Ss spent his first 15 straight days with us. It wasn't so bad! Maybe because I was out of town he 1st week and did my own thing thenext half! Dh was supposed to have off when I was out of town, but ended up having to work. When I came back, the house was actually clean! (Before I left I told dh if the house was a wreck, that ss was cleaning it since it was ss mess. Dh ended up cleaning!) I kind of felt bad because NONE of the food had been touched while I was gone. So ss didn't eat til dinner when dh cooked out. When i got back my mom stayed with us a few days. My mom saw firsthand how ss was an didn't like it. Before she would tell me 'you knew he had a kid when you got married' and 'you're goin to have to deal with him this summer'. After a few days, my mom understood because I purposely ignored the fighting, would leave to nurse the baby and leave my mom to deal with ss and the kids. So I bit my tongue this days (bcauae that's what mom said I should do then leave the room.

Then ss went home for the weekend- freedom!! He missed dh's bday. Again. Didn't give or make him a card or anything. Dd6 made like 6 cards for him and wrote him a 'poem'. Same thing happened at FD- when we gave dh his gifts (ds4 & dd6 picked out a card for dh AND made him pictures), ss stepped out of the room and stayed there te rest of the afternoon, never acknowledging to dh that it was FD.

Anyway, this last week we sent ds4 to my parents house for the week. It helped because ss and ds usually team up against dd. . So with him gone, ss had nothing better to do than actually be nice to dd or he'd have no one to play with! Too bad he already made me mad from the week before! So dd an I spent the week together and left ss at home! We'd leave the house around 10 and ss was still asleep. We did her swim lessons or camp/errands then have lunch before returning home. Ss would barely be waking up. Like I told dh, "you snooze, you lose!" in he afternoons we didn't do much since the baby napped. On Thursday and Friday dd had play dates so we left ss at home those afternoons. Dh did get a little mad when we'd leave ss at home, but I told him I wasn't going to wake him up to do boring things it's not like he could go to dd's camp with her or do swim lessons or like he wanted to go run errands with me while dd was at her camp. And I couldn't invite a 13yo boy to a 6yo girl's play date.

So that half was no so stressful! It didn't even bother me that ss bathed once a week while here! Or that he stained our sofa with oil or grease of somesort! I disengaged. I let dh notice those things andet him handle it. In fact, it was much more entertaining watching dh handle those issues. He next half of the 30 days, dh will be off for 10 so we'll see how that goes!