This is mostly a rant, as I know the answer is basically grey rock her and learn a lesson from my mistakes. This is my custody weekend (3 young daughters) which started Thursday. My stbx for one reason or another has seen the kids everyday so far, because I let her which was a huge mistake and has caused so much stress.

Thursday night: kids wanted their stuffed animals so she brought them over. I told her to leave them on the front porch and text me when she did. Instead she decided to ring the doorbell so she could get hugs from kids. She left after 5 min.

Friday night: my oldest daughter’s ankle was sprained after PE, and asked if her mom could take her to urgent care. Not really wanting to take all 3 to the clinic and expose them to germs, I agreed. Her mom picked her up and dropped her back off a couple hours later.

Saturday: She got a babysitter for our youngest not in school yet, who starts Monday and my stbx asked if she could take them over for a couple hours to get acclimated. The babysitter is one of her good friends and has 4 kids of her own which all my kids like to play with. So I agreed in exchange for me getting an extra two hours with the kids next Sunday. When she dropped them off, my oldest did not get out of the car. My wife wanted me to convince her to get out and starts recording me doing so as she sits in the drivers seat. This started a whole argument about why the kid doesn’t want to go with me. This daughter then says I hit her which is totally untrue. She was talking about Friday morning when she was having a tantrum and didn’t want to get out of bed for school so she threw herself half way off the bed and said “help I’m falling”…so I helped her back into the bed. This is now me “hitting her.”

As a background, my wife put her in counseling and the counselor filed a CPS case against me for emotional abuse a couple months ago which was ruled out. My wife spewed all her garbage about me to manipulate the counselor and has tried to deny me custody in court which she lost. However she and my oldest daughter have this codependent relationship and my oldest daughter is a mama’s girl, and hates going back and forth between homes. My wife initially kept the kids from me almost entirely for two months until the court ruled I get expanded std custody [TX] a couple weeks ago. She is pissed the court gave me custody and intent on ruining it somehow. So this whole court ordered shared custody thing is fairly new.

Anyways my wife is recording all this and I’m asking my daughter why she said I hit her which isn’t true and my wife is fuming at me telling me to stop invalidating her experience and she was gonna take her home. Honestly the kid just knows how to get what she wants with mom and walks all over her and doesn’t like to be with me because I set boundaries and don’t let her get away with misbehaving. This makes me “mean and abusive” I guess.

So then the entire rest of the night turns into this debacle of me trying to get my ex to bring her back. My ex knows she was playing with fire and finally brought her back to the video game arcade at 9pm where I was with the other kids.

I told my wife on OFW that all this impromptu visitation with mom during my weekend was a huge mistake because it is too hard on the kids to transition so frequently. But my wife says it’s because I am a bad parent that my kid didn’t want to go with me. Of course, the fact that she has had the kid (8yo) with a therapist for months, and turned her against me, and filed for divorce and ripped our family apart has nothing to do with it. All of that is my fault too if you asked my ex, because I don’t put up with her psychotic nonsense (but that’s another story I digress.)

Sunday: she is asking when we are going to church so she can say hi to the kids. At this point I don’t even want to take them there and deal with her. Normally they go every week and go to the daycare during the sermon. The court order says that each parent has to disclose daycare activities including church so is why my wife feels entitled to ask when we are going. I think I’ll just take them to Applebees instead and ignore her.

Having to deal my ex and her bs and smack talking on OFW during all this coordination has basically ruined the weekend. I wish I just ignored her since my time started Thursday. Lesson learned. Oh and I won’t even bring up the Friday afternoon story of her parents badgering me and video recoding me as I picked up the youngest from their house while my wife was at work. Such a fucking fiasco.

Rant over.