I learned from that phone call not to bother talking with this woman. It's a waste of energy better used elsewhere. We had another blow-up through email over the summer, but it was very brief & I immediately blocked her email. I went for 3 or 4 months without ANY contact with her. But she kept calling us & being annoying. Then I did some research & read how some people on here handle this. I started answering the phone when she called, being polite & pleasant. She hung up on me TWICE in 2-day period. I was proud! After the 2nd time she hung up on me, she immediately called our voicemail box directly & left a nasty message. So I called her (getting her voicemail, of course) & left her a message telling her that she could call us as many times as she wanted, but that we would not be answering phone calls from her until we had SD again. I gave her my parents' phone # in case there was an emergency because they would know how to reach us. I wasn't a jerk, I was just straight-forward & meant business. She left us alone the rest of the week. Plus, she's only called twice since then & both were for legitimate reasons AND when we had SD. (The big issue was that she was constantly calling the minute she had the kids. More than likely just trying to ruin our weekend alone.)

My husband went to mediation with her almost a month ago (useless), and we're dealing with FSD issues, which I'll get more into later. But we're definitely trying to iron out a schedule with her. She's just being extremely difficult. We've gotten to the point where we stick to our weeks (no more switching for her) & we don't watch the kids for her. She was not at all happy & there was a lot of backlash over that, but we survived.

We've considered going for custody (my husband's family wanted that from the beginning), but my husband wants to try to work things out because he doesn't necessarily think taking his daughter away from her mother AND half-sister is what's best for her. Personally, I think we should fight for his daughter & FSD's BF should fight for her, but that's my opinion. It would really split up the kids, but I think we could make it less traumatic than it has to be. We'll see, I guess.

Oh, and PS....BM has been threatening lately to go for full custody of SD now that she has FSD full-time! Don't think that's going to happen with all of our documentation!

Thank you for the advice! We're definitely sticking to our guns on the schedule. I think BM finally gets it that we're not switching things around for her anymore because she hasn't asked in a long time. The bad thing is that at first she would just take the kids with her rather than not going. God forbid if she missed something! But amazingly, out of nowhere, BM's mother & stepfather decided to move here last fall. How many middle-aged people just pack up their life & move several states away where the weather is way colder? Either they were running from something (both have been in jail) or BM was ready to give up the kids & they came to offer support so that wouldn't happen. So now they play baby-sitter all the time and BM can still have her social life. It drives me crazy that so many people enable her.

We've been documenting as much as we can for a while now. It's scary to go back & look at some of the stuff. I could not see the court favoring her with all the stuff we have on her! I really appreciate the custody info; it's really good to know this stuff. Mediation was pretty much useless, but it was in their divorce agreement that if they had future problems, they had to try mediation before going back to court. So I told my husband that they would NOT have a second session if BM requests it; they should just go to court. Mediation was a waste of time & money. BM was still difficult, didn't agree to much of anything, "answered" important questions extremely vaguely, etc.

I know that FSD11 sees her mother's flaws; she used to actually make comments about them to us. (We of course, didn't say anything nasty back, we would just sympathize with her.) But I think now she feels like she has to defend her mom (probably because BM tells her that I attack her & her choices) & I think she makes up a lot of stories to make her mom look like a good mom. SD8, on the other hand, has no problem telling it like it is! In one breath, she's bragging about the "awesome" meal that mommy made the other day, the next, she's admitting that it was gross. It's so bizarre (& sometimes amusing!). SD8 & I get along great. She certainly seems to like that I'm her stepmom. She's very well adapted to the eow schedule & seems very content with the situation. Since she doesn't remember her parents being together, I think it's easier on her than it is on FSD11. And without FSD11 here, things are WAY less stressful. SD8 is able to talk & tell stories without being interrupted or ridiculed. She's a cool kid, but it was hard to see that before because it was being suppressed by FSD11. I'm not saying we don't ever butt heads, because we do at times. SD8 is very stubborn & gets mad when she doesn't immediately get her way (kind of like her mother). But she's getting a lot better & I'm getting a lot better at dealing with it. So SD8 isn't the problem here.

I feel for you on the primary custody issue. I guess part of me wonders if it would be easier having primary custody of SD8 because then she would stay the way she is once she's out of "mommy mode" (the God-awful way she acts when she first comes here & sometimes just before she goes back to her mom's). But I don't think this is an issue for us right now anyway.

Once BM got wind that we were keeping tabs on her, she got better at hiding things like partying. We do know (from mutual friends) that she was hitting the bars fairly regularly & either driving drunk or being a passenger in a car with a drunk driver. Since she feels the need to tell the kids EVERYTHING (except the truth if it's something she's trying to hide from them), rather than not telling the kids stuff, she has told them not to repeat things to us because "it's none of their business". SD8 actually said that to me several weeks ago. I had to bite my tongue on that one! But it confirmed what I've been telling my husband for the last year...that BM probably was telling FSD11 not to repeat certain things. This is probably why she became so distant & stopping confiding stuff in us. She probably doesn't know what she can talk about & what she can't. It makes sense.

I came very close to calling child services last fall. The kids came here from their mom's wearing clothing that was either dirty or too small (because BM didn't have time to do laundry) & smelled AWFUL! It was more noticeable with FSD11. She sat within 2 feet of me at the table & I felt sick from the smell. My husband casually got out of them the next day that they hadn't bathed since the last time they were with us (so a whole week). This was when FSD11 was still wearing Krocs to school & so her feet were FILTHY. Then the same thing happened the following week at BM's. No showering the entire week. That time we definitely should have called child services. We made a big enough deal about it to the kids, though, that they started to make sure to bathe, even if mommy couldn't remind them to. The thing I can't imagine is that they went to school like that. And no one said anything? I'm sure schools see a lot worse, but I wish they would step in once in a while.

I wanted to clarify something...it's my father that's law enforcement, not my husband or FIL. Plus, I'm around law enforcement all the time (I work in my dad's department & being a cop's daughter, I've known some of these cops for years), so I do have people looking out for us, who know the situation. They know me & know what kind of person I am. I've also been getting to know people at our courthouse, so I'll be able to get advice on some of this stuff from them also.