In-law visits

Whew! They are gone... the in-laws.

First came my father in law for one week. He's pretty easy to have around and is helpful but sometimes helpful to a fault. For example last time he visited all of our cast iron cookware got cleaned... right down to shiny silver metal  (cringe) :(

Anyway, his visit co-coincided with Kai's 6 week growth spurt and fussy time. He's so enthusiastic to hold him and play, but the poor little guy got so easily overstimulated that it was so much more work for me to settle him down again.

Then he flew out and the next day my mother in law arrived. That's when the fun began. She is extremely high maintenance and treats visits with us like a full service spa expecting full and prompt service. Hello... we have two children under a year and a half that NEED full and prompt service. She brought along 3 recipes with her for things she said she would like to make. We shopped and got all the ingredients, but somehow DH or I ended up having to prepare and make the recipes, sigh...

She barked at my DH one night to make her a coffee after he had just sat down to get some work done in his office. We showed her where the coffee supplies were and she was not impressed to have to make it herself. One night  Kai was cluster feeding away and she offered to make me a cup of tea. I thought that was really nice. Minutes later she changed her mind I guess and said she didn't know how I wanted it prepared so I should just do it myself. Needless to say I didn't get my tea.

We rented a friend's basement suite apartment for them to stay just 150m down the street, and thought this would be ideal. It was ideal for us, but my mother in law put up a huge fuss about not being able to stay with us. First off we actually don't have anywhere for her to stay other than a foam mattress in the middle of the living room floor. The baby is up 3 times in the night and both kids are up by 6 am bouncing around in there, so staying with us would not be comfortable.


The one that really got me was that she refused to walk the 100 steps to her apartment and demanded we give her a ride in the car. I don't think I've ever made such a short car trip in my life. We love to be active and get outside every day rain or shine. Unfortunately the week she was here we had fairly wet weather on and off and she wouldn't dream of going out in it. Finding things that she was willing to do, and that we could manage to do with two young kids was a challenge. We spent a lot of time at home tripping over each other.

Fortunately, she did really enjoy playing with Anika so that kept them both busy while I managed the laundry, cleaning up and the baby's feeding, changing and soothing to sleep routines on 4-5 hours of broken sleep and DH juggled working and cooking.

So, yes now we have our space back. It's so nice to slip into less chaotic routines again. We've definitely decided that having 3 kids would be too much to juggle.