I Just Called...

Seth calls me a ridiculous amount of times everyday. During the week when he is with Adam and I, he calls me at least twice a day, remember I am home with Lulu so I don't know why he feels the need to call so much. He calls to tell me that he has gotten to school and then calls to tell me he is coming home (he walks to school, his school is around the corner from our house)

When Seth is with Lilith he calls me on average 6 times a day and I talk to him on average 4 times a day. He calls to say goodnight to Lulu and although we have said goodnight to him during that phone call he still calls again when he is going to bed. No joke, he called me yesterday while he was using the bathroom. He calls to tell me when he does chores and earned money. He calls to tell me when Lilith is acting weird, or when she is acting normal. He calls to tell me his plans for the weekend, the day, the afternoon. He calls to confirm when Adam and I will be picking him up, who will be picking him up and what time, those phone calls start about 2 hours after we drop him off on Friday night.

We buy him minutes on a prepaid cell phone, usually we buy them in 200 minute bundles and we buy them every 2 or 3 months. With the way he calls me alone he is using around 100 minutes a month, now throw in his calls to Adam (who he only calls about once or twice a day when he is with Lilith and hardly ever when he is home) there is where his minutes are going. What I don't understand is when you figure in his calls and text messages to friends and the rest, when is he talking to Lilith?

Lilith calls him usually twice a week on his phone, she hardly ever calls Adam and I anymore, she would prefer to pass messages through Seth although she does call Adam when she needs to lie about something. Occasionally Seth will use Skype to call Lilith but that is rare because Brandy is now with Sam every other week. On the weeks that Brandy isn't around it isn't uncommon for Lilith not to talk to Seth for 4 or 5 days.

I find this all very bizarre. I always encourage and support Seth in communicating with his mom but I don't know why he is so resistant. I also don't know why Lilith isn't more proactive in trying to communicate with Seth. I couldn't imagine not talking to him everyday, even when his multiple phone calls drive me batty.

Just another part of their relationship I don't understand. This is a screen shot of my actual call log from the last few days.

Lies, Liars and Lying

Lilith lies.

Lilith lies about just about everything from what I've noticed. Lilith lies about big things, small petty things, she lies when we know the the truth or the truth is easily found out. She lies about things so she doesn't have to take responsibility for them, she lies about what she thinks people want to hear. She lies when it would be just as easy to tell the truth. She lies to herself and she lies so much I often wonder if she even knows she is lying anymore.

She lies to Adam constantly. It becomes difficult to know if anything in her world is ever real. I have had to come up with complex ways to find out the truth. Adam and I have a joke between ourselves "how do you know Lilith is lying? Her lips are moving" but in honesty it is hard to co-parent with someone who lies all the time.

Every single grandparent of hers has died at every single job she has ever had. She told us 4 times last year that she couldn't come get Seth because she was getting her car registered, then when she was arrested on the DUI one of the charges was expired tags. She lied to us for years about the abusive nature of her marriage to Sam. She lied about things Seth saw or heard while in her care. She lies now about her drinking.

She also white washed her and Adam's past together, which admittedly we all have a tendency to do and I don't expect her to tell Seth the true nature of her and Adam's relationship but to hear Seth talk about what his mom says, you would think that they had a wonderful relationship, still love each other deeply but just in a different way now and that Adam wanted to be with me, so they split up. I have been honest with Seth that his dad and mom were divorced before I came into the picture and that his mom was already living with someone else but I don't try to refute the rest of it. If it helps Seth to believe that his parents still love each other then fine, it doesn't change my place in this family. The truth is Adam and Lilith were very young when they met, Adam's parents were divorcing so he was in a but of a rebellious phase. Their relationship was, like all of Lilith's relationships, very volatile, they fought often, there was drinking and the such involved, there was infidelity and when Adam had enough he moved out and asked for a divorce.

Anyways. Lilith's ease at lying is a trait that I see Seth picking up and it really disturbs me. I know people lie, heck I lie, we all lie but for the most part I try to be an honest person and a real, genuine role model for Seth and Lulu. It bothers me to see and hear Seth lie like it is no big thing. I know part of it is his age, but also is watching his mother lie so easily about everything. It is a real problem for me, one without a clear answer.

Dealing with Personality Disorders

Let me start off by saying I am not a mental health professional and at no time could I ever diagnose someone with a mental illness or a personality disorder. Also mental illness in and of itself does not make anyone a bad parent but learning how to deal with what someone is suffering through can be immensely helpful in custody situations.

We all deal with our own quirks and mental illnesses, I am prone to depression and live with ADHD-I.

Over the years of dealing with Lilith I have questioned my own sanity. I have also looked for an explanation of her behavior and why she makes the choices that she does, which far too often haven't taken Seth's well being into consideration in my humble opinion. Remember, I chose this life, I chose to give up a free and unattached life to be with a man who had a child and I have always strived to do what is best for that child.

Also in my family of origin I come from a blended family with a sibling that suffered Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) at the hands of their custodial parent. I am an armchair psychologist, like Adam is an armchair quarterback yelling plays at the screen. I am fascinated with mental health and what makes our minds tick. I have read and studied but I am no professional.

Lilith has never shared if she has been diagnosed with any mental illness or personality disorders with Adam or myself. You probably are thinking that of course she wouldn't have shared that with us but with the amount and types of details that she does share with us on a normal basis we would be surprised if she didn't tell us she had a mental illness or personality disorder. There is a history of mental illness in her family that we have been made aware of by Lilith and her sibling. Lilith's sibling also believes that Lilith is at minimum bipolar, which is very possible.

It is my unprofessional opinion that Lilith may have a borderline personality.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001931/

http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/borderline-personality-disorder/what-is-borderline-personality-disorder.shtml

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borderline_personality_disorder

What this means for us is that Lilith is very emotionally unstable. She has expressed inappropriate behaviors towards Adam on more then one occasion and she is inconsistent and unreliable. I have previously shared that Lilith has a problem with substance abuse, which only exacerbates the possible underlying personality disorder.

How do we deal? Here's the thing, crazy trumps everything. You have a full house suited? Great, they are crazy and win with a joker, a 5 and a magazine subscription card. You learn that "drawing a line in the sand" means nothing. You have to choose very carefully what battles you want to fight. You allow yourself to be stepped all over so that the kid isn't affected. In our life Lilith leans toward not wanting to deal with Seth or have him at times. If you deal with someone else who leans towards never allowing the child to leave and an enmeshed emotional relationship with their child, well hopefully I will have a guest blogger who can talk about PAS more at a later date

Thank you for understanding as I played catch up these last few weeks. I have spent a lot of time in reflection and we may have another custody change in the near future as we deal with Lilith getting a restricted license and then she should have the ability to transport Seth and Lilith is telling us she has a legitimate job so those should take some stress off Adam and I.

Having Seth full time is a mixed bag. He is helpful with chores around the house and there is no denying his love of Rachel, which is a blessing for me but he also makes messes, is stubborn and doesn't pick up after himself. Nothing moves in a linear manner in this world I am in, it doesn't even move in a pattern I can recognize. It seems just about the time I have things figured out or anything Lilith flips the switch on us but that is typical of mental illness.

What to Expect When Your Expecting or Not

Please excuse my cold medicine induced hysteric's and delusions. This was written before I got sick but I can't promise that I was able to check it over with my usual editorial eye.

These first few entries I have tried to get you caught up with who we are as a family, a blended family and more, even a little bit of who we are as people. I have a ways to go in our story and a few family members to introduce. I hope by now that I have managed to express that I do not hate or have negative feelings about Lilith, Adam's ex-wife and Seth's biological mother. As I am hoping to have some guest bloggers show in the next few weeks, blended families are hard even when everyone involved is focused on the best interest of the children. At the best you get the "bonus moms" situation? where everyone has a role and respects each others role The other end involves court orders, PAS, custodial kidnapping, extended family interference, expensive court battles, mud slinging, hurt feelings for adults and so much worst for the children involved and restraining orders. We are much closer to the bonus moms in the middle.

Enough rambling on to this weeks blog!


When Seth was 5 Adam and I, found out that Lilith was pregnant again. I was scared and upset.

I was scared because pregnant women are nuts. They cry, they are super uber sensitive, they have cravings they just have to give into, their emotions and feelings are all over the place to extremes. They can be laughing to crying to laughing so hard they need to pee themselves. I had been around 6 or 8 pregnant women by now, a couple of friends and family members, I wasn't just going off what I had seen on tv or movies. Imagining Lilith, who exhibits some these symptoms all the time normally, pregnant was terrifying. It would be like finding out Godzilla was pregnant with King Kong's baby or more accurately finding out Satan was worshiping Anton LeVey. It seemed like bad on top of bad to me.

Adam on the other hand wasn't as worried or distressed and reassured me, that for some reason, the only time Lilith seems completely sane and normal is while she is pregnant. During her pregnancy with Seth, Adam has shared, was the only time during their entire relationship that wasn't marked by constant fighting or constant drama.

I was upset because Adam and I had already begun to experience what we would discover would be my fertility issues. I was sad, I was frustrated that Lilith was pregnant so easily again, with Sam, someone she had known for less then a year. It felt extremely unfair in the karmic sense that Lilith was pregnant again when she wasn't always a good or attentive parent to Seth. How on earth would she have the time and attention to have two kids? I was sad because I worried I would never get to have a child who was "mine" I loved Seth with all of my heart but maybe it isn't the same or maybe I would never get to have a real family with Adam. Even though I kept telling myself that family is what you make it. I really did believe that if Seth was all my life was blessed with child-wise then I was lucky because Lilith was gracious in allowing me to be a part of Seth's life. She never played games in that area and I am forever grateful for her about that.

Adam was correct about Lilith's behavior while she is pregnant. Maybe it is because she has taken being pregnant seriously and never smoked or drank once she found out she was pregnant. Maybe it is something about the pregnancy hormones that balances something out in her brain but she was so great pregnant. She was reasonable, she didn't cross boundaries or act inappropriate in her conversations with Adam or Seth (I sometimes wonder if she has forgotten that she is taking to her ex husband and son, not her best friends when she over shares details of her life with them) Lilith was even warm and attentive to Seth. Things were really good.

Then she gave birth to Leah and within 3 months of that, things were crazy, if not crazier again.