Two weeks ago on visitation weekend, DH and I took both Skids and one of their friends to the family cabin. At 7:30am on Sunday, one skid is banging on our bedroom door saying, “dad, we have to leave now. We have a flag football game at 10am!” BM had texted him that morning to tell him. The cabin is over 2 hours away, so I tell him, “we’re not going, we’re not going to make it.”  Of course, DH relents and we all rush around like idiots to get out to the car and race home.

Did DH get any advance notice that Skids were signed up for flag football? No, even though he and BM have joint decision-making over sports. I kept asking him if he was told they were signed up because I saw on FB that games were starting. 

BM tried to convince Skids that she only found out about the game the night before, but really, the dates were posted on FB about a month ago. She also registered Skids the week before, according to her, and I’m sure the dates were shared at registration time.

Because BM’s best defensive move is to try to prove that even though she did something wrong, DH did something worse (in her mind and totally like a child would do), BM had her lawyer send a letter to DH’s lawyer basically saying it wasn’t her fault that she didn’t follow the parenting plan. In that letter, she also had her lawyer add the following:

“Both children have told her that the stepmother takes their phones away whenever she sees that they are communicating with her. It is 100% unacceptable that the stepmother is using her jealousy to interrupt a mother’s communication with her children.”

Say what?!! Naturally, I hit the roof. I have never taken the children’s phones away and the only thing I’m jealous about with BM is her seeming ability to convince everyone around her that nothing is ever her fault.

This weekend, DH told both kids not to bring their phones because he wanted to spend quality time with them. At his pick-up, BM comes storming out of the house and shouts at him, “you can’t tell them they can’t bring their phones. That’s what the judge said!” DH told her he was not having that conversation with her in front of the children and drove off. She later sent him a message saying he was “escalating” things and he would “definitely” hear from her lawyer. He calmly responded and said that if she needed to reach the children she could text him and he would have them call her.

She’s texted him both yesterday morning and today and they’ve called her. This morning she wanted to speak to them to have them reassure her that they really did want her to go to their football game. I heard one repeatedly say, “no, I do want you to come!” And the other saying, “just tell her to come.” Nothing like using your children for your own emotional validation. Also, the children are 13, so it’s not as if they feel a need to talk to their mother every day. This is all about her. I will also add, that when the children were younger and didn’t have phones, she never felt the need to call them on DH’s weekends.