.  By events I mean birthday parties of kids his age, etc.  When he starts school he'll likely play soccer or other sports  that will continue to require our time - or are things that DH will want to do with him and not me.  I'm supportive of stepkids having alone time with dad, but it sucks to separate every other weekend with me chasing after toddler and taking him to activities or park, library, whatever (staying home all day with an active kid is not an option)and not behave as we normally do - go to swim class together and then have breakfast with other families in the class for example.  Hard to find things we can all do together and I predict it will get harder as they become teenagers - though most teenagers don't want to spend time with their parents anyway.[/quote]
I'm a stepmom (my bonus is now an adult), but I'm not understanding what the issue is. If all the kids lived together all the time, what would you do? Why can't the other kids just come to swim class and breakfast. The point is to operate as a family, so you do what families do, which means not every event is geared to EVERY one. 
And I must say...yea on the destination wedding...we had one... and no kids were allowed at the resort, but my bonus was 16 (the minimum age). Otherwise, we would have done something else.[/quote]

I'm this pp and I want to say I was not trying to come down on you, just wanted to point out that you are over-thinking it. Honestly, that comes from being a new mom, your kid is a toddler and at this point it seems like everything is about the little one. At some point, you realize, 'meh, not so much'. In other words, everyone can go with the flow and no one will get hurt.[/quote]

Thanks.  I'm sure I am over thinking things. I've never been so close to a divorce and seeing how hard having two separate homes is on kids.  Their experience is so much different than that of an intact home ([b]especially since DH was only married to their mom for 2 years -  1 year after first kid was born and then divorced when second kid was born[/b]). I just don't want to make things worse for them but it is hard sometimes to run our family of 3 and then twice a month 5.  [/quote]

It is very easy to bash the stepmom, and sometimes stepmoms are to blame, but if the dad didn't care about the kids being at the wedding, kids never had a stable intact home experience, and the fact that he only sees them a few times a year, it doesn't sound like they were ever much of a family to begin with.  Stepmoms can only work with what they've got.  Sure, they can try to make things better and not add to the hurt, but the dad never had 50/50 custody doesn't seem to have fought for more.[/quote]

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