No, this doesn't have anything to do with the ghostie-jedi-mind-trick post below. My head isn't going to spin around and pop off. Oh wait perhaps it will, this post is about my mother-in-law. She brings out the absolute best in me.
Today our daycare was closed. Hubs asked my mother-in-law (we'll call her MILFP...Mother-In-Law I'd Like to Freakin' Push...okay that was mean, it's definitely a Xanax kind of day now isn't it?) to stay with the boy while we are at work. Normally I wouldn't ask MILFP to babysit simply for the fact that she never offers to, she usually only likes to act as Grandma when it suits her schedule. Anyway, we're in a bind so Hubs asks her and she agrees.
MILFP and I used to be friends. We used to go shopping and have coffee and eat cakes and smoke cigs and oh yes, we would tawk and tawk and tawwwwwk. Then I quit smoking in 2002. We stopped shopping and sipping and smoking and tawking. It wasn't my doing, I think she felt uncomfortable around me because I wasn't smoking. Or maybe she didn't want to expose me to the smoke, who knows. I don't know the reason because we never talked about it. And up goes Wall One.
The boy was born and things got even weirder. Every piece of advice she had annoyed me. She pushed and pushed about certain issues that she had no business pushing about. She thought we were crazy for implementing a schedule, for making our own baby food, for making sure we were home at naptimes. Because you see in 1971 when she was raising kids, they didn't have naps. Her kids never needed naps. Then she will go on to tell you how cranky her kids were. Hmm. Well then.
Homemade baby food was unheard of, wouldn't I feel better if I bought him the jars? My favorite was when at 6 months she felt the need to bring to my attention that perhaps I needed to stop nursing; after all, at six months of age I could be setting my son up for years of therapy, what with flapping my breasts in his face all the time. And up goes Wall Two.
Wall Three is a real bitch of a wall. The day it was put up my son was about 3 months old. I put him down for a nap and jumped in the shower. A few minutes later when I turned off the water I was shocked to learn that someone was in my apartment. There I stood, dripping wet, not to mention naked therefore totally vulnerable ... frozen in fear in my bathroom as I hear a voice coming from my son's room. I fling open the door and there she is, MILFP, standing on our second floor landing, holding my son (whom, did I mention was supposed to be napping?). Apparently she knocked but when I didn't answer felt it was appropriate to come right in and walk up the stairs, take the baby out of the crib and then act as if she hadn't done anything completely fucked up.
So for the last two and a half years there has been this unspoken source of contention between the two of us that of course Hubs refuses to acknowledge. I usually handle it by taking every opportunity to display my Babycenter knowledge when she shares an antiquated mothering tidbit, i.e. "Back when I was raising my kids I only had to blow smoke rings to entertain them, while they were sleeping on their stomachs of course". I know it's probably some mother-son thing, I'm in the new role of mother and wife, I don't know...also it could be me just being paranoid but I don't think so. Right? RIGHT??
Did I mention the time that Hubs and I went on vacation for a week one year, pre-Boy, and we returned only to discover that MILFP and re-arranged our entire apartment? So you see what I'm dealing with.
With the continued harassment I feel the need to exact revenge. Not horrible, terrible revenge. Just that little taste of I'll-Show-You-Who's-In-Charge-Missy kind of revenge.
So I prepare the boy for his day with grandma. I made sure I gave him a few extra of his favorite cold prunes at dinner the night before. Makes for a nice diaper in the morning. I set the tower of DVD's at eye-level so as to make sure he would see them the minute he got up and immediately break into his Dictator routine of demanding which episodes he'd like to see, taking 15 minutes to decide, and finally settling on one right at the moment your head almost spontaneously combusts. Of course then once the DVD is playing the boy turns bi-polar and insists he didn't want to see that particular DVD. He wanted the other particular DVD, and so on, and so on.
I made sure to tell her he likes to have his place settting on the left side of the table when I know darn well he always sits on the right, and any deviation in said seating pattern is cause for a nuclear explosion. I also let her know how much he LOVES to brush his teeth after his meals, and especially how he likes to have help. Not true of course. I told her she should use the Dora cup instead of the Mickey Mouse cup, knowing full well that mass hysteria would ensue as a result of my little plan. Are you thinking I am a cruel person for playing little tricks that would upset my son in order to put MILFP over the edge? Don't worry, he'll never remember.
I come home at the end of the day with a carefree attitude and a smile. MILFP's hair is askew, shall we say, and although she finally quit smoking six months ago I can tell she is jonesing for a butt. She sighs and says it's been a long day. The boy just looks like he is on top of the world. I swear he winks at me. He's my partner in crime.
Ah, it's the little things...
Labels: 1971, Babycenter, babyfood, breastfeeding, drinking coffee, DVD, evil, meddling, mother-in-law, naps, prunes, pushy, smoke rings, smoking, spontaneous combustion, talking, Xanax
