[kakuehl]

Actually, Crick he's too sick to enjoy the attention. When he's well he prefers benign neglect! He's not eating (that's not Dad). Today he's had orange juice and jello (Unless his weekend hostess got him to eat more.)

[zxczxcasdasd]

Sorry to hear about your dad, Kathy. How frustrating for you and your sisters to have rearranged plans for nothing! Maybe you need to tell the nurse there is a single Point-Of-Contact person for making plans like that? I mean, he is your dad and it seems like those should be family decisions. Sigh.

Crick, I love the picture of your little guy telling off the yucky lady and adding YA! to your not-so-subtle hint. hee hee. Gross, but funny.

Oy vey, we need to go to sleep around here. We had been feeling so wonderfully united as a family in taking care of each other and sticking together going into tomorrow and then my MIL didn't like the adjustments we (J and I) made to the eulogy that J is delivering after *she* wrote it the way *she* liked it and blew up at me on the phone saying it was ALL WRONG and ALL SCREWED UP AFTER ALL HER WORK (taking out what she didn't like and putting things the way she liked them), and then refused to speak to me about it when I asked her what exactly she objected to (for the life of me I don't know...it was heartfelt, acknowledged his family, absolutely nothing objectionable), and called someone else and told them to just change it all back to the way *she* had it. Person told her, um, it's J's eulogy, it's for him to write. She did calm down, and when I called her back after an hour and asked if she was ready to speak to me yet to explain what it was she thought was wrong, she apologized for how she behaved and has been trying to make nice the rest of the day, but honestly it tweaked me so bad that it's left a bad taste in my mouth and now I have one more thing to be annoyed about going into tomorrow.

Tomorrow will be the biggest gathering of all the people I like and respect least in the world, all in one place, to mourn a kid for whom, in my opinion, they paved the path to his grave. I just hope that we can all focus on what we're there to do and who we're there for so it just doesn't matter who else is standing around. I do know that F would get a huge kick out of all the drama around this. He'd think it was hilarious. F's dad, in a moment of levity, suggested I bring a camera so if anything juicy goes down, I can get it on tape.

One more request for prayers tomorrow. We're all obviously on edge but tomorrow we need peace.

[Xdad]

Justified paranoia on my part

My daughters mother HAD to ask concerning a comment I made on a picture of my daughter. My comment was "I think she looks more like her mother in this picture". Her Mother asked me what that ment, and said she thought it sounded hostile. Again... I-yai-yai.
After this chat, later in the day, after discussing a possible meet up with my daughters parents, my daughter changed her FB profile pic to a pic of her smiling huge... like to think it was for me. So, to recap, her mother is paranoid, and I am delusional... sounds like parents to me

[kakuehl]

Heidi, May the peace of God surround you this day and always! I hope that hope that F's sense of humor is present since that's apparently a part of him. I'm still not sure how your MIL got into the act! (As pastor, I normally ask if anyone else has something to share which would give her the opportunity to say what she wanted to say, lol.)

My dad is capable of making his own decisions - his children listen to him and allow him to make them. Unfortunately, his "friend" is rather overbearing and does what SHE thinks is best for him and runs down his children (we never do enough, we're not there for him like she is, etc.) Right now I'm sure it was easier for him to go with her than to fight her. (Sigh.) I think it's family meeting time.

Xdad - my son can't remember what he saw in the mother of his son/first wife, so a comment he made about his child looking like his mother would not be a positive comment. (S is a good mix of both his parents, btw) Perhaps adding to your comment something like how attractive you found her mom when you first knew her would help. (Actually, I wrote that and thought, nah- she'd take that the wrong way too.) It sounds to me like your daughter's mom still has some work to do in dealing with the pain/anger/hurt surrounding her memories of you and of the time when she was pregnant. (Sometimes if we blame the other person, we don't have to deal with our own issues. Meanwhile, keep enjoying those pics and the glimpses into your daughter's life.

[crick]

Kathy - I'm sorry..just got caught up on your dad being more sick than I realized! I hope you are all able to work with him and get his health back on track! As for the overbearing neighbor...confront her nicely as a group and hopefully she'll back off. Nice to have her, but yanno...

Heidi - Sounds like your MIL is pretty overwrought herself and you know how grief makes people "off" at times. Hopefully tomorrow will be focused on what it needs to be and it ends up being a nice service. As for the "ugh" people...maybe every time they say "It's such a tragedy" you can say "Yes, and the real tragedy is people like yourself who contributed to it."

Xdad - paranoia & delusion...interesting parenting cocktail!

[zxczxcasdasd]

Hey guys. We survived. Whew.

I know that 98% of MIL's blow-up was her own grief and anger and it just got focused on this little situation. She got involved because she LOVED this kid since he came into J's life and fought so hard for him to make it and she is really grieving. J did a tag-team eulogy with another close friend (my first boyfriend actually, and how I met DH ) and that friend had forwarded it to MIL as a friendly gesture so she could see what they were going to say. Well, she had *opinions* (it happens ) and apparently submitted all her changes and revisions. On our end, we hadn't really spent time on it before that, so after that (not knowing she was suddenly invested and involved in the writing), we made revisions on our end and sent them back to the other friend, who sent them to MIL- who then blew up.

Everything was fine today though, between us all as family at least. It was SO sad. J sobbed and cried and cried- through the eulogy, at the grave site, but at the end of the day said he felt "cried out" and like he had good closure.

On a happier note, I'm taking Little J to the Miramar Air Show tomorrow. My cousin is an Air Force pilot and also flies for an airshow team and Miramar is one of the shows they do every year. He's going to show Little J the planes and have a crew member escort us to the front for for good viewing when they fly. Little J is very excited. Only downside is a VERY early morning.

So good night ladies (and gent). May you dream of traps and plots against you, and gross ladies improperly handling food.

[crick]

I'm glad you were able to get through the service and it went "well". That's such an odd thing to say, but kwim!

On another sad note, please see this thread to give Kathy some love and support...
Please keep Kathy in your thoughts & prayers

[zxczxcasdasd]

Kathy, if you make it to the forums today- please accept our hugs. (((((Kathy)))))

[thanksgivingmom]

Ay-yi-yi! What a weekend to get everyone on here again and then for me to disappear!!!

Biggest hugs to everyone that needs them

But I am good at prayers and cocktails - so if you need either (both?) - I'm here

[kakuehl]

Thanks, Heidi. I'm getting to be on a little in the evening, trying to catch up with all the emails.

[Tigger27]

Okay so, I didn't want to start a whole new thread...just had to add a recent post here...that's more of a vent, well recent thing about my mom...anyway...

So, she sorta invites herself over...so we have her and my dad come over and play games the other night (Wed night) and we're sitting there eating dinner and then playing games.

Well, after we're done eating dinner, we clean up and then get ready to show them our place...and for a min...I'm by myself with my mom while hubby goes upstairs and my Dad's grabbing some more food/drink in the kitchen...so what does my mom do...she leans over to me like she's going to share a secret...and then says...

"I know you don't want me to say anything about this, but I feel like I should say this..." Now every time she starts something with this sentence/phrase, which she's done multiple times in my life, the rest of what she says is never good and always upsets me...so I hold my breath while she finishes...

This is what she said..."are you prepared to have a down syndrome baby? and I'm like..."um, excuse me, what?" and she says, "well there's a lot of new studies coming out that say cause more women are having babies later etc. that there are more down syndrome babies being born and that more women are becoming to be at risk for having down syndrome babies when they're 35 and not just 40 now so if you wait too much longer you'll probably have to be prepared for that, ya know...not that you will wait that much longer, but just something I thought I should tell you while you're deciding things...blah, blah, etc."...need I say that it was all I could do to not smack her and to keep myself from having my jaw hanging open etc...I know there are or can be all sorts of risks or things that could or could not happen depending on your age and many things when planning/deciding about having a baby/kids, but seriously she needs to learn some tact and how to keep her mouth shut sometimes...

I know she was trying to mean well in her warped way, but it didn't work...it just really ticked me off and I've calmed down and worked through a lot of it since Wed night, but some of it is still there obviously...and we (hubby and I) have been discussing how we want to have a baby but trying to figure out when we feel we should and taking things into consideration like money, our age, etc....but my mom does not know about our plans/hopes for having a baby/starting a family hopefully as soon as we can...but we already have a lot that we have recently been stressing about trying to figure things - they're normal things, but still things to deal with...and I don't tell my mother every thing about my life so I don't appreciate when she assumes things and thrusts herself into the middle of my life and my marriage and decisions that she is not a part of and then throws out studies/statistics etc. that she's 'heard' about somewhere that say things like if you wait too long you'll probably have a baby with problems like down syndrome so are you prepared...augh...I swear I really don't know how I don't lose my patience with my mother and how I am able to still put forth an effort to involve her in my life when sometimes I wish she'd go away or at least just shut her mouth already!

Anyway, I just can't believe she said that to me the way that she did and then tried to act like we were talking about some fun thing when my Dad asked what we were saying like she didn't want my Dad to know what she said to me...so I told my Dad what my mom just said and he didn't say much but he had a very minor expression on his face that said all to me when he glanced at me - that he was unaware she had this in my mind and he was not happy with her saying that to me the way she did either - it was all shared in a quick glance and then we switched the subject and went on to playing games and pretended to forget about it...until they went home and I vented and worked through some of it with my hubby and then wrote part of it on my Facebook and now I'm here writing it all out so thanks for listening/reading .