Mother-in-law drama and family "help"

My mother-in-law is one of those people who discovers something and then goes after the fad 100%.

Like if she decides cider vinegar is the new elixir, well, that's it. We will hear about it forever and a day.

So she is on a mission to have me not use table salt for the babies.

She came over once when I was cooking rice/ pasta (something like that) and told me that sea salt is best, not table salt.

At the time, I said something like "I really don't care" (not as rude) but basically that.

The reason being... I really don't care. I have FAR BIGGER things in life to worry about. And secondly, I hardly use salt. I have low blood pressure because of my salt aversion, for goodness sake. And of course, the babies don't know any difference so still hardly get any salt and definitely no sugar in their food.

So last week she sent me and D a "helpful article" about the table salt again, and also the article said that plastic containers should not be microwaved.

Again, I don't really care. What's 30 seconds here and there?

(also the point is not the content of her email, it's about the interfering which I'll get to in my roundabout way soon-ish)

I asked D how he wanted to deal with it; he said to ignore it. I like to tackle things head-on so I told him I'd reply.

And I did. I told her that we prefer not to live in fear and also (again!) that we hardly use salt so it is not an issue.

I didn't hear a thing back.

But I know she's upset because I feel the tension.

Granted, I'm a little to blame as D said my email was cold and "could you not have put a Love, Marcia or something?" I said, "no, I want the tone to be firm and cold."

Reason being, she is the type if you're not VERY firm, it's an invitation to engage on the topic again and again, and I'm not going there.

I am their mother and I make the food rules. D knows I'm doing the best I can for the kids so he's happy to go along. We have a policy where the one who feels strongly about an issue gets their way if the other one is indifferent.

Anyway, so Friday.

On Friday last week we had a public holiday in South Africa.

I (now) love having an extra day on the weekend because it allows us extra social time :)

I said "now" because when the babies were little, I'd dread the weekends simply because we'd have no help and we'd both be dog-tired by Sunday night.

It has not been that bad the last 4 months or so. We're actually enjoying our time together - who would have thought?! :)

Anyway, back to the public holiday.

I prefer to pre-empt social plans as I then have a measure of control so I suggested to D that we get together with family so that we'd be done til Christmas.

Yes, I'm bad.

D phoned his sister who's always game for socials and we invited ourselves over since his mother was going to be there too. Something about killing two birds with one stone.

I decided to take the kids' lunch, snack and supper with us as well as their bath things and pajamas so that we could feed them, bath them and then put them in the car to fall asleep while driving back from Pretoria, about an hour away from our house.

A couple of things happened to make us realise we really can't depend on anyone else to help with the babies.

D's sister told him on the phone that we can just relax and chill and she and his mom would watch the kids.

Well, his mom watched the kids for 15 minutes while we quickly ate our lunch.

The rest of the time we were "on". Yes, there was some playing with the babies but certainly not that either of us could really "relax".

My expectations were not high so I wasn't disappointed but D was ... he is also highly protective and kept thinking the dogs would attack because they were barking in Connor's face. He was crawling around FAST like a little boy on steroids :) D's point was ...it didn't look like anyone cared about the dogs possibly biting our boy.

I said, "of course no one cares like we do - they're OUR kids"

Anyway, last MIL story.

She has it in her head that Connor loves strawberries so she brings out this bowl with strawberries LIBERALLY covered with sugar.

"Here, Connor"

I said, "he can only have strawberries if the sugar is rinsed off" so D went to rinse off the sugar.

Connor is, in fact, not a lover of strawberries and duly spat them out (I am quite proud that I kept a straight face).

She then tries to keep feeding him these darn strawberries so eventually I said, "no, he can't have anything to eat now. Snack time is over"

Those of you who were reading when the babies were real, tiny babies will remember how Kendra used to graze - 25 ml here, 30 ml there.

Since that's fixed, I am STRICT. No more grazing. We eat 5 times a day and that's it. Not on the hour!

So she said nothing but gee, it's exhausting.

I mentioned the salt and microwave thing to a lady at work who very rightly said, "she means well". That is true and I'm aware of it.

But where does the interfering stop?

She is actually not a bad person, she's a good granny; it's just these one or two things that keep cropping up.

What's your relationship like with your MIL? If you've had issues, tell me what worked for you?

P.S. Did my 45 mins last night at gym. So far so good... But abs very sore from those 140 crunches on Monday night.