It's funny. Sometime back BM blasted DH about planning to leave the kids home alone, and then he did it anyway. But she was cool about it in the end. Possibly even happy, because here's what, now that it's summer, they're home alone almost every day now, granted only for the few hours that she works. The sad thing though, she lied to DH and said they stay by their aunt. And well, she has the kids lying to DH too. This weekend he finally got the truth out.

And it turns out, that may be the reason they don't want to come here for summer. They get to be home alone doing whatever they want. Plus they say their dad gets home too late after work and so they won't actually get much time with him. There's really no getting away from being the bad guy - work hard to provide for them, but then there's not enough time. And because there's not enough time, they choose zero time.

And they do have some issues with me, of course. DH had a long chat with them last night. I didn't hear much but I heard him trying to defend me a bit, telling them about some of the things done in their best interests which have been my ideas and at my insistence. At one point though, I think I heard them talk about if Dad and Stepmom31 get divorced, makes me sad to think that that's something they might actually want.

Anyway, all this actually happened because BM had asked for the kids to spend an extra night because she had something to do. Then she calls and said she got back early and wanted to know if the kids wanted to come home. They said they wanted to stay the extra day. She asked 3 times if they really wanted to stay. They did want to stay the extra day. Later that night, DH asked if they wanted to stay even longer. SS wanted to stay longer, SD wanted to go back to mom's. SS only wanted to stay longer because he got a Wii game from his uncle and he's trying to beat it. It's the ONLY reason why he wanted to stay. DH tried to bribe them by saying if they stay he'll go buy a game that they keep talking about and go see a movie and SD got all excited and wanted to stay too. DH got excited too and called BM to ask that they stay a few more days, but then SD refused to talk to her mom on the phone to say she wanted to stay and SS was scared but said he wanted to stay one more day. DH ended up telling BM he'll talk to the kids again and call her back. When SD started to pester him about when are they going to see the movie, if they are going tonight, when will they get the game if he has to work tomorrow, he really felt he was just being used and he decided he'd had enough and decided to have a long chat with them. In the end, they are both not staying any extra time.

I'm still waiting to see if he'll actually tell me about the chat with them. He never really volunteers this stuff, I usually have to dig with 20 million questions, and then he accuses me of interrogating him and trying to control him. He took a long time to come to bed last night after the chat, probably thinking things through, and he did come and hug me up very tight and say he'd always be there for me. I'm trying my best to leave it alone, but I'm dying to know what they said and what DH thinks about it.