I am new to this whole blog thing, and internet "speaking", but have come to try this in hopes to gain insight and experiences from other step parents.  As my background information shares, I have been dating my boyfriend for a little over 2 years and we have a 1 year old son together and I am pregnant with our daughter.  He has a 9 year old daughter who he has had sole custody of since she was 2.  Her mother has been in and out (out for the most part) of her life.  

I have been struggling with finding a healthy balance between our lives, and children, because there is a large age gap between our kids and before we started dating I lived on my own with no children of my own; he lived with just his daughter for the past 7 years.  We moved in together shortly before our son was born, and have been living together now for a year and 3 months.  It has had it challenges to say the least.  We are still learning to co-parent his daughter and parent our son all while preparing to welcome our daughter this Summer.  

I should first start by saying his daughter and I have formed a strong bond and have built a mother/daughter relationship best we could with the time given.  I love her dearly and do as much as I can to make our family a whole.  But with that said, I am finding it difficult because they have such a strong bond, understandbly, which makes it hard to blend because their special relationship takes time away from our son, which inevitabley will also take time away from our daughter when she is born.  I have been struggling to fully understand their relationship even though I have been more than open to communicating with him to try and better understand.  He is not the best at communicating.  To better express why I have a hard time understanding there relationship, I will give a few examples.  She is almost 9 years old but he and his family baby her so much that she just learned how to do age appropriate tasks after I moved in and showed her.  Some examples include: brusing her own hair, making a PB&J sandwich, doing chores (making bed, putting away her laundry, picking up after herself, cleaning her room), how to use a knife to cut food, etc.  I was shocked to see that a girl of her age was not capable of doing these things.  I should mention I was a teacher for many years and so I have a good knowledge, and background, of child development.  To me, it seems like him and his family are doing everything they can to keep her a small child; as if they are scared to let her grow up.  After time, my boyfriend has begun to support her gaining more independence but not his family.  His mother still sleeps with her in her twin bed when she comes to stay with us.  She still even washes her hair and gets her ready for bed as if she were a small child.  

Another thing I have been struggling with is how much time he spends with her in the home.  I am not trying ot sound insensitive because I fully understand he needs to still show her love and affection, as she very much deserves.  But, when we get home from work with the kids he spends the evening taking her on bike rides, to tutoring, to girl scouts, to the park, and then spends about an hour to an hour and a half in her bedroom with her every night tucking her in and reading her a book and talking about her day.  Our son is barley 1 so by the time he is done with all of that he has already been asleep for close to 2 hours.  Not to mention, I am the one who puts him to bed every night because he is busy with his daughter.  I have talked to him multiple times about sharing his time and he is trying but it doesn't last too long because his focus goes back to spending time with her within a few days after talking to him about sharing his time.  

I think that is a good start for me to get my story out there and hopefully get some feedback about others experiences that may help me better understand the relationship dynamics.