in my defense

My in-laws really are quite lovely people, generous and supportive for the most part. The real problem (in addition to the electronic bird) is that we have just seen them too much lately. When Henry was born, Jason’s mom told me they were going to try to visit (or get us to visit) every 3 months. Ok. Not so bad really. Up until recently the trips have been pretty short and they take us out to dinner and spoil Henry. There’s a little friction here and there but it’s tolerable. Feeling a little bad about my previous bitching, I thought about these visits a little more carefully and realized that we saw them in December, they stayed with us in late January, they stayed w/us a few days in April and we all drove to the coast for the weekend, they came up in June and we went to North Dakota with them (inc. many, many hours in a mini van) and they stayed here for a week into July. And now they are coming back this weekend for 9 days with Jason’s opinionated grandmother. Thankfully they aren’t staying at our house. I simply couldn’t take it.

So, that it. It’s just way too much of an okay thing. That whole every 3 months plan is sounding pretty good right now. This summer has already flown by too fast for me to spend another week feeling strung out by the needs of too many people. My plan is to spend small amounts of quality time with them and figure that they are on vacation in Portland not at my house. They can see Henry as much as they want and I might even cook a meal or two but that’s about it. Hostess and tour guide I will not be this time and I think we will all be better off for it. Really I do. We'll see how my little experiment works out.