digsite

I remembered that I had mentioned my grandmother and her baby caring advice the other day and we were just over there on monday so I wanted to give ya’ll a taste of what I have to put up with.

Things she said to me on monday.
– feeding a newborn.
her: yelling at me “..and don’t you do to the next baby what you did with Jada, that poor thing!”
me: “what?! what did i do?!”
her: “you starved that poor baby for 3 whole days until your milk came in!”
me: “huh!? sure i had milk, it’s called COLOSTRUM.”
her: “no you didn’t you starved that poor baby and that’s why she cried nonstop for 3 entire days”.

yeah right… if that had been the truth, i don’ t think the nurses would have passed up a chance to call child services on me considering i was in the hospital for 4 days. So what does she think I should have fed her during those 3 days? yeah… water with sugar mixed into it. And I’m not kidding!

next…
- why a toddler refuses to eat.
her: “you need to take her to the doctor if she won’t eat”
me: “she’s not eating because she’s not in her own element right now (aka, gramma’s house) she rather look through your stuff than eat”
her: “so and so’s 2 year old eats ALL by herself. She just sits her at the table in front of her bowl with a spoon and she feeds herself”
me: thinking to myself (. o O i just hate it when people compare one kid to the next)
her: “you know why she doesn’t eat well? because she cries too much. Children who cry too much don’t eat very well and don’t gain weight”
me: “she doesn’t cry too much.”

next…
- how to feed milk to a toddler
her: “why don’t you give her a bottle of milk, put her on the bed and pat her butt and see if she’ll go to sleep”
me: “are you kidding? first of all, she doesn’t like to drink milk much anymore except right before bed, second you should know by now that she won’t sleep in anybody’s bed except for her own crib”
her: “if you put chocolate in her milk, she’ll drink it”
me: “i’ve told you before that she doesn’t like flavored milk. she only drinks plain white milk”
her: “that’s because you haven’t accustomed her to it since she was very little”
me: “it’s better that she not like it anyway. if you think she’s too hyper now, imagine with all of that extra sugar in her body”
her: “not sugar, you have to get the kind that is fortified with vitamins and minerals. it helps them stay strong and healthy:
me: “we give her a multivitamin chewable everyday, she gets all her vitamins just fine”

yah… i’m not even exaggerating here. I guess it’s a good thing that Dennis doesn’t know spanish or he would have been offended enough for the both of us and made us leave early. But oddly enough, it doesn’t bother me as much as you’d think. my grandmother has always been this way.

let’s see what else…
- Jada’s hair.

her: “her hair is SO SOFT! she got a good mix between you and her father”
me: thinking (. o O wow, a COMPLIMENT!)
her: “nothing like her mother’s hair tho, when tania was little (talking to my dad) her hair was way hard”.

alright, I do hope J’s hair is easier to manage than my own, but is she kidding me? my hair was SOFT like silk until i hit 3,4 years of age. I didn’t bother arguing it.

sigh…. My grandmother is lucky that she’s a lot more pleasant on the phone than she is in person. Cuz if our phone convos went anything like that, I’d never go visit her.

I have learned to take my own grandmother’s “advice” and have become a pro at silently dismissing her opinions over the years. She is one EXTREMELY opinionated and strong willed woman and pushes her beliefs on people with no mercy. But I’m so used to it that when she begins to preach at me, I make it so she thinks I’m agreeing or listening when I’m actually secretly purging the info out my mind. The reason I take this approach instead of arguing my point is that she doesn’t take well to being disagreed with. Disagreeing with her can quickly blow up into threats of never visiting eachother again. …so since she’s the older one with the health problems, I have conceded to avoiding the fights.

But I have yet to perfect that skill with the in-laws. Mainly because they don’t tend to voice their opinion very boldly as my grandmother. Instead, it seems like they talk about others and how they feel about others… then you can hear the underlying meaning of their words when you talk to them. Very sneaky like. I need to learn how to deal with that real quick. I don’t tend to counter with my own opinion because it’s never my intention to push my opinion on anybody. I usually give my opinion only when asked or, i guess, if the discussion is clearly an open debate. I really despise feeling like my life decisions are being questioned. My life, afterall, is my life. Dennis and my marriage and life, is afterall, our life. We make decisions based on whatever the both of us feels is right for us as a family. So…. if we decide to buy a house big or small, decide to go on a vacation short or long, decide to have 3, 4, 5 kids no matter how far apart in ages… whatever the case, it’s *OUR* business. Totally, utterly, and forever *OUR* business.

I know people will express their opinions, it’s only human i guess… but don’t act like you expect me/us to take your opinion and make it our own. I/we have our own family plan. Some of it may not be completely agreed upon, some may not even have been talked about yet, but still, that’s *OUR* business.

I can’t help but feel defensive about this kind of stuff when I think our family decisions are being challenged. But like I said, I need to learn how to let it go in one ear and out the other and then when I say goodbye just go right on living my life (our life) the way we damnwell choose to. I really do think it’s a waste of emotional energy for me to allow myself to feel this threatened by someone’s opinions no matter who they are.

thank you for listening. :)