planning for step-parents

The thing about being a step-parent that drives me the most insane is the inability to plan anything in advance. Our custody agreement with Red's mom is rather lax. We all just kind of go with the flow.

However, now that it is the last day of school. All of Red's friends' moms are wanting to know what are plans are for the summer. You know, in hopes of coordinating some play dates and what not.

Well, the best I can do is shrug and tell them that the details of when she is here versus at her mom's is still undecided. And to give us a call because if she is with us, we know she'd LOVE to have a playdate.

This is a mild annoyance. I can deal with it, it just would be so much easier if we had a plan.

The other step-parenting thing that is really driving me insane right now is Red's desire to play a sport. I would love for her to play a sport. I would even be fine with her doing Cheerleading with the church again. She wants to play soccer or basketball. And I think doing either of those would be wonderful for Red. She'd get some exercise, she'd have fun, she'd have something to motivate her.

However, last year when Red did cheerleading with the church, her mom told us never again. The football games Red cheered at were on Saturdays. Well, her mom didn't want to have to bring Red to the games and watch her cheer. She came to one of the eight games. But she also didn't want to give up half of her weekend so that Red could stay with us and have us take Red to the game.

So, basically, any sport that has weekend games (hmm...all of them?) are out.

We had Red in gymnastics during the week. But that is really one of those things a child has to be motivated to do and practice at home. And getting her to practice at home was always a fight. And then Ruben stopped getting paid and we couldn't afford it anyways.

Now it is summer. And there are week long sport camps that teach basketball, baseball, soccer and football and then they get to cool off in the pool at the end of the day. Sounds great! But we don't know what weeks we'll have Red and I'm not signing her up for a camp just to have it now work out.