In-laws

My in-laws arrived this past Sunday. I've been looking foward to their visit with slight ambivalence (sp?). On the one hand, my mother-in-law could be really helpful with the cooking, cleaning and taking care of the kids. On the other hand, she can talk too much and is very different in personality from my husband and myself. My father-in-law is the parent who my husband and I can least relate to. He also is a very different personality. He's always on the go and can't sit still. He's very quiet. When he's not quiet he's riling up the kids. How much help could he possibly be? Well he can take the kids to the park and do dishes.

I was hoping that they would come and take care of the house and the two big ones so I can rest with the baby. So they came on Sunday night. On Monday, my father-in-law cleaned up the yard all day. He's been taking out the thorns and cleaing up the weeds. He literally did that all day with just some small breaks in between (although he didn't finish). My MIL sat and talked. About what? Everything. She's good at that. We made a menu for the week and a shopping list. We discussed the schedule for the week also. Sunday night I went to bed late because that was the day they arrived. My hubby went to bed even later. My MIL kept him up talking and then he had to learn some. Yesterday I barely got to rest. This is because they don't like to rest and don't really anticipate all of my needs as a mother who has just given birth. When Uri went to sleep at 12 PM I asked if I could go rest. Then Uri woke up at 12:15 to eat. Oh well. At least I got to eat lunch before picking the kiddies up. I can't deal well with their on the go style. They always need to be doing something. I on the other hand am content to just rest. After all, I don't sleep very well at night.

Now I'm exhausted and wondering if I would be less tired if they weren't here. One thing that really really gets to me is the fact that when they come, they make themselves feel at home. Now I know that most normal people would love for their guests to feel at home but I am not normal I guess. I like to be in control. I like my own space (their sleeping in my office). I don't like when others intrude. They came to our house. Within minutes they started openning up their suitcases and taking things out. Some were presents for the kids. Some were for other people. Then they unpacked, on our dining room table. Then my FIL started going through our cabinets for snacks. Luckily we still had some pretzels left and we had bought cinnamon grahm crackers. He really likes those. After that he just had to make coffee. Can't live without it. So he started to look for the milchigs dishes. Not once did he ask for help finding anything. He was perfectly happy being on his own. I meanwhile was watching from the sidelines and was going nuts inside.

After all, this isn't his house. He's never been here since we just moved a few months ago. Why does he think it's okay to go looking through someone's cabinets? Would it be better to ask where something is? Maybe he's not used to being dependent on someone else. Maybe he just doesn't want to bother us. Maybe AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! Maybe I need to calm down and work on my middos and this is what Hashem has thrown my way. After this week I should have most excellent middos. Hooray!

So they unpacked. Now the room they are in can fit two beds and has some hanging space. Well they have a need to unpack and place their clothes anywhere but their suitcase. So they reorganized the room. Everything that was on top of the closet was neatly moved aside so that they could have room for their clothes. Where there was space on the bookshelves they also placed their stuff. Why does this bother me? I don't know. I'm very territorial. I like my space like I said and I don't like when others come to my space and do something else with it.

It's very hard for me to sit back and let someone else take charge. I like things done my way. That's probably why I don't have cleaning help. Onto another related subject, what do you call your in-laws. When we got married my husband and I both agreed that it was weird to call them mom and dad. Neither of us felt comfy calling the other one's parents by that. We wouldn't dare call them by their first name. So, we didn't call them anything. Then one year later our son was born and we could call them Sabba, Savta, Grandma, Grandpa. That was a relief. But I still feel that it's weird. It's also weird not to call them anything. What I have learned from this is that the best things for a mother-in-law to do is to say, you can call me ____(mom, ima etc.) if you'd like.

I've spoken to friends about what they do. One friend calls her MIL mom and her mother Ima. One friend has a sister-in-law who calls her MIL by her first name. Some people just don't have this problem. I can't see calling someone other than the parents who raised me mom and dad. Why should they deserve that title if they didn't earn it?

So I guess the bottom line is that I'm a chutzpadik, irrespectful little immature person who can't get over her pet peeves. Wow, that felt a lot better. Sorry for the vent-a-thon. Have a nice day!

Progress Report

Although I had been doing really well, yesterday I slipped up again. I started being really stressed out and took out all the negative energy on my poor kids. Being home all day is not easy. Talmud Torah didn't split the afternoon up enough. Today I was better but still not great.

My daughter has had diarhea for a few days now. She also caught a cough from the girls in her playgroup. At 4:30 she said her stomach hurt and curled up in her stroller for a nap. When she woke up I saw she had a fever and after seeing it was 100.9 under the arm, I gave her akamoli. It took a while for it to work and she was in a lot of pain. Once it kicked in she was back to her energetic self although a bit tamer. Luckily she went to sleep and in fact all the kids are asleep. My husband is urging me to go to sleep as well.

He wa so helpful tonight. He stopped off on the way home to buy a new Imim L'binah calendar and also bought some kugels for shabbos. I told him how much I appreciated that and how it lifted off the burden of having to make side dishes. I feel like all the pressure of preparing for shabbos is gone. Tomorrow, we'll have to take my daughter to the doc, cook the chicken, and clean. It should be interesting. We'll see how much I get done with baby in one hand and sick toddler kvetching all day.

My First Day Back

Today was my first day back to regular mothering (plus a new baby). My father took the kids to gan with me and then left for Jlm. That left me and Uri home together, alone. We took a nice nap together. Then I woke up and did some laundry. I picked up my son from gan and when we got home he did his homework-he's really in gan chova but they call it kita alef. Anyway, then we walked to pick up my daughter because having to handle buckling in three carseats in the back seat of our car was too much for me. In the morning it took us a while to do it. I may have to switch the placement of the carseats or something.

So we picked up my daughter and boy was she happy to see us. The ganenet did say that she had a pretty good day for her. We took a walk to the makolet to pick up some conditioner b/c my daughter has lice and we're trying awefully hard to get rid of it. Then we picked up my hubby's suit which got stained with mud last time it rained. We walked back home and everyone had lunch. This was around 2:30. After lunch we folded laundry, cleaned up a bit, read some books.

Then it started to rain. Of course I knew that it would rain but I'm in no shape to take down a sukkah or schach. What can I say? I can't move my hubby to do something if he doesn't want to do it. The same thing happened with putting the sukkah up. I told him we should do it early b/c I know how to do it and I can guide him but he stubbornly refused. There was an excuse every Friday until after I gave birth. The day I came home, the last Friday before sukkot, he asked the neighbor for help. Unfortunately, because we moved an had to reconfigure our sukkah we didn't have enough of the right size boards. So we really couldn't put it up before shabbos. On motzei shabbos hubby got more boards from the hardware store and the neighbors put up the sukkah on Sunday. On Monday my dad and uncles put up the schach. Now if that's not last minute I don't know what is. Now hubby is in no rush to take down the sukkah. So what if it rains. We'll wait til the sukkah dries up and then ask the neighbor for help taking it down. I'm not as laid back as hubby. He can only do stuff on Fridays b/c that's the only day he's off. He gets home too late to do anything after work. So I'm leaving this to him and I'll try to watch calmly from the sidelines as we wait for our sukkah and schach to dry. Boy do I hope that those beams hold our schach up b/c if it lands in the mud nobody will be happy.

Hubby is going to a wedding tonight. I told him to go by himself. I didn't want to take baby and thought that it would be better if I rest rather than going. I can't really dance anyway so I would just go to socialize. I don't need to spend money on a babysitter for that. I would probably have a better time than he but because I just had a baby I was the natural candidate for babysitting.

Somehow I managed to deal with kvetchy baby and hyper kids. Baby fell asleep in time for me to make dinner and check my daughter's hair for lice. Fun fun. We ate and then I decided to read a new book to the kids. After that I changed them. All this was able to run smoothly b/c baby was asleep. Thanks babe. I put the kids to sleep while nursing. It went pretty smoothly. Now the house is quite. Kind of strange although I don't miss the noise one bit. I guess I'll have to go to sleep early or something. Wow, imagine that.

More Updates

I should start of by saying thank you to Doron the fix it man who came by last night while I was at another Miriam Adahan shiur. On Thursday he tried to fix the leak and said the faucet had to be replaced. On Friday we drove to Jlm to give the broken faucet to the owner to get it replaced b/c it had a warantee. He got it replaced (or so we thought). Then it was too close to shabbos for Doron to fix it. Motzei shabbos he was busy. So on Sunday night he came by to fix it. After trying to install it he said that it was the same leaky faucet that we had given them to replace. My hubby called the owner. They decided to get a brand new faucet from the Kol Bo. They split the pay. It's a really nice one. Yay. Anyway, so thank you Doron for allowing us the luxury of running water in our kitchen. I was too tired to wash dishes when I got back from the shiur.

On Sunday I tried to get an appt for an ultrasound. So after trying to book an appointment for Tuesday for an ultrasound I gave up and decided to go local on Sunday. It was way more convenient. Unfortunately, the technition told me that my water was kind of low. She did me a favor and said that I shouldn't go to the hospital right away. She made me an appointment at a place in Jlm to get an ultrasound for Monday at 11. Unfortunately I had to teach a class this morning. I got there ten minutes late and they all decided that they had finished davening already. After trying to argue with them I gave up and told them that it's between them and G-d and after all it's aseret yimai teshuva and this was their choice. I gave them a lesson on sukkot words in English. After the lesson I went home to get ready. I gave my neighbor the clothes for the kiddies and packed and left. I left late, picked up the hubs and went to the ultrasound place. We got there and had to wait. The water level was considered low but not low enough to induce me. Then I was sent to get a monitor reading. We had to wait a while. Monitor was okay. Dr. said that since baby is a good size and I feel movements I don't need to return until Sunday. Of course I think I'll give birth after Yom Kippur if I fast. I was kind of hoping to give birth before YK. Well this dr. kindly offered to do stripping for me which I kindly declined. No thank you. I don't like to inflict pain on myself. She wasn't too happy that I declined and told me that if I change my mind I could come back. No thanks. So then we went to the mall and ate lunch. I bought a hat for baby and then went home to the kiddies. They were happy to see me.

When I got home I couldn't stand the mess I saw so despite being on my legs for a large part of the day I began to clean. I couldn't stand the way the kitchen looked after a week of no dish doing. I did some dishes and actually cooked dinner for a change and then we ate. Meanwhile lots of family members called to see how I was doing. They all wanted to know if I'd given birth yet. The answer of course was NO! So that's where we're holding.

I called someone to ask about natural induction methods. I was told that it only helps if you are dilated a little. I have no clue if I'm dilated b/c my doc won't touch me other than to do an ultrasound. So for now I'll try some methods and we'll see what will happen. I so don't want to give birth on YK. I really wanted to give birth on Tuesday but that will also mean having a Yom Tov bris. Oh goodness, please let everything work out for the best. This is not an easy time to be preggy. Maybe next time I'll try to have a little more foresight.