Man, sometimes things will be great for awhile and then inevitably things will fall apart again. I am struggling. I am on my own island here and I'm ready to just call it for a bit. 

   My daughter has had a lot of loss in her life and the only thing that has always been constant for her is me. She lost her birth dad when she was 8 months old, and then her step dad of 6 years died in 2020. She went through a really dark period. Her stepfather and my relationship was not a good one. He was an alcoholic and very verbally and emotionally abusive. He was quite literally the worst. He would gaslight me and just was not the best. I was too scared to be alone so I stayed when I shouldn't have and Blair was exposed to this behavior longer than she should have been. She can say awful, hurtful things sometimes and she has had issues with lying, but we are taking her to therapy and begriming the process of working on things.

    Meanwhile, my stepdaughter (8) had to adjust from basically being an only child, she was solely raised and  is shown favoritism by her father, to having 2 extra women in his life. She adjusted fairly well after awhile like my daughter did and they get along pretty well, most of the time. She gave me a lot of trouble, she likes to call her mom and exaggerate circumstances to her mom and dad, and I know it is an attention thing. She will do so much as interrupt her dad while he is helping his oldest with homework so she can do hers with him. She isn't bad all the time, she usually helps out when we ask her to and she is nice most of the time, but other time she is an attention monster. She literally has her head up her dads ass constantly or she's not happy. It's slowly gotten a little better, but not due to effort from her dad. That's for sure. 

   Our latest issue is this past Friday, she locked everyone out of the bathroom until we were walking out the door, and when her dad asked her about it, she said that I stay in the bedroom until it's time to go and my daughter locks her out. My daughter gets up in the morning, and goes to the bathroom in the morning. She takes 3-5 minutes, tops. I get up every morning, feed our newborn and then head to make lunches and we leave. I just don't appreciate it. 

   Baby Mama and me are pretty close and we have very open communication which helps out so much with everything. It used to not be that way, but we figured out the youngest (her bio) games with exaggeration and we exchanged numbers to help avoid the situation. This summer they are going to be doing sports and camps so they are not sitting around all summer, fighting and driving each other and me crazy.