The Queen's Rambles

My mom is here! Her plane was supposed to arrive at a very decent hour yesterday (5:38 pm) so we planned on taking the whole family. Things kept getting delayed and delayed, but we still thought the whole family could handle it.

We didn’t know that her plane wouldn’t have a jetway, so even though the plane arrived no one was getting off the plane. She told her seat mate that she wanted to pull the emergency exit open and go down the slide and he freaked and told her she would be arrested. Turns out he was a pilot for the airline and had no sense of humor at all. She was not arrested. Nor did she go down the slide. As if she would really do that.

It was a very happy reunion between Erik and his Grandma. Even Elsa surprised us after we got home and seemed to remember her. She even let her kiss her and wrestle around with her. I was shocked.

I decided to sit next to Elsa on the ride home, thinking it would keep her from screaming. Sometimes if we have a stranger in the car she’ll scream bloody murder.

That didn’t work at all since she wanted to nurse and there was no way to nurse her. I used to nurse Erik in the car all the time, but we had a bench seat in the back of the Saturn. I may have big boobs, but they aren’t big enough to cross the divide between the van’s captains seats.

Thankfully she only screamed for 15 minutes. Erik would have been screaming the whole 45 minutes. She finally stopped screaming, scrunched up her face in anger and closed her eyes.

Such a funny, little angry baby. She wasn’t asleep, but she made it clear she was done with me. Guess you had to be there.

I am so glad my mom is here, but we will need to set some boundaries (as always). She judges people based on their appearance and is obsessed with weight–cracking on her own weight, putting people in categories for being too thin or too fat. Not acceptable in our household. Not at all.

She also brought a ton of pictures of my dad that she wanted us to look at. That was fine and I didn’t really think anything of them as I was looking at them. They are all pictures I’ve seen before, but my 5 year old was not raised with dead animals in his back yard. He’s never had to gut a duck or put his arms around a deer head. He’s never even seen a dead animal, other than as road kill or dinner. I’m not sure we should show him all these pictures.

Over half the pictures had a dead animals in them. Bloody bobcats, beheaded deer, skinned carcasses hanging from trees, piles of dead ducks.

I suppose we can show him one or two and see what his reaction is. So far my mom has only tried to show him the pictures while he was eating, but I stopped her because he had dirty hands and would ruin the pictures.

In good news, my mom is going to family counseling with my sister and my sister’s husband. Very, very good news! I hope they continue and that they take it to heart.

I was doing a search for buttercream frosting yesterday and came across an in-law board on BabyCenter. I got sucked in and couldn’t stop reading. Those people are crazy!

I thought I knew a lot of internet terms, but I had no idea what the hell they were talking about. Unicorns, JADEing, Flying Monkeys, cutting off, timing out, blacking holing, and a bunch of other stuff. I finally figured out that I’m a unicorn. A unicorn likes to give people the benefit of the doubt. I guess I wouldn’t give my family the benefit of the doubt if they did some of the stuff the posters are writing about (like teaching a kid to call the mommy “daddy’s whore”), but one lady was totally freaked out because her mother-in-law kissed her baby too close to the mouth and everyone was encouraging her to “put her in a T[ime]O[ut]”. They make fun of the concept of family and say that the only family that matters is you/your spouse/your children.

I suppose that is true in a certain level, but there is value in extended family. There is value in letting other people love your children even if they don’t do things exactly they way you want them to do it. There is value in variety and flexibility. Children need to learn how to get along with different people in different environments.

If you have demands that they are not used to (and some of these people have some pretty strange demands in my eyes–no one allowed to hold the baby except the parents? What? This was a healthy newborn.), you need to expect that they will probably be talking about you behind your back and think you are crazy. That’s part of the whole parenting thing. You make your decisions, you stick to them, you know not everyone will agree and you decide not to care. Otherwise you’ll go nuts.

Ok, so that sounds all tough and I know I wasn’t tough with my first child. I was fragile and hurt when people questioned what I did. I am glad I never, ever have to be a first time parent again. I’m more relaxed this time around, yet I am also more firm in my resolve about certain things. I know what’s important to me and my family and I truly don’t give a flying fig if other people agree or not. I am so much better at knowing when to fight and when to let things go. Not caring what other people think makes things much easier.

I guess I am just lucky that I don’t have to deal with too much crap since we live so far away from everyone. If I lived near either of our families I might need to put adults in a time out and use contact with my children as a leverage to make them behave in ways that I found acceptable.

Anyway, I need to stay away from that particular board because it’s a total black hole of drama. Once in, you’re never getting out.