My Fiance Has To Regularly Rotate The Photo Of The Kids On His Phone

There is a lot of jealousy when it comes to blending families. Case in point? Technology. My fiance has to rotate the photo on his iPhone screen because he is surrounded by a bunch of jealous family members, half biologically related, half not.

When his two daughters are with us, he makes sure there is a photo of them on his iPhone. If there isn’t one, there WILL be one, because his daughters will ”crack” into his phone and change the setting. When my daughter got wind of this whole ”hijacking” of phone business, she asked my fiance why there was never a photo of her on his phone. She wanted in on the action.

My daughter, like most kids these days, easily figured out how to take a photo from his phone and made a screensaver of herself. For an entire 24 hours there was a photo of my daughter on my fiance’s phone, before his children arrived, because he knew they would be all, ”WTF? Why isn’t there a picture of US?”

I also hijack his phone to include a photo of us, because I like the idea that he sees US when he picks up his phone. So do his daughters. So does my daughter. Thankfully our son is only 10 months old and only knows how to CHEW on the phone. So, his daughters hijack, my daughter hijacks, and I hijack and my fiance is left shaking his head, doing a mental calendar of when he has to change his photos, so none of the women in his life get jealous.

”I change the photos every two days,” he sighed the other day when asked why there was a photo of the dog on his phone.

The safest photo for him to have on his phone IS probably a photo of the dog or a photo of our son, because we ALL love him to death. But, like I said, there is jealousy and his daughters will want their photo back up. My daughter, who finds the entire thing just h-i-g-h-LARIOUS, will crack into his phone while he’s in the shower and put her photo up, because she finds it funny.

But, these days, there are not just photos on phone screens. In my house, because of this blended family of six, there are five iPads, three iPhones, and four laptops. Which means computers, iPads, and phones are being ”cracked” into, at all hours of the day and night, so we can all have photos of ourselves up on every screen possible.

It’s such a small slice of life, this cracking in to go into the ”settings” and put up our own photo on my fiance’s iPhone. However, it proves that in blended families, sometimes it’s the littlest things that can set off jealousy.

I admit I was in fairy tale land when we all started living together (his girls with us 50 percent of the time, my daughter 100 per cent of the time, and our son 100 per cent of the time) because everyone got along so damn well. Finally! My daughter had sisters! Finally, my fiance’s kids had another sibling to play with because ”real” siblings get sick of each other. Then the baby came, and, yay! Everyone was so excited to have a brother!

But now, I can clearly see, even if the children can’t voice this, who is jealous of whom and why. My daughter went, in just over a year, to living with me alone, to sharing her house with my fiance, two other children, and a new baby. She no longer is an only child. She’s a middle child with siblings and now can’t sleep in my bed every day. She’s jealous of my relationship with my fiance and the fact that my time can no longer be spent just with her, because of the baby too.

His children are jealous of my daughter and all her fancy toys and also because they no longer just have ”Dad.” They have to deal with another TWO siblings (my daughter and their brother). My fiance gets jealous when I want to spend the night with my daughter alone and I get jealous too.

Over what? I’m not quite sure, but I do know that I WANT MY DAMN PHOTO ON HIS IPHONE sometimes.

I know this doesn’t really matter, but now it’s become such a part of our household routine that it’s become somewhat of a game, like hide and go seek.

In one night, when all the kids are with us, my fiance’s iPhone photo could be changed 12 times. So, yes, why doesn’t he just change his password? Because his daughters like to text their friends and need his phone and we don’t really believe in hiding things. Why don’t we have one family photo of ALL of us on his phone? We had a professional photographer come and take photos of all the children, but we don’t have a photo of all of us together. (Try getting FOUR females to agree on a photo where we ALL look good.)

And even with this portrait of all the children, each child wants to sometimes be featured individually. ALONE!

Maybe it happens like this in all families. I wouldn’t know. I do know that right now there are no kids around and that my fiance’s iPhone is sitting right beside me. Take one guess what I’m about to do.

(photo: D. Hammonds / Shutterstock)