I thought it might be interesting to see what everything thinks

3 Short Questions for the Step-parents out there

1. How long have you been a step-parent?
2. How do you like being one?
3. Whats your biggest challenge with it?

My husband and I have been married 15yr. I have 2 sons; 26 and 24, a daughter 22 all from my first marriage. He has a 22yr old daughter from his first marriage, her mother left when she was 3 and no one knows where she is. My first husband passed away when daughter was 1yr old. Together we have a 3 yr old daughter who was a total surprise to us, I had been told I couldn't have any more kids after older daughter was born. My 2 sons have already graduated collage and daughter graduates next year. None of them live at home, they all work, have their own cars and homes.

I'm on vacation with my parents at the moment (away from the skids and my wife for the weekend).

My father took out some photos of when he, my mom and our grandparents were young so it was fun getting to see all the different similarities across the ages between the people in our family.

Last night...I don't remember how we got on the topic of children , but we did and over a period of time it ended up in a full blown argument.
The problem....I want to marry and have another child(I have 1 bio-son and never married) and he does not(he's been divorced and has 2 kids). The bigger problem.....he never bothered to tell me this until AFTER we moved in together which I only agreed to do if marriage was in the horizon and he did not oppose; and never once said he didn't want more children only that it was something he would consider.

What do you think is a reasonable bed time for a 2 (almost 3) year old and a 5 year old?

A little background on why I'm asking:
BM has always picked up the kids, fed them, bathed them, then bedtime, with very little play time at night. Their bed time is 7:45 and she wants them sleeping by 8pm. DF says this is how it always was, because she gets to spend the next few hours of the night cleaning and doing her own thing. I understand this early of a bed time when they are infants/toddlers, but this seems a little early as they are getting older...or am I wrong?

BM has apparently been giving my boyfriend a hard time about coming to see our house. We've been here for about a year now. Any time he needs to pick up SS he just goes over there and picks him up and drops him off. She asked to come see house the first week we moved in and I said no. Am I being a baby about this? yes. I realize this so please don't leave the "oh how can you be so immature comments" because yes I realize this is immature. I don't want her in my house because all she wants to do is snoop.

After one weekend of putting "the Rules" the kids agreed to up on the fridge, and DH attempting to follow through with ONE consequence for SD not following the rules (it failed, because he told her no TV on Sat night and she ended up watching TV and getting away with it anyway), BM told DH this morning that she wants to have a chat with him about HIS WIFE and the kids.

Hmmm... I wonder what this can be about....

Well H & I had our first counseling session yesterday and it didn't go so well. It really just seemed to be a giant "venting" session for H where I barely got a word in, but I then I guess maybe that is to be expected? What's worse, even though I barely said anything at all somehow H's "level of commitment to working on the marriage on a scale from 1 to 10" went from a 3 at the beginning to a 1 at the end?! We were there for an hour and honestly I don't feel we even scratched surface on all of the issues we have in our marriage.

I'm just curious as to what age people typically stop having birthday parties for their children? I never had any growing up (different story I won't bore you with) so I am very clueless on this. My BS will be 6 next week and I am planning a birthday party for him for the following Saturday on 7/10. As I mentioned in a previous post I don't "do" parties at my home, so in researching the location this year I found a lot of interesting ideas that could keep his parties fresh, different and fun for years to come!

Ok, I get the picture now. I will no longer try to help or give opinions on blogs that comments keep getting deleted. It is very frustrating to see good advice and then go back and it is gone because the post did not COMPLETELY agree with the original poster.

A LOT of good advice is getting missed out on because of this. This blog had some great advice, but so many comments were deleted, that it does not even make sense anymore.