Just a little rant for the week....

So, I am sure most of you have been wondering where I am. I know I have been tweeting and posting about random Cash Crate things. But I haven't been really talking about myself or my family lately.

Well, we have been hitting a lot of rough patches that I have been wanting to overlook and in turn burying myself in my "work" to avoid thinking about it all. I am still up in the air about how I feel about it all, but I think I should really get it off my chest before it eats me alive. So, here for my online community of friends, I need to just vent a little.

A few weeks ago, my step daughter really became worse with my son. She has always not really played well with him, simply because she is used to playing with her older cousins and they play rough. Well, my son is only 1 years old, and so we have always told her she needs to play nicer and gentler with him. But that wasn't really the issue lately.

Thankfully our living room is connected right next to their bedroom that they share. They were in their playing when I heard my son whimpering. It was a very strange sound to hear coming from my happy-go-lucky little boy, so I peeked my head around the corner. What I saw would have made any mother's skin crawl.

My SD had her large pink fleece blanket tossed over my son completely, and is holding it and him down. She is also leaned close to him whispering 'Shh it's ok.' Completely and utterly shocked, I stood up and walked into the room. I could barely react and the only thing I could say was 'What are you doing?' Normally I would have predicted that I would have flipped out and screamed at her, but I couldn't even bring myself to comprehend what I had seen.

She tried telling me she was trying to make the blanket look like his hair, but we all know that that was not the case. She also tried saying that she was whispering to him that it was ok if he wanted to take the blanket off, which again we all know is not true. I was scared out of my mind for my son. I took every blanket in the room away. I just was beside myself about how to handle this situation.

The next morning, there was another mishap where my son fell and was in a stuck position, and instead of helping him or coming to get one of us, she laughed at him until we came running into the room. Hubby and I were dumbfounded as to where this new behavior was coming from. It was obvious it was for some kind of attention. That afternoon we got her in to see a psychiatrist, and she started rambling off all kinds of things about voices in her head telling her to do these things.

Now, hubby and I know that her grandma often has friends over with mental illnesses and they openly discuss these types of issues around her. So, we questioned where she heard things like this, and she told us who told her about 'voices.' We then explained this to her counselor. Now we have a whole new issue of attention, lying, and acting-out behaviors.

Needless to say, this is all something an 8 month pregnant mother of almost 2 does not need to be dealing with her step daughter about. I feel unsafe to leave my son alone with her, and at the same time I hate feeling like I have to watch over her every move. It's not fair to any of us to have these types of feelings toward family members.

I'm not exactly sure where we stand now. As a family, we still have the same rules in our house just with one added (no blankets for play time). Also, my SD has begun calling me 'mommy' on a regular basis now and rarely refers to me by my first name anymore. Does this mean we are on the right track and soon will be one 'happy family'? Only time will tell... but I know one thing is for sure... I personally will never forget that moment. It has scarred me in quite a deep place. And although I hold no anonymosity towards my SD because of it, the action and the intent behind it burned me badly.

Wouldn't you feel the same way if this happened to one of your children regardless if it was another one of your own kids doing it?