S7 seemed to be better later in the day. I watched him pretty closely, and his appetite returned in force by dinner time. On the latter, W asked if I could feed our 2 S's before bringing them to the house, which I agreed.
I have been ruminating over another development that has been gelling since just before the mediation meeting, the MIL is now planning to move out of the house by the end of this month to go live with her sister (W's aunt) two hours east of here (now that W's aunt is now widowed.)
While I am thrilled at the prospects of my deranged MIL no longer having a regular influence on my two S's lives, at least as far as a day-to-day basis, there are unfortunate consequences to this. W is now putting both of our S's into extended daycare programs. S7 is beginning before-school and after-school care as run by the YMCA today. And S3 is being taken out of our church run preschool program that is only two days per week and being transfered into another preschool that is five days per week. This is all so W can continue to work even more, but it is detracting time away she had formerly spent with our S's.
W refuses to acknowledge the hardship this places on our two S's. She is trying to spin this change as a positive for each of our boys, but I am so disappointed that they are now losing yet more time with another of their parents. It's bad enough that their mother forced their father out of regular daily influence on their lives, now their mother seems to be abandoning them on top of that. And yet she still acts like she has their best interests at heart, while I, by contrast, am still perceived as just a selfish, unthinking ass in her mind.
I have been noting, both from personal observation in person and over the phone, and from several comments made by S7 and by S3 independently, that W and MIL have been having continual arguments with each other. I don't know the real source of this refound animosity between them, but my S's seem to think it is mostly due to differences in how to care for the children.
W and MIL used to butt heads quite frequently until about this time last year, when the two mysteriously became thick as thieves all of a sudden. I would later learn that their nefarious alliance was struck when W suddenly became receptive to listening to MIL's advice about dumping me -- W must have found her OM by then. Silly, naive me thought that W and MIL had worked through their petty differences like adults (at last) and were cooperating for the sake of our S's -- little did I know they were only colluding in getting rid of me.
I knew MIL was merely using W until she could find another gig with her sister. I knew MIL was only tolerating our two little children of the (despised) male variety only as long as she had to. I really hoped she'd turned a new leaf, that she was really interested in helping our family, but my reservations about her proved to not be unfounded.
W, in turn, was using MIL until she could get rid of me. I guess the two of them have come to the conclusion that the other has now outlived their usefulness, and so the pretense to peace between them can now be dispensed with.
All I know is that with each new development in this sitch, my poor S's are ending up with less and less of their parents.
I still cannot trust my W either. Even though she talks about finding a rental property nearby, I strongly suspect she's gearing up to relocate to where the OM lives (1+ hours east of here) just as soon as she can possibly get away with it.
