dreading Thanksgiving with MIL

[Anonymous]

I'm sitting here looking at flights for Thanksgiving and starting to feel anxious and upset about the prospect of spending nearly a week with my critical, passive aggressive, emotionally manipulative MIL. Sigh. Is there any way I could send my older kid and DH and stay home with the baby?

[Anonymous]

Hotel

[Anonymous]

If your DH is like mine, he'd never get around to booking the flights himself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hotel

This.

Can you leave Thursday am and fly home Saturday?

[Anonymous]

Sure. You and the baby stay home. Or you all stay home. So many possibilities. Are you looking for permission to stay home? OK, you've got it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If your DH is like mine, he'd never get around to booking the flights himself.

Ha, DH is exactly the same! I have thought about leaving all the planning to him but I know what would happen is that flights would get booked late/last minute, which would probably mean we would end up paying more for less convenient flights. Which just stresses me out more. So here I am looking for flights...

[Anonymous]

Baby will have a bad cold at the last minute, and you will sacrifice yourself to stay at home with him while generously allowing older sibling and DH to enjoy Thanksgiving in your gracious MIL's home.

You will ignore MIL's accusations that you and Baby were malingering together, thereby depriving her of the "Grandmother with infant in arms" tableau specifically geared towards her friends.

You will have the best Thanksgiving of your life, bonded with Baby, watching the Dog Show on the couch and nibbling at a little Thanksgiving meal from Whole Foods or Balducci's.

That's my fantasy, anyway.

[Anonymous]

Don't go. Stand up to your dh and stay home. If you don't have the guts to do it, refuse to stay longer than 3 days.

Do you not speak?

[Anonymous]

Just go Weds through Saturday.

Let your husband get the tickets. He will forget and because of the cost and unavailability at the last minute will have to go alone

[Anonymous]

How bad is your MIL, OP? How far away is she? Can you fly there on Tues or Wed and leave on Sat?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Baby will have a bad cold at the last minute, and you will sacrifice yourself to stay at home with him while generously allowing older sibling and DH to enjoy Thanksgiving in your gracious MIL's home.

You will ignore MIL's accusations that you and Baby were malingering together, thereby depriving her of the "Grandmother with infant in arms" tableau specifically geared towards her friends.

You will have the best Thanksgiving of your life, bonded with Baby, watching the Dog Show on the couch and nibbling at a little Thanksgiving meal from Whole Foods or Balducci's.

That's my fantasy, anyway.

Love this. My MIL is also a huge pain. We've cut off ties with her, but I can totally appreciate that it might not be worth the drama of actually speaking up. Besides, if older child enjoys awful grandma, why stand in the way of that?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Don't go. Stand up to your dh and stay home. If you don't have the guts to do it, refuse to stay longer than 3 days.

Do you not speak?

Of course I can stay home and skip the trip. I posted here to vent, commiserate, and crowdsource opinions on whether that would be an OK thing to do. And yes, we will not be going for longer than a few days.

[Anonymous]

How would you feel if DH refused to go visits your manipulative mother? It's his mom, for Pete's sake. You married him. Is it fair to him for you to act this way? Some times life isn't all about us. We suck it up and do thing for the one's we love.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How bad is your MIL, OP? How far away is she? Can you fly there on Tues or Wed and leave on Sat?

The question about how bad she is -- that's what I'm trying to determine in order to decide whether it would be appropriate for me to skip the trip. She is pretty good with the grandkids and she is generally ok to deal with if you can ignore her know-it-all parenting criticisms (aimed only at her daughter and the DILs, never her sons) and her manipulative tears and/or passive aggressive jabs. She's definitely not one of the MIL horror shows that I've read about on other threads. It's a 2-hour flight. I'm thinking I might just schedule out our entire time with activities to get us out of the house (we'll stay in a hotel but will be at MIL's often) so I can stay sane and make plans to arrive Thursday and leave Saturday. If we plan to spend all day Friday with SIL's family (SIL is no longer speaking to MIL), that will really minimize my MIL time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How would you feel if DH refused to go visits your manipulative mother? It's his mom, for Pete's sake. You married him. Is it fair to him for you to act this way? Some times life isn't all about us. We suck it up and do thing for the one's we love.

My parents aren't toxic but DH does get annoyed by my mom and if he didn't want to visit with her, I don't think I'd really care except that it's a cross country flight and it would be hard for me to manage the kids alone. As it is, DH stays at least part of the time in a hotel alone while the kids and I stay with my mom. That said, I don't totally disagree with your point, which is why I'm sitting here pricing out flights!