So it's been a long time since I've posted anything on here. Things have been up and down but generally okay. SO and I have now been living together for over 2 years and SD15 and SS8 have been pretty good about everything. SS8 stays over most weekends and SD15 stays when she wants - maybe once or twice a month, because she's a teenage girl and would rather hang out with her friends on a Saturday night than stay at her dad's. BM now isn't speaking to either of us if she can avoid it as she and SO are still arguing over money, so at least SO isn't hanging out at her house fixing her furniture anymore!

Anyway, a couple of months ago I decided I wanted to foster some kittens for the local rescue centre. I've always loved cats, have a couple of my own, and it's not like we don't have room in our house for them. I figured it's be a nice thing to do, too, helping the local rescue out, as they always need more people to foster their animals. The rescue asked me to keep them in a room separate from my own cats, because the kittens and their mum could carry a disease nobody knows about and they would hate for it to be passed onto my own cats. So, long story short, I decided to keep them in SD15's room seeing as she's hardly ever here anyway. SO wasn't too happy about this because it means SD can't stay over while the kittens are here (unless she wants them to jump all over her at night). He actually had the cheek to tell me I 'wasn't allowed'. So I calmly set out my arguments to him which are as follows:

1) While I appreciate that we gave the skids a room of their own when SO and I moved in together, SD is only there once or twice a month. Does that mean that I can't use those rooms for anything else for the 29 days of the month she isn't there? Besides, as far as them being "their" rooms goes, I was actually the one who encouraged SO to decorate them in the way the skids wanted them done because he couldn't be bothered to get up off his bum to do it himself. I spent TWO DAYS painting their rooms and putting wallpaper up. And did I get a single thank you? No.
2) I pay half the rent on this house. As far as I'm concerned that means I get to use half of the house for my own purposes.
3) I don't moan when SO goes out to see his mates, or when he decided to spend the whole evening cycling, or in the garage playing with his motorbikes, so how is it fair that I'm not "allowed" to do something I want to do? It's not like I asked him to get involved in caring for the kittens. And it's not like I'm happy when he goes off for whole evenings at a time when I already see so little of him (he works 6 days a week and doesn't get home until 7-8pm). But I support him in that because I know that it's something he likes doing. So why can't he support me in this because it's important to me, even if it isn't something he particularly wants to do?
4) For the first three months that we lived together, and before I bought the skids actual beds to sleep in, SO refused to have both skids over at the same time because we apparently didn't have anywhere for the second one to sleep (we only had one spare mattress). Even though we had perfectly comfortable blow up beds and bedding. So, seeing as he decided he didn't want both of them over at the same time for three months, and for no good reason really, is it really too much for me to ask them not to come over at the same time one or two weekends a year?
5) Not my kids, not my problem - apart from not doing anything to deliberately obstruct SO's relationship with his kids, I have no actual obligation to keep them happy. I often bend my own life to fit around their visits with SO and I usually do my very best to make them feel welcome and respected. But I don't see why I can't sometimes choose to put my own wishes over theirs, seeing as they're NOT my children.

Either way, SO still objected to having the kittens for no other reason than "I just don't want them here", so eventually I decided to make a stand and foster some anyway. They were here for three weeks - I gave them back today as they're now big enough to go to their own forever homes - and for the first week he refused to even acknowledge they were here. SD threw a hissy fit, too, which I expected. I knew she was going to be upset as I would have reacted the exact same way had I been in her position at her age, but she'll get over it eventually. One other thing that upset me about that though was that SO and SD exchanged texts about this and SO actually told SD that he wasn't happy about the kitten situation, and that we had had a fight about it. I don't think it's appropriate for him to tell SD that we have been fighting. But what I want to know is, have I really been that unreasonable? Was it that terrible of me to temporarily use my own house for something I really wanted to do? Or is SO the one being unreasonable? I knew when I accepted the kittens into my home that it would cause some conflict, but as I said, I just felt like I needed to make a point for once about how my feelings and wishes matter too...