Sharing Halloween

*There is some venting in this post.*

I love all things Fall!

Pumpkin picking, carving pumpkins, roasting seeds, the leaves, the festivals, the weather, the smells...ALL of it!

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays too! I'm not into scary stuff, but cute Halloween stuff. :)

I love making treats for Andrew's class, baking at home with the kids and now putting Lily in adorable Halloween clothes.

See????

Seriously that little punkin melts my heart!

The last few years we've established some traditions with our family that we all look forward to each year and we've been fortunate to have Reagan with us for trick-or-treating. This is year she will be at her mom's on Halloween.

It's Lily's first Halloween this year, so we're bummed it won't be all of us.

We've still been doing all of our other activities like we do each year. We live our lives, knowing that sharing holidays is simply part of sharing custody of my stepdaughter. 

Andrew's dad and I have had our holidays worked out flexibly for years and it works for us.
It's a little different because his dad lives out of state, but having a working relationship as parents is a huge benefit to Andrew.

We're lucky that our kids still go to schools where they celebrate Halloween with pumpkin carving contests, parties and parades. I love that!

Of course there HAS to be one little hiccup in the events... 

Like I said, we don't have Reagan with us on Halloween this year, as she's with her mom during that part of the week.
Reagan's parade is Friday of this week.
So, we asked Reagan's mom to send her costume in to school for Reag to wear in the Halloween parade.

She said no.

Ummm...What?

It's your daughter's school Halloween parade where the kids wear their Halloween costumes.

It's YOUR daughter's parade.

See, we didn't think it WAS a big deal since it's her daughter, her costume and her parade. Yep, nothing to do with my husband and myself as people.

We should have known the answer would be no. I, however, was surprised.

It doesn't hurt me, but we definitely had a hurt little girl last weekend.

Instead, it perpetuates a kid who thinks she gets two of everything and has to be two different people --one at our house and one with her mom.  Double everything. Things are not allowed to come to our house because "we're dirty" and "we're poor".   Reference: The Anger List

Before I get into the rest of the bullshit about my stepdaughter playing outside in tennis shoes and her play shoes being "stained" or her jeans having grass stains on them because we let her play outside--THE HORROR!--I need to get back to the costume because the rest of it is so absolutely ignorant and ridiculous, I cannot believe she even wrote it.

So, instead, we get to go get Reagan a different costume for a 15 minute parade.  And the damage done to her, once again, will most definitely last longer than 15 minutes.

I've found this is really difficult for me to write without venting all my anger about the entire situation, as I personally have never encountered a human being who is more destructive to their own child as a means of "hurting" other adults.

Basically the message we received: "She's only my daughter the 3 1/2 days she's with me." 

Yep. Two backpacks, two lunchboxes, shoes and clothes she's not allowed to bring here etc. etc. etc.

I don't know about y'all, but I'm a mom all the time....even when my son is with his dad.

Someday, maybe we'll actually SHARE custody of this little girl instead of having her torn apart each week.