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I woke up yesterday morning and just needed to clean things. All the clutter. All the decorations. The tree. The leftovers. Everything had to go. All that is left are the outdoor decorations and I'll get John to take those down on Thursday.
We had such a good Christmas. The boys were happy with their gift...a Wii. John surprised me with a gift card to the spa I frequent, a DVD, and a book. My parents gave me a new blender/food processor, a stick blender and new towels. John's parents gave us money for us to buy our own gifts.
We drove down to see John's kids and parents on Saturday. I made a concentrated effort this year with his kids. Things are progressing but slowly. Usually we give them money because their mother would throw away gifts we gave. This year we gave them money but I took time to specifically select a book for each of them...something I knew would be meaningful based on my recent conversations with them. I got my stepdaughter a book all about horses and she loved it. My youngest stepson got a book all about the history of Alabama football and he was pleased. My oldest stepson got a book about world history and he seemed to like it as well. I also got each of them some clothes. This brings me to our next hurdle...
When the kids come to our house we immediately have to wash the clothes they bring in their suitcase. We don't do it so they see us but their clothes smell so bad we have to do something. They have a bunch of pets they have taken in over the last few years and the entire house smells like cat urine. The clothes have pet fur all over them and they smell horrible. Usually we can get the clothes to an acceptable level but the shoes are another story. John washed one pair 2 times and they still smelled to high heaven of cat pee. He mentioned it to their mother when he took them home and she gave him a very curt, "I don't smell anything" as an answer.
I'm not sure what we can do other than start buying clothes/shoes for them to keep at our house. I can only imagine how other kids react to them at church for instance. I mean this is not just a faint smell...they stink. I have mentioned to John that he needs to have a talk with the 15 year old about deodorant and maybe try to talk to him. I don't want to hurt their feelings but I seriously wanted to gag when they got in the car last weekend. How their mother can let her children go out like this and live in these conditions floors me.
Any suggestions?
2 years ago
2 comments:
Cute picture of the boys on your other post....sorry you got a sick one.
Sorry about the situation with the stepchildren. My husband's brother has a similar situation with his own kids....their mom just doesn't "get it." I'm not sure how old the children are, but you may have to keep clothes at your house for them....it's just that as they get older, they may take some offense to it. Our neices and nephew are HIGHLY defensive of their mother, so any effort of trying to "fix" something that she has done is taken with lots of hurt feelings and offense. Hope you can get it all worked out....tough stuff.
oh poor things. That is so sad. I am just now reading this post so I don't have a ton of background info but is there any way to get it through to the mom?
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