Hi slanie, and if I haven't said this before, welcome! Glad you could find this site.
Neither one of us replied. I picked up SS last weekend and we all had a great time.
Good job not engaging You can probably imagine how it would've gone if your H had tried to Justify his actions, Argue with her, Defend himself, or Explain "what really happened". Maybe you've heard of this acronym already -- JADE -- but it describes four communication paths to avoid. In fact, here's a link to a workshop if you want to find out more:
https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=139972.0Sounds like in that situation, not "taking the bait" of blame helped things to defuse.
Now she’s offering to help?
Yeah, I know, right? It can be disorienting when you always expect negativity, blame, passive-aggressiveness, etc from the kids' mom, and then she goes and does something "normal".
I told her thanks, filled her in on what I planned on buying and left it there. I know any negative reaction from me would just make me look bad.
Great job. Sometimes "decide and inform" can work better than "ask and wait". When we were coordinating paying for SD10's activity a year or so ago, I just went ahead and did the math on an almost even $ split (we paid a little more), emailed Mom with "how about DH and I pay for X, Y, and Z, and you and Stepdad pay for A & B -- let me know if that's an issue". Versus "What do you want to pay for?" which would've probably been an meandering, unclear, slightly victim-y email thread. No thanks!
Disordered moms will often have another bomb to drop. I'm right there with you as a stepmom with that feeling of "yeah, things are OK now, but what will she pull next?" Something we can try to do is to accept the peaceful, cooperative times as a nice surprise, kind of a gift, while also accepting that unpredictability is what is predictable for Mom. We can set the bar really, really low for Mom's baseline so that we can accept her poor behavior as How She Chooses To Be, while being delighted by the times when things work out. I guess I see that as an alternative to letting Mom's chaotic and unpredictable behavior be a rope that always pulls me around in surprising directions.
Anyway, congratulations on getting married what a wonderful thing to celebrate! Hope it's a wonderful day for you, fiance, and kiddo.
Let us know how else we can help, provide feedback, or just listen.
kells76