Not On My Own Blog I Don’t

I have a new niece. She’s adorable in that way that all brand-new-borns are. All pudgy cheeks and cute baby noises and wee toes.

But.

I don’t feel much of anything for her. I love her because she’s my niece (my husband’s sister’s child, to be exact), but I am not as gooey and head-over-heels in love with her as I know other aunts are over their nieces and nephews.

My sister-in-law has two other children in addition to this new one and I feel roughly the same thing for them. They are nice, but … meh.

I know that part of my antipathy towards them has to do with my nephew. He’s the oldest and he’s challenging. He’s high energy and low listening. That is absolutely not his fault (well, the listening is somewhat his fault, but more his parent’s fault) but it still means that I am less than enthusiastic about spending time with him. (Where “less than enthusiastic” means he drives me batshit crazy)

My other niece (the new niece’s older sister) is OK, but somewhat … wet. She seems to always be drooling or sporting a runny nose and neither of those are my favorite. I barely want to kiss my own children when they are like that, let alone someone else’s.

This is all complicated by the fact that my sister-in-law asked me to watch the two older ones (we’ll call them T and E since that makes things less complex) while she is on maternity leave. How do I go about spending two days a week with two children that I don’t care all that much for? And WHY don’t I like them? Why aren’t I excited that I have a new niece? And what the hell am I going to do with four children under four?!

I can’t help but wonder if my sister had children if I would feel different towards them or if this is some deep personality flaw in me that I don’t like other people’s children. I also wonder if my lack of feeling towards T, E and H (the new baby) are due to my deep feeling that these children should not have been born to these parents.

My sister- and brother-in-law should not have had children when they did and they absolutely should not have continued to have children and certainly not in the timeframe they did. {T, the oldest, will be 4 in a couple weeks. E, the middle, will be 2 this coming Monday and H was born this past Monday. 3 children, 4 years.} My brother-in-law is a slug at best and an ass at worst. His idea of discipline is to yell at the child from a seated position. When the child does not respond to the yelling? He yells louder and uses their middle name. Still no response? Louder still and full name. None of which is effective unless you peel your butt off the couch and enforce it  first. My sister-in-law works in child care, so her idea of discipline is “T, why are you standing on my leg? That hurts. T, please get off my leg, you’re hurting me.” (all of that is said in a very saccharine voice) Now, I understand that she can’t belt a child in her care one while she is at work, but this has drastically affected her parenting abilities to her children. And the end result is that her kids are running wild.

Even more frustrating is the fact that brother-in-law is taking next week off work to be home to help sister-in-law with the baby. BUT I get to take care of the older ones because brother-in-law doesn’t feel capable of handling them. Translation: he’s hoping sister-in-law will be sleeping a lot while he’s taking care of the baby, who he’s also hoping will be sleeping a lot, thereby leaving him with an uninterrupted and guilt-free pass to futz on the computer and watch movies all day.

End result: I’m a bad aunt. And I don’t know what to do about it.

I have this friend I met through my local MOMS Club. She and I announced our pregnancies at the same time, were due within days of each other and grew to be very close over the past two years. Suddenly, she dropped me like a hot potato. I am completely frustrated and hurt by this sudden fall from grace (go figure). I’m borrowing this forum to post my thoughts so that I don’t say something to her face that I will regret later. So here goes.

You really hurt my feelings. We went from being really close and talking to each other almost more than we did our own husbands to not talking at all. You were one of my closest friends and then suddenly you’re gone. I’m incredibly hurt by that. I don’t know what I did to upset you, if I did anything at all.

You pissed me off with your passive-agressive bitching about me on Facebook. I know that you have three children and no local family and so you haven’t had any time off in a while, but, BUT 1) you have a husband and he is more than capable of taking the kids for a couple of hours and DOES SO on regular occasions. ALSO, I have offere countless times to help you with the ONE child who is still at home in the mornings  so you could have some time off. You have not taken me up on that offer, so you are now NOT ALLOWED to get pissed off because I get a whopping TWO hours of child-free time ONCE a week.

I’m really not sure why you have three children when you seem to hate being a mother so much. There are ways to prevent that.

I am not sure what the hell is going on with you, but I miss hanging out with you. Sometimes. Other times I am much happier now that I am not dealing with your constant negativity. And hatred of random things. It’s been kind of nice to have opinions about something and not have them disregarded or criticized because they don’t align perfectly with your own.

I know you are having a hard time with your finances, but guess what? SO IS EVERYONE ELSE! Get over it. The fact that you can still buy groceries is a blessing. Just because your husband has student loans is not reason to mooch money from everyone in your family. And constantly bitching about using your husband’s bonus to pay those loans to someone whose husband didn’t get a raise or a bonus this year? Not the best of moves.

Do you like anything? At all? Because every time I mention something I like, you tell me you hate it. So what, exactly, do you like? Seriously. Quoting you: I’ve never been a fan of sports, vampires, snobs, reality tv shows, organized (or unorganized) religion, wishy-washy-ness, high heels, ironing, cell phones, gardening, exercise, scrapbooking, cleaning, baking, self-righteousness, Starbucks…the list can go on. I’m not a big fan of much. You have also mentioned that you hate Wal-Mart and in the next breath talked about your beloved M—–n Wal-Mart. Which is it, do you hate it or love it? And also? That right there is wishy-washy-ness. I’m also pretty sure that you hate anything that I thought of or found first, just because it wasn’t your original idea. If you come up with it, it’s The Best Thing Ever! If it is my idea? It’s shit.

I know that you are feeling stressed, but if you send me another mail note bitching at me about something that isn’t my fault, I am not going to be responsible for my actions. Or my words. It took everything I had not to rip into you when you emailed me, yelling at me because I got a morning away from my children and you didn’t. And because I had the gall to remind you to give me something that was due in September. Telling me you’ll give it to another friend because you don’t have the time is bullshit. It takes NO time to hand something to me when you see me twice a day at school. Even less time if you carry it with you and put it on my car.

You are entirely too hard on your children. And it is hurting them. If they won’t eat their food, they will be hungry. And yes, they will likely complain about it. And you will have to ignore it because they have figured out that food is one of your MANY hot buttons. Also, messing up a play room? Is what children do. Taking toys away from them for a week or more, doesn’t teach them actions & consequences. It makes them forget the toy existed. Especially when the child in question is TWO. Making a kid stand in a corner for an entire afternoon is not appropriate punishment for a three or five year old. It’s bordering on torture. Especially when the infraction is running in the house. Or bouncing on the couch. Or spilling something on their clothes.

I hate your daughter’s hair cut. She looks like a pixie. And a boy. It’s not a good look. I know that it is what your daughter wanted, but I suspect that you helped guide her to that decision by complaining about her losing her hair things. She’s THREE. They do that.

I gave you a birthday present. You got me nothing for my birthday. That hurt. I feel very greedy saying that, but I thought that after nearly two years of friendship AND your long-winded discussion about what you were getting K for HER birthday, that I would receive something other than a Happy Birthday wish on Facebook. I was mistaken. And that hurt my feelings.

If your kid won’t poop on the potty it’s because she’s not ready. And because she knows it pisses you off. She can tell you she has to poop. She can tell you poop goes in the potty. She can tell you she has pooped. That’s great. It does not mean that she is ready to physically poop in the potty. She is not yet two and a half. You admit yourself that you know she’s young. She’s a potty training savant, but forcing her to sit on the potty for 45 minutes is unreasonable. She’s telling you poop goes in the potty because you have yelled at her for two months about pooping on the potty. Back off. Let her shit in her diapers for a while. That’s what’s happening anyways. Don’t scream at her and maybe she’ll decide she’s ready.

Telling me that you were “completely content” with the way the preschool pick-up/drop-off schedule was going and then LESS THAN 12 HOURS later telling me something needed to change is NOT COOL. Also? I’m pretty sure you were pissed off because I professed a desire to stay home the whole day. I know it is a crime, but I didn’t want to leave my house. You tell me that all the time, but I guess I’m not allowed to hole up in my house like you do every day.

All that vintage shit you have in your house looks like crap. It’s old and unattractive and doesn’t go with anything else. I like antiques as much as the next person, but there should be a cohesive theme instead of Yard-Sale-Barfed-In-My-Living-Room. That’s especially true for the faded plastic Santa thing that is 1) an outside decoration and 2) not meant to be up year-round.

Saying that you “don’t mean to be rude” is rude. If it is your opinion, it’s your opinion. If you think it is rude, it probably is and maybe you could find another way to speak to your friend that isn’t rude or hurtful. Just because you are upset doesn’t mean you have carte blanche to hurt people. You know you are abrasive and brash and yet you continue on like this as though admitting it gives you impunity to act that way. It doesn’t. It just makes people not want to be around you.

Even if you do decide you want to spend time together again, I’m not sure I do. I don’t think I want to open myself to the potential to be hurt again like this. And, after writing all this, I’ve realized you weren’t as good a friend as I thought. And I don’t think I need you in my life like that.