Stuck Between a Rock and a Hard Place

There are times when I feel Chloe is lucky to have to have two dads. She gets twice the fun dad stuff, twice the good dad discipline, twice the daddy love. Since Scott has started playing a bigger part of her life, that is. Our family has a very interesting dynamic that can be lots of fun. Her dad's girlfriend has a little girl and we all make quite an effort be parental to all of the kids when we hang out. Not just our own. I treat her child like my own. When Chloe is with them and I call her, I also talk to Sasha. When she is at my house, I treat her like one of my kids. The same goes for them with Jack. It's very interesting to watch us all interact with one another in these situations. It's great that we can all be friends and have such a good working (actually it goes beyond working) relationship with each other. It's the best thing for all our children. I would hate for Sasha or Jack to feel left out or second best. It has taken many years to get here and there have been many times that I thought it would all crumble away but we have managed to keep it together.

There is also bad sides to this story. Co-parenting isn't an easy thing to do. I've written posts about this in the past and I am reminded constantly how much stress and heartache can be caused in this.

The main reason I am staying at home with the kids is that we were paying $300/week for childcare. Eww. It made no sense to continue paying what is essentially the salary of one person in most families. Chloe's dad has been pushing to get her into preschool for a while now. I told him he should be responsible for finding one since it was so important to him. He thinks she is behind in education. She just turned four and I'm sorry but she has two more years before she enters kindergarten. She isn't behind. He doesn't agree with the "a kid needs to be a kid" philosophy. He thinks she needs to be grinding the education wheel by now and that she needs to not only be able to write her full name but to be able to read very well. She's only just turned four! I don't want her to be behind either but I seriously don't think she's going to be. He's been a huge ass pain about this so I put the ball in his court.

He found a great school nearby but the tuition is $600/month. The school offers scholarships and they can take off a considerable amount but he expects Baye and I to foot the remaining tuition costs. It's not something we can really afford and I don't feel I'm wrong when I say Scott should pay for some of the tuition as well. He feels otherwise. He told me today that since he pays me an "enormous" (haha!) amount of money each month, I should have no problems footing the bill. He told me she couldn't possibly cost that much each month. He actually has no clue whatsoever what it takes monthly to raise a child, especially when he wants that child in extracurricular activities that cost money and a private school. Baye is being pig headed about the situation, as is Scott. No one is willing to give and I am stuck between each one as the middle man. Both getting mad at me for relaying information that I haven't even been able to have an opinion on! Neither one is willing to listen to me on this, with both thinking they are right and I am bad, bad, bad! Fuckers!!

So, needless to say, I will be sitting down and working a tight budget and also having some serious talks with both of them. Ech.