We're going to pick up my MIL at the airport tomorrow for her 2-month visit!   In all honesty, I'm looking forward to it, but I do hope to avoid major run-ins with her over totally opposite child-raising philosophies.  Other than that we get along pretty well.  Wish my FIL could come too, as I'm closer to him. Probably won't have much time to post for a week or two at least.

Don't feel bad I have a MIL and a FIL comming in July from Germany but only for a week. Good luck with your adventure.

I do wish you well inlaws have a way of making you uncomfortable even the ones who are good to be around. Lucky me I don't see mine often.

Larry

Do you all speak the same language, Homey?  If not how is it that you are able to get on each others nerves? hmm

Fight translator?  I can see it now...

She called you this.... well she said to tell you you're a...

I had a MIL who never had a kind word, even called me the worst possible mother when I needed her support while my son was running away from home and I was devastated.  She died of cancer within 3 weeks of diagnosis--it struck her in the throat--who says karma doesn't exist--but the interesting thing is that in the end she realized how she had acted and how SHE had suffered from driving everyone away.

Doesn't sound like you have a situation like mine, but please do what you need to do to get this worked out NOW.   We lost five years of Christmases over our problems.  I finally had to put the relationship back together to ever enjoy a holiday again.  If I had it to do over again, I would have done everything different.

Quote from: glenn kangiser on June 11, 2008, 10:09:09 AM
Do you all speak the same language, Homey?  If not how is it that you are able to get on each others nerves? hmm

Fight translator?  I can see it now...

She called you this.... well she said to tell you you're a...

 funny you should mention it, Glenn!  I am not fluent enough to argue (unless I'm talking someone down on a price in the Korean market, and I'm pretty decent at that).  When DD was about a year old, we went to Korea for almost a month.  My MIL wouldn't listen when we told her not to feed her certain stuff, and DD was actually getting sick from eating so much junk.  She'd never tasted sugar until that trip, and MIL kept overloading her on it to the point she'd throw up.  One night, DD was getting really cranky, and I went to put her to bed (which MIL didn't like because she'd always let her boys run around until they just collapsed from sheer exhaustion... they never had a regular bedtime.)  DD was crying in the bedroom because she was sleepy and fighting sleep, and my MIL and FIL threatened to tear up their passports and never visit the US because they thought I was abusing her by making her cry because she didn't want to sleep.  MIL kept coming in and waking her back up and interfering and I finally got so mad that I remember telling my husband, "YOU TELL HER EVERY STINKING WORD I SAY!!!!!!!!  TRANSLATE ME VERBATIM!!!!!"  He's not the best translator because he tries too hard to soften the words from both sides so nobody gets offended, and I remember telling him to tell her to butt out.  He couldn't translate it.  Poor guy was between a rock and a hard place.  In Korean culture, you just can't talk to your elders that way, no matter what they're doing or how aggravating it is.  However, we have made it abundantly clear that at our house, it's our rules.  DH has gotten to the point now where he's better at discipline than he was then (perhaps because he's seen the benefits as our kids have grown) but he's still the soft touch in the family.  The girls know they can talk him into just about nything.  There are two reasons that I expect this visit to be better than my last one to Korea: 1) MIL doesn't have access to junk to give the kids, and even if she did get to the store, she doesn't know what anything is, AND 2)  DH has gotten a lot better at backing me up and I've gotten a lot thicker skin.  I don't care if she does hate me for putting kids to bed at 8 o'clock... it is best for the kids, and I know that no one can  live with my oldest unless she's had 10-12 hours of sleep!  I dn't know if it is age or just having more than one kid now, but I'm a lot more confident now than five years ago that I am doing right by my kids and my husband.

Of course, I am trying to just to expect the "fat" comments MIL is sure to make even though I've told her over and over that it is very rude in this culture.  Even when I was really skinny by American standards when I was teaching in Korea, all the older ladies seem to feel some pressing need to tell you you're fat.  It was like, "Nice to meet you.  You're fat."  I even had a bra salesman chase me through an outdoor market swinging an over-the-shoulder-boulder-holder and yelling, "Extra-largey size-uh here!"  Back then it was just something funny to write home about because I was only a size 6.  After three kids, not so funny!

One other thing is that I really want MIL to enjoy her visit.  I'm a little afraid that she'll be bored because she's a little hyperactive.  If she doesn't have a good experience here, she'll go home talking smack and keep my FIL from ever visiting.  He would LOVE Oklahoma, I have no doubt.  My BIL will not do a thing for them in their old age, and I'd like it if they came to stay with us.

Going for sainthood, I see (says the woman who took care of her Mom for 27 years).   

Quote from: CREATIVE1 on June 11, 2008, 11:21:01 AM
Going for sainthood, I see (says the woman who took care of her Mom for 27 years).   

  Not exactly!  I just don't want my BIL to neglect them while spending their life savings.  He's kind of a punk.  And I've seen the way a lot of elderly folks are treated in Korea, and it's wrong.  Of course, the whole culture tends to worship youth in a really unhealthy way.

   Well, her flight got in early... she saw her suitcases and they were even right there together, so we took off and didn't stop until Gainesville for lunch. We're sitting in a Cracker Barrel when DH's cell phone rings.  He answered and it was an irate clerk with Korean Air baggage claim.  Seems his mom picked up someone else's suitcase that looked like hers and even made it through customs with it.  They never even checked inside. So, we had to drive all the way back to DFW and the roads were getting crowded by then, and ended up not getting back home until 9 PM.  What should have been a 3-4 hour trip turned into an all day affair.  Come to find out, mom never checked the baggage claim ticket or her name tag or anything.  It never occurred to her that someone else might have a suitcase that looked the same as hers!

Of course, every single time the baby cries, she thinks I need to feed her.  She doesn't get that babies cry sometimes for other reasons (dirty diapers being #1.)  It's going to be an interesting 2 months.

I do have to say, however, that the big girls are enjoying her immensely.  She caters to their vanity and sweet tooth in ways that I can not... she brought them dress shoes with built in disco lights.  They tried them on last night and turned off all the lights in the house.  It looked like there was a police car parked inside.  Of course, they're going to have some very jealous cousins!  They got a bunch of frilly, cute new clothes too, and "princess" headbands.  Really, do we need to add to the culture that says "I am the center of the universe?"  But, that's OK, I'll have the rest of the year to straighten them out, I guess.  Yesterday en route home, she bought them some kool-aid type junk juice drink AND ice cream at a gas station and then didn't understand why they wouldn't eat supper.

Sounds like you're having fun now.

Thats what grandparents do.  Let her enjoy the kids. I am sure they will enjoy her as well.  They do tend to get in the way sometimes and by-pass all the things you have tried to set for your kids.  But they know it is special time and will revert back as soon as she goes home.  Use the extra hands HT and just grin and bear it.

   I'm grinning.  It's not so bad, but last night she got mad because she said the big girls don't listen to her.  I told her that it isn't that they're not listening, but they don't have a clue what she's saying.  She yelled because she got the idea if she talked louder that maybe they'd understand her.  I just need to get a pair of earplugs for the summer I think.  They talk louder to her to try to make her understand English and she does the same to them in Korean.  She told me last night that she's not going to help with the kids because they "don't listen" to her and they "listen" to me... she was pouting a little bit about it.  What happened is that she was giving the big girls a bath while I was feeding the baby.  She about scrubs them raw, anyway, but the little one started whining about something.  DD#1 flipped the drain on the tub even though DD#2's hair wasn't washed because she knows that I don't allow whining.  If they start, I get them out of the tub right then and make them go to bed, but Grandma wasn't understanding why DD was draining the tub.  Thought she was just being a brat.  Anyway, then, DD turned off the water after Grandma started refilling the tub, and told her that they had to get out because Momma don't allow no whining.  Well, they fought back and forth over the water in the tub until Grandma finally kicked DD#1 out of the bathroom.  She came to me shaking her head and said, "Mom, it's going to be a long summer, isn't it?"  I can already see the favoritism from Grandma toward the two little ones.

Well, I've tried my darndest, and even though I think MIL is having an alright time, what I expected to happen has happened.  Yesterday morning she asked us to change her flight back home to mid-July instead of mid-August.  She is homesick even though she's enjoying trying new foods and stuff in ways that I never would've expected.  So, she is going to go back a full month early.  I'm a little disappointed, but I know a lot of it has to do with the fact that we have a newborn and two small kids, which requires our schedule to be a little bound to theirs.  She feels "trapped" because she can't communicate and because there is nowhere she can walk to or go see on her own (no public transit system.)  So, we sat at the table last night for a few hours trying to figure out how to cram all the stuff we wanted to do with her into the next few weeks.  I think I'm going to borrow a Korean student from one of the local universities to help me out with the translation and take her to the OKC national memorial (the bombing memorial) and to run around downtown a bit during the weekdays.  There is a girl who goes to church with my mom who has volunteered to go with us to some places so that I can have a little help with the language barrier.  My vocabulary just isn't adequate.  I don't think MIL realizes how long it might be before she gets to see us again.  At current prices, it would cost our family over $10K to visit Korea, and the prices just keep going up.  I so want my kids to speak Korean more fluently than I do, and the only way for that to happen is to have someone around who speaks Korean consistently (DH has never been good at transitioning between the two languages... most people here think he was born here or was raised here because he has a hard time speaking Korean or translating... if his brain is working in one of the languages, it automatically seems to shut of recognition of the other.)  Anyway, she's homesick... so she's planning to go back really early.  I told her that next time instead of revelling in the fact that she got to feel like a single woman for a while, she needs to bring FIL with her because they'd have a better time if they had each other.

Think by yesterday, MIL was starting to regret changing her flight a little.  She held the little one all day nearly.  When she goes home we're going to have to teach the baby to sleep in the cradle all over again!  Wish in some ways that she would have waited to come until FIL could come with her and until we were in a place we own.  If we were out in the country somewhere, I think it would be better than being in a subdivision where there is no destination within walking distance... all the houses look exactly alike (to me, at least.)  It's a boring place to go for a walk, whereas in Korea, she spends about an hour and a half every morning hiking Namsan mountain.  When I lived in Korea, I used to go with her every morning. 

OK City bombing -- you better study the conspiracy story a bit so you can tell her what really happened.  It will be a lot more interesting if you endeavor to find out the truth and explain it to her.

Did you know that the same demolition company that cleaned up the OK city bombing was involved in cleaning up and advising on the WTC.  These guys are good -- rush cleanup of massive demolitions without enough evidence left to study.

sounds like the MIL trip is going well.  My MIL is great, but unfortunately speaks very little english as well.  My wife is originally from central america - they immigrated when she was 8 to escape the ravages of a civil war in their country.  I like her company (and the babysitting ) but know how the visit can drag on. 

Theres got to be lotsa free neat stuff to do in OK.  If your part of oklahoma is anything like I saw it's as flat as can be.  Maybe try to see how many miles you can see looking straight on the horizon .. then step on a tuna can to see if it doubles?   Your MIL might like that 

muldoon -- central America - US foreign policy tampering?

Korea - we were there. 

Just trying to keep this topic together, Homey.

no point in trying, Glenn...drift happens.  

Took MIL to the Edmond Farmer's Market today.  Thought she would enjoy it, but don't think she really did.  There weren't many familiar vegetables for her, so I bought her some blackberries and blueberries because she didn't know what they were.  However, she thought the blackberries were sour.  (IMO, they were just perfect.)  Anyway, it was a really nice farmer's market with a lot of community support, obviously.   Lot of vendors for a weekday, too.  Even had locally made soaps and cosmetics as well as breads and canned goods. 

Funny story... yesterday afternoon I noticed the dogs looked a little hungry, so I told the girls to go feed them.  When they opened the back  door, MIL started screaming and trying to force the door back closed.  I saw what looked like dirt all over the floor inside the back door, and she kept yelling, "Gee!"  I was slightly miffed since I'd told them to go feed the critters.  MIL grabbed the broom out of my hand and started beating under the couch with it.  At this point, I'm thinking that DD brought in a snake or lizard in OR MIL has finally snapped from spending the days with us English-speakers.  I called DH at work for an emergency translation..."gee" sounds kind of like the word for "dirty", so I thought maybe she was pitching a hissy about the dirt that seemed to have come from nowhere around the back door.  Well, after translation (gee= rat/mouse) I looked closer at the mess around the back door,and realized it was a packrat's nest!  Apparently, the nest had either fallen from the ledge above the door, or the dogs had left it there on the back threshold for us, AND MIL saw the critter run under the couch.  Needless to say, we hunted for an hour, but never found it.  I will be so glad to be out of this house!  Even in some of the slummy places I lived in college, I never had floods and rodent infestations!  MIL looks really tired and pale this morning, so I wouldn't be surprised if she was up worrying about that rat last night.  (I, for one, slept as soundly as is possible when there's a newborn in the house.)

Rats happen too.

Yeah.  It wouldn't be bad if it was JUST the rat... it is the rat, the two floods, the scary wiring, the carpet that smells like pee when it is raining outside, the fact that we can't plant much of a garden or have chickens here.  Just going a little stir-crazy being in town is all.  The blacktop just radiates the heat from the sun and I think it is about (or feels about) ten degrees hotter in the city than it does out of town.  I think MIL would be a bit more content here too if there was a garden to help work in and produce to put up, etc.  I think it would be fun to teach her how to can stuff.  She tried fried green tomatoes the other day and loved them. 

Well, MIL moved her flight up again...  she's leaving next Saturday now.  She says it is not because of us, but because her BP is running consistently high, and she's homesick.  She wanted to go even earlier, but dd#2 is turning 4 today, so she wanted to be here for her birthday.  Saturday was the earliest she could leave.  We had to cancel a planned camping trip to Missouri this weekend so we can drive her to the airport in Dallas.  I hate driving in Dallas.  Too bad.     Think she picked the worst possible time to visit...we're still settling in and there's a newborn, etc.