Never Look an in-Law in the Mouth

I don't give my in-laws enough credit.

Mothers-in-law are often misunderstood. I mean, very few people even know that the correct way to pluralize the word mother-in-law is to make it mothers-in-law, not mother-in-laws. This may be because most people only have one mother-in-law and figure that they will never need to use the plural form. But aside from not understanding the grammar related to the mothers of our spouses, I feel like we often suffer miscommunications with our in-laws that cause them to get a bad rap. If we stop to think about it, though, many of the negative mother-in-law jokes that are responsible for making our fear of our moms-in-law second only to step-mothers (who are also undeserving of such a reputation), most—if not all—are unfounded.

Sometimes, I negatively critique people. However, as my husband recently pointed out after patiently listening to me vent for awhile, “Umm . . . not to be offensive, but a lot of the things you've mentioned are just as much your fault as theirs. If not more.” And he was right. I think this is the case with in-laws. I mean, I'm basing my evaluation on a rather small sample size consisting of . . . well, just my in-laws, but they are good people. However, we're both human, so we have some misunderstandings. Some of which can be rather humorous, as illustrated by the following story.

It was the Fourth of July weekend and we were spending it in Richfield with Alex's family. Having had Melody just over a month earlier, we were both tired and in dire need of sleep. I'm sure my mother-in-law could see this and she generously volunteered to watch the baby anytime so that we could go rest. We being new and slightly over-protective parents, though, we nodded and thanked her—while staying close by.

As the baby fussed and our nerves got shorter, though, I finally surrendered and handed Melody over to her grandma. To be completely honest, after having Melody I was overly sensitive and saw offers to help as an attack on my motherhood. You wanna hold my baby? Oh, I see—because I'm not doing a good enough job, huh? (I don't need to say this, but that was the fatigue talking; my mother-in-law was being nice. I, on the other hand, was being a brat.)

Anyway, as Melody continued to fuss, Elaine rubbed her back and softly murmured something which to my ears sounded like “Should we go put some margarine on that belly?”

I thought, I'm just going to ignore that, pretend it didn't happen, and hope that it doesn't.

But the crying continued, and again I heard “Yes. Let's go put some margarine on that tummy.” She then took my baby upstairs. Presumably to smear a mixture of vegetable oils and animal fats on her belly. I was at a loss.

“Alex!” I hissed across the room, “What is your mom going to do to Melody?”

“Hmm . . . what?” he replied as he tore his eyes away from the TV screen.

“She just took Melody upstairs saying something about putting margarine on her belly! I don't want her to put margarine on her belly!” I started into a sleep-deprived panic.

“What the . . . ? I'll go stop her!” And off he ran to rescue our baby from the evil trans fats.

A little while later he returned with a smirk and assured me that everything was fine.

“Well . . . ?” I asked expectantly.

He stifled a snicker and reported: “I asked what she was doing and she told me she was going to put some marjoram oil on Melody's belly to help with her gas, but then she settled down so it was unnecessary.”

Huh. Marjoram. Fancy that.

So, here I stand (or sit, rather), guilty as anyone of condemning my in-laws. However, I would like to say that I'm sorry, and I'm trying not to do it again. They are good, nice people.

They have a really odd daughter-in-law, though.

Great Expectations

I often find that big life events don't turn out much like I expected. They aren't necessarily awful, they just leave me wishing that I hadn't imagined them so much that I got a totally unrealistic idea of how they would be. I think the only time I wasn't let-down in my expectations was when I went to kindergarten.

When I was in the pre-kindergarten phase, I was obsessed with going to school. I would load the diaper bag with every book that I could and carry it to the front door to imagine that I was going to school. (Kudos to my mom for allowing me to string a trail of books to the front door on a regular basis. Also, for not ruining my fantasies by telling me about how truly awful school can be sometimes—say, as an eighth grader.) I found it unfathomable (“It means without fathom”) that I would ever be cool enough to go where the BIG kids go—the elementary school—let alone graduate from a university and be a mom. And yet here I am. How did this happen? It sort of went like this . . .

One day, I finally DID get to go to kindergarten. I put on my [empty] backpack, my mom took a picture of me, and I went to class. It. Was. Awesome. We decorated paper cutouts so they looked like us—and they were almost half my size! Mine had mismatched blue button eyes, approximately three strands of light brown yarn hair, and a scrap of fabric that I would guarantee would not adhere to the For Strength of Youth modesty guidelines, but I was so proud. Later, we rotated through several activities. We played with blocks, and there was a large plastic trough full of water that we got to dip toys in to play, and we listened to Raffi (you may know him for his masterpiece, “Down by the Bay”). It was so wonderful. The only problem was that apparently the book on tape about some pigs that we got to listen to had a song at the end, but my partner rewound the tape before we got to hear it. Other than that, it was just as great as I thought it would be. With promises of finger painting, the trough being filled with a new substance, and the thought that I would get to hear the pig song, I was looking forward to my next week of Kindergarten. Then we had our assessments, and it was determined that I was better suited for first grade. My kindergarten experience had come to an end.

First grade, though! It would be even better because most of my friends were there, anyway. I think as I pictured walking into my first day in Mrs. Munk's classroom, I envisioned that it would be something like the Arthur theme song: I would be surrounded by my teacher, my friends, and some other kids who would all say “Hey!” What a wonderful kind of day.

It wasn't like that, but it was still pretty good. I've found that most of the so-called “big” events in my life have been kind of like that. Not quite what I expected, but still good. A bit anti-climactic, but good. I expected something crazy important and big each school year. Then I would sometimes be disappointed and a bit surprised to discover that this year, like the last, was good. The same thing happened with my high school graduation. The whole bit seemed surreal, but when it was all over I found myself thinking “That's it?” And life went on with some ups and some downs, but really I just found that things were very much the same as they were when I was in high school, and so on.

I have since discovered that dating someone is very much like being single, except that you're dating someone. And when I got married, my wedding day was a very exciting, happy day that made my life after just that much better. I had many people ask how life was being pregnant. Well, it was a lot like life, but I was pregnant. Now I'm a mom, and I love it. However, with all the time spent thinking about what it would be like, I would think my dreams would share a bit more fidelity with my current reality. Much like I haven't noticed day-to-day differences in the mirror, I still don't feel like my life has changed until I look back through snapshots of time and discover there are major differences. I wouldn't trade my current situation for what I thought it would be, though. I don't think my reality's broken, I think it has to do with my expectations. Maybe I need to finish kindergarten and renew my imagination.

Hyperbole (and other perfectly acceptable ways to lie)

This is more for me than for anyone else. It's not a family blog where you will be inundated with pictures of what we have been up to. My [very large] family happens to be a very large part of my life, so they will naturally show up a lot. But this is just a way to keep myself writing and feeling like I have an audience.

I will warn you: I intend to write daily. As in, every day. It would be very misleading of me to pretend that this will be the best thing you read each day. Much of what you read will be first drafts. There will be some rough posts and--hopefully some better ones. Unlike most of the internet, I'm not going to tell you that this is the FUNNIEST blog you'll EVER read. My tagline will not be ''This girl got married and had a baby. What happened next will ASTOUND you!'' The internet has been crying wolf so long that we honestly don't care whether the wolf is real or how many sheep are being eaten. Wolves are an everyday occurrence.

I'm not a wolf, and I'm not a sheep. I'm an average person with an average blog. I honestly don't expect you to read every entry just because it's here.

. . . But if you come back tomorrow, I'll tell you about the event that single-handedly changed my perspective FOREVER. ;)