When babies bring out the crazies

Sitting on couches in comfortable living rooms, children laughing and playing, coffee from the closest coffee house in hand, playgroup conversation is fairly predictable. There's talk about diapers and discipline, what's going on around town, the upcoming preschool and kindergarten registration panic of OH MY GOD! What school are you taking your kids to!? There's chit chat about the next cooking club and what dish we'll bring for Mexican Night. Eventually, someone mentions family members, usually their Mother-in-Law.

This is about the time I wish my coffee had been spiked with some Baileys. While some people exclaim that they have the best mother-in-law ever, always helping out around the house, spoiling their kids with gifts and sugar, watching their children on the weekend so that they can spend some adult time with their husbands, I sit back nodding with a smile thinking about how lucky they are. How absolutely, incredibly lucky they are to have a normal family. The family where everyone gets along, where everyone helps out and there are unicorns, rainbows and bright rays of sunshine. We got stuck with a twisted Brothers Grimm fairy tale with poisonous apples and gold spinning dwarfs trying to steal first born children.

I don't know what it is, but babies bring out the crazies in some people. It certainly happened in my family. I never had a great relationship with my Mother-in-Law after her hurtful words many years ago, but it never mattered since we were in different states and I was fine with pretending that things were decent during holiday visits. They were short visits, after all. Then during my first pregnancy, also the first grandchild in the family, it got worse and all hell broke loose. The crazies came out, and it wasn't by my post-pregnancy hormones, either.

There was baby snatching and passive aggressive comments about breast-feeding and my post-pregnancy weight, name-calling and Grandma calling herself "Mommy" to my kids. Basically her world was falling apart because the expectations she had as a Grandmother were not quite the expectations I had as my child's mother. It's been an ongoing monster-in-law mess.

I often sit back and wonder how all of this happened. Knowing others that have less-than-fabulous in-laws and are in similar situations, I catch myself questioning if it's a generational difference. Are the mothers of today too independent for the mothers of yesterday? Is there really a power struggle between the two women because older generations were used to their mothers and grandmothers taking over? Why on Earth would the birth of my children bring out such insanity? Whatever the case, it is what it is, the damage is done. All I know now is what kind of Mother-in-Law I will not be and not to have those same expectations. I will not go crazy over someone else's baby and hope that I will not be thought of as the fairy tale villain when everyone else is living happily ever after.

Kristin Mastre

I guess dates aren't just for married couples

My husband and I have been married for 10 years. In those 10 years, we've learned that relationships take a lot of work. A lot of CONSTANT work. We are always working on our communication, always trying to remember to be considerate of each others feelings and trying to avoid the ruts we've fallen into in the past. Sometimes are aren't very successful and have to work even harder on getting our relationship back on track. We continually work on this together as a team.

While I've come to realize that our marriage will always be a work in progress, I never realized the same principles apply to parenthood.

I've been a mom for almost 4 years and this weekend it hit me like a ton of bricks that The Preschooler and I are in a rut. For quite some time now, his contentious antics and my inability to handle it with patience and grace has caused a rift between us. Being a parent is so much more difficult than being married because as a parent, you are essentially working on this relationship alone.

After a weekend of constant battling and button pushing, my husband ordered that The Preschooler and I go out to a movie together for some quality bonding time alone. He stated that since The Baby has been born almost 10 months ago, The Preschooler and I have not spent any special time together. This dose of reality made me feel like a completely crappy mom. Here we had been stuck in the rut of day to day routines, spending every hour of the day together, and it never occurred to me that we were drifting apart. But we were. We are. He's not even 4 years old yet and it's a heartbreaking level of awareness to see where we are.

So away we went. We went to a movie together where I didn't reprimand him for getting up and down from his seat a million times (only when he tried to pick up crap from the floor). I didn't limit the amount of popcorn he ate and we sat together enjoying his movie about dinosaurs. We went to the toy store afterward and I bought him a new Matchbox car. It was a few hours without having to raise my voice, repeat myself or threaten time-out. It was refreshing and fun.

We came back home and within minutes were right back to where we started before our movie date. My heart sank.

This is when I was cognizant of the perpetual effort it's going to take on my part. Much like in my marriage where at one time we forced each other to sit down at night and have a conversation, it's going to take the same kind of work to shorten the gap in our parent/child relationship. And I have to do this alone, without expecting any change on his part, but hope that my redirection influences a positive change from him as well (like better listen skills and being more respectful).

Who knew that dates aren't just for married couples.

Kristin