This is my first post, so please bear with me. I've been talking to SO about my frustrations and he has been very understanding and supportive, but talking to him has not been good enough. I just needed somewhere to put it all out there and just let it be

I currently live with SO who has been named joint managing conservator of his 2 boys (soon to be 8 and just turned 6) pending a social study and final ruling by the court. SO and I have been together for a little more than 2 years and he was separated from his ex-wife for about 10 months after she left him because "she was not ready to have a family and be a wife". Since the time the ex left until about 1 year ago, SO was the sole care taker and provider for the children during the week. Now that we have moved in together, we share the responsibility.

Up until this past summer, SO had allowed his ex-inlaws to babysit for the children on each weekend because he felt they should not be barred from seeing their grandchildren simply because the mother was not involved. This past summer we noticed the kids would come home with the smell of marijuana in their clothes, shoes and hair and it was discovered the children were spending some weekends with biomom and her new bf in a motel room. It was at that point that SO requested to have alternating weekends, which prompted exwife to fight SO for full custody. Long story short, we are in the middle of the battle, she has lied her way through every court proceeding we have attended, the courts gave her "extended" custody rights, so she has the children each Thursday night and on 1, 3, 5 weekends and keeps them until the Monday morning after her custody period.

Now, on to my issue(s)...

Very recently, the children have started coming home with complaints about things that go on with their mom and I have noticed some things that really frustrate me.

-The kids came home last week and their backpacks and jackets smell like someone rubbed them in ashes

-I always send the kids back to their mom in the clothes she sends them to me in and I noticed last Thursday the oldest had pants that were too small, so I had to send him in new pants I'd just purchased the day before because they were the only thing ready to be worn

-Just this morning I was preparing to wash the pants biomom sent the kids to school in last Thursday because they were covered in large syrup stains from eating breakfast in the car. I just happened to notice the pants are 2 sizes too big.

-The kids take a treat to school each day. Biomom tells her children to purchase snacks from the cafeteria despite never providing money and despite SO and I giving direct orders to use the money for lunch only.

-The kids come back from weekends or Thursdays with MOM and hair has not been brushed, no lotion has been put on because "mommy does not have these things"

-The kids always come back covered in dog hair because biomom has several dogs that are not tamed and the house is not kept in any kind of order

These are just a few of the things that have come up in the past few weeks. But even these things alone are not my issue, because there is very little, probably nothing, I can do to make her change. I'm not even as mad as I should be that biomom has not paid any of her court ordered child support. No, my frustrations come when, even after listening to the kids complain and see the way biomom [fails to] take care of the kids, I get comments like this:

"you bought honey buns, zebra cakes and chips, etc, etc, but you didn't buy fruit roll ups" (I guess it isn't enough that I stocked the entire kitchen with everything else that you could ever imagine you would ever want to eat)

"you could have gone to the store and bought the part for the toy while we were at school" (yes, because your mother could not have bought the piece needed before she sent you to my house with the dumb toy)

"why haven't you paid for my field trip yet" (even though the money is not yet due and I have paid for 3 field trips in the last 2 months, totaling $60)

"mommy told me to tell you that you are not my mom" :jawdrop: (now this one hurt, not because of the actual words, but because this was said in response to my enforcement of a "no snack for poor behavior in school" rule that SO, myself and the kids agreed to. Rather than take the matter up with SO, she specifically gave the 6 y/o, 5 at the time, a message to deliver to me).

I operate under the idea that I do whatever it is that SO needs me to do to support him, including caring for his children the best I can, but this is beginning to be too much for me to swallow on a daily basis.

I mean how is it that their mother can do much less than the bare minimum, but if I show any sign of being human (i.e. forgetting something or overlooking a piece of paper in a sea of thousands of permission slips, consent forms, newsletters, and projects) then I am criticized and my shortcoming, if you would call it that, is magnified and put on display. How can they tell me they don't take baths at their mother's house in one breath and in the next throw a mini tantrum because I forgot to give them a quarter for the pencil machine. :?

I would really love to be able to make a list of everything biomom has ever done to or failed to do for her children and hand it to the kids, because their fairy tale visions of their mother are sickening. :sick: I have no desire to replace their mother or to cause them to feel negatively about her, but I do wish they would just once say to themselves "it's not so bad that we only have 100 choices of what to eat for a snack instead of 101 because at mommy's house our only choice is whatever we can find in the kitchen".

I know they are kids, but is that too much to ask?