Last night’s episode was about their daughter Leah’s second birthday, and the former couple ultimately decided to have two parties instead of a joint effort, which is a fairly typical hurdle that separated people have to navigate when trying to co-parent. But for all of their arguing about the subject, neither of them seemed to invest much planning or interest in their respective celebrations. Gary went out and got trashed the night before his party for Leah and decided to go out to get fast food (because he was hungover) with a friend, with only an hour before the guests arrived. This, as opposed to cleaning the place up or decorating or anything. The result was that his daughter found a strip of his condoms on the floor, which she began to play with. It was up to Gary’s mom and the party guests to blow up balloons, dress the little girl, and put together her birthday cake before Gary finally decided to come home so she could open her presents.
Later that evening, instead of throwing a party for Leah like she said she would, Amber took her daughter to a Mexican restaurant. The little girl fell asleep before she had a chance to open her gifts, which was probably a good thing, because they weren’t wrapped anyway. It’s not that any of this behavior was particularly abusive toward Leah, but it definitely demonstrated neglect, not necessarily in legal terms, but certainly emotionally so.
