BM is always always always signing the kids up to stuff in their little village on my SO's weekends. I want to say now that while we don't have 100% crossover in terms of taste or ideas about what's suitable for kids to do, we do have about 80% crossover. So it is not the activities themselves that I disapprove of, rather the fact that while they are in the village she is controlling their time. I managed to get them out of weekend sport by signing them up to weekend sport here. (Same sport and my son has been going to this club and I played at this club myself.)

This weekend though OSS was in a panto. I hate panto. But whatever. I buy tickets for my SO's weekend for myself and my son because SO has to be there before my son gets out of school. We get hotel rooms (SO paid for those), I buy train tickets. Eating out, etc. (SO paid for most of those) All in all this weekend was not cheap. 

Basically our entire weekend was consumed by OSS's panto and getting him there, etc. Oh and the panto itself. He said about 6 words total and it was honestly one of the worst theatrical productions I've ever seen. Just dire. OSS did an ok job with what he had. He's done about 11 at night and then what's left of Sunday is our time. As I said I don't like panto anyway, but this was a form I despise, badly executed. I mean it's meant to be a comedy, but I think I counted three audience laughs through the whole production and they were more embarassed titters. 

On the Sunday I had planned to go to a museum in a city not far from there and show my son the city which he'd never been to. But all of a sudden BM tells us that OSS's paper round hasn't been completed because he's been too busy with panto practice, scouts, 2 lots of swimming lessons, friends over, etc etc. and it has to be done TODAY. So we all pitch in and do the paper round. 

Also it had snowed and the kids all wanted to go sledging. It doesn't snow much in our city - or hasn't in a while - and there aren't many good hills anyway. So while the museum has been there for a couple of hundred years and isn't going away any time soon and the city for over a thousand...the snow isn't around so much - so I say ok go ahead and do that. 

So who should come by the sledding hill? BM and she proceeds to hang out the WHOLE time we're there fawning over the kids, 'working the room' with local villagers, etc etc. Demanding pics of 'just her two' (obvs she doesn't want pics of my son, but they were all playing together) and telling them that instead of having lunch with us and dropping us at the train station they should just stay at hers. 

I am FUMING, by this point and so is SO. She then invites us all to lunch (directed at me) - which I decline. I know what she's up to. My SO asks me to take the kids to the car and he drops the sled off at BM's just so she can't do a big long goodbye. 

My ex used to do this crap, too. I'd take my son swimming at a gym we both belonged to and he'd come and join us at family swim until I told him to buzz off. I only get every other weekend with my son and I don't want to spend it with any crazy ex. Mine or his. 

The worst thing is I know she's setting this up as a whole kind of 'plausible deniability' - "I was just trying to be nice..." Yeah, whatever. If you were really trying to be nice, you'd be getting a real job so you could take over the mortgage for YOUR house and not be just swanning around the village, volunteering and being on the parish council, so we could afford to have adequate housing for YOUR kids.