Having grown up a child from divorce with two households of moms and dads and step dads and step mums and all of the family and chaos in between, I have a really unique view on raising children in the “step” situation… and I tend to step back and try to see things from everybody’s perspective, not saying that my own selfish personal emotions don’t cloud the water, but at least I try.

Our working arrangement with Mother Russia is one of keeping the peace while trying to be considerate at all times… “keep it friendly” is our family motto. Custody arrangements, visitation, holidays, have always been handled in the most calm, dare I say, loosie goosy fashion. No lawyers… no courts… no paperwork… just the parents of the kids workin it out and keeping it friendly. It’s the best possible environment for kids in a divorce situation to live in, right?

Here’s my cloudy water for the day… me thinks that Mother Russia has used the first year as a kind of test. We’re entering the second year as a “divided family” with the second round of holidays coming up. Last year we had the boys for thanksgiving (the BIG holiday for DH’s family… you know how family’s have the BIG holiday, right? Everybody with a trace of a family gene is in attendance… the BIG get together. Not only is it Thanksgiving, but its DH’s birthday weekend AND the start of hunting season… HUGE in his family!!!) and she had them for Christmas. All was right with the world.

This year DH and I have scraped and saved for months to afford the trip home to Pittsburgh so we could get the boys home for the big family weekend… and here is where we made an ASS of U and ME… we assumed we had the boys for thanksgiving, cause, you know, we did last year… she KNOWS how important that week is to DH and his family… AND she’s f-ing RUSSIAN!!! What in the hot holy fark does thanksgiving mean to her anyway..?!?!?

She strolls in last night and kinda casually mentions that she’s making arrangements to fly the boys out west to visit her friends for thanksgiving. *blink-blink*… what?
I got up, snatched the boys up and left the room to let them duke it out… the kids don’t need to be subject to what was about to fly around that room.

The long and short of it is this… SHE assumed we’d swap holidays, we had them on thanksgiving last year, she gets them this year… and so on and so forth. And while I see the Vulcan logic in that arrangement, at the same time, she KNOWS what this particular holiday means to us. And when DH tried to (in his defense) gently bring that up to her he got both barrels in the chest…

Barrel #1: “You don’t know how hard it is for me! I was thrown to curb… I have no family or friends here! All I have are children…”

Barrel#2: “And who knows how much time I have with thing in my head…”
(for those who may not know, she’s in the process of finding out what’s up with a mysterious cyst in her brain, the testing doesn’t seem too rushed or serious so we’re (again) assuming the doctors don’t think it’s very serious)

So there it is. Poor girl… what do you even say against that? You roll over and give her what she wants… to keep it friendly. Cause once you start putting up walls and making demands (“You know that’s MY holiday! Don’t you DARE fly those kids across the country by yourself to spend a holiday with strangers when I can’t trust you to safely take them to the park by yourself!” What do you care about this holiday for anyway..?”) it all falls apart and you end up in court paying thousands of dollars just to let some guy in a robe designate “fair” arrangements for you. And we don’t want it to get there… and she knows it. And she’s using it. Cause she spent the whole last year testing the waters… and now we’re going to see how this “friendly” arrangement is actually going to work out.

Right?
Sorry so long… just my therapy session for the day folks.