Just curious why BM didn't have the kids come over to get their gifts? I mean, you're willing to drive over to get the gifts, couldn't the kids have gone too & opened them with her? (that's just my first thought when I read it, sounds like she didn't even see them at all for Christmas)

I feel bad for SK's that are hurt & angry (they don't have the mom they want) but have very little sympathy for a BM (or BD) that makes little effort to be a parent, when it comes back to bite them. They deserve the slap in the face & with any luck, those slaps will knock some sense into 'em, but wouldn't count on it. So sad. Hope your Christmas was good otherwise.

It was a little of my doing that they didn't go. After all the bs that lady pulls I am done making it easy for her to pop in and out. So I didn't give the kids advance notice that I was going to bm's to get their gifts. I just got ready and told them I was going to pick the gifts up because bm asked me to. None of them asked to go and I didn't ask them if they wanted to. Of course if they would have asked I would have brought them with.

BM is just such an idiot though. She randomly pops in to ease her conscience. Then she is nonexistant for months until it is a holiday or until her parents get on her case.
I figure after today we should not be hearing from her for months again.

She did not call them on Christmas and made no plans to see them on Christmas, which was fine with us! Our holiday was wonderful and filled with family, friends and fun.

Ugh. What a pathetic excuse for a mother she is.

If it's any consolation, it sounds like the kids weren't all that phased by her lack of *presence* over Christmas; and BM is beyond the days with them when she can up for that with *presents.*

I think you did the right thing. It's sad the situation is the way it is, but it's BM's doing. And wtf about her BF's car in the drive?!

DGS's BM didn't spend his 1st Christmas with him, she left him with me last year. This year, she didn't come see him or call. How does a mother not celebrate special occasions yet wants recognition as the mother? She got angry because she thinks he may start calling me mom!

Ima, that's a puzzle I never figured out, & it isn't limited to mothers.

A guy who worked for one of the contractors around here, we'll call him Dave, once told a bunch of us, crying in his beer (literally-it was at a July 4th barbeque), his whole tragic life story.

He had married, had a boy & a girl, & his wife was mean to him, expected him to work & all.

He said they'd lived in a log cabin, but it burned down-
pay attention, there's a pattern here.

Then they bought a brick home, but it was in her name because she had good credit & verifiable income, *& he'd planted the shrubs there, with no reward at all*.

Then the wife started pestering him to spend more of his paycheck on bills & on the children & less money on booze, so he outsmarted her on that:
he got a 2nd job as a package boy at a grocery store & kept all that paycheck, since he didn't "owe" it to the household.

as though he were a 10-year-old with a paper route.

Of course, he wasn't ever at home, either, what with a job & a part-time job & a bunch of bars & all...

Then they lost the house, & Dave moved in to a storage building behind his boss's house, until that burned down.

Then he moved in to an old mobile home in somebody's pasture.

His wife & the children moved in with her sister & brother-in-law.

Then Dave got another job & moved in to the back room of the office building.

By this time, he had accumulated 7 DWIs (this was evidently before Texas would put you away for 3 or so), & he couldn't get a driver's license.

He had never made a single child support payment, so he wasn't in any position to argue when his ex, who by now had terminal cancer, sent him papers terminating his parental rights so her sister & brother-in-law could adopt the children.

& the thing that opened a whole new floodgate of tears & resentment was that the new parents *had changed the children's last name*!

Somehow or other, he still thought that those children should "belong" to him.

So there I sat, listening to this tear-soaked narrative, & I asked him how old the children were now.

He couldn't remember.

A couple of years later, I ran into one of the guys who had been at the barbeque, & he told me that the old mobile home belonged to his parents.

He said he was so glad when Dave had finally moved on, because his father had twice had to break down the door when he saw smoke pouring out when Dave had passed out smoking in bed.

IMA that is awful! Sylvia that story so reminds me of bm. I can imagine the stories she tells about "poor her". Probably goes something like Evil sm and ex dh keep the kids from her. She tries so hard to see them and talk to them but evil sm and ex dh make the kids dislike her. How ungreatful the kids are when she does things for them. BLA BLA BLA.

I'm sure after her phone call with ss she spent a little time crying at her hurt feelings but never saw past what hte kids were doing to "her"!