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[quote=Anonymous]Let me start by saying we love my FIL and his wife and they have always been great to us and the kids.  They live 3 blocks away and we see them at least once a week. We generally have a great relationship

DH and I had a once in a lifetime opportunity to go on vacation for a week without the kids (ages 6, 4 and 10 months). FIL and wife and MIL (who we also get along with and also lives nearby) said they would be happy to watch them while we were away. They have babysat a million times and the older ones have slept there before but this was definitely the longest we had left them.

Before we left, I asked if they would stay by us, thinking it would be easier for the kids but they wanted the kids to sleep by them. No problem. I drafted an extensive child care document, pre-made meals, pre-packed bags, hired a mother's helper, and gave lots of instructions to make it as easy as possible. FIL said "piece of cake!" They were only to be sleeping (7pm-8am and they go to sleep by 7:30) by FIL - MIL would have them after school and feed them and get them into pjs and drop them off at 7pm.  Their carpool would pick them up for school at 8am and they would drop baby off with the nanny at my house on the way to school.

5 days into the trip, FIL's wife calls me on vacation and tells me "You need to make other arrangements for the baby, I cant take care of him anymore." Of course, I freak out, but I call a friend and MIL and make other arrangements. Then, on the day before we are due back, FIL's wife emails me that we need to send a carpet cleaner over immediately bc the older kids had accidents and the carpet is wet/dirty. We say we will take care of it when we get back.

Since we got back, we got them gifts, said thank you a million times, but they have been extremely cold to us, reluctantly acknowledging that we got their entire house cleaned (not just the one room where the kids slept) and otherwise barely speaking to us. Last night, I called FIL and said that we were really upset about all this tension, how they made us feel like it was such an awful experience and we have such terrible kids. I acknowledged that taking care of the kids was much more difficult than they/we had anticipated (girls had accidents, carpool was late one day, baby cried more than usual - cut a tooth and away from me) but that I didnt feel like we had done anything wrong for them to be so angry and hostile. And he basically said that he felt we didnt properly prepare them and that we should have anticipated that they had jobs and we should have hired someone to stay in the house (which we offered to do but FIL said they would be fine with him).  He even said they felt "manipulated" by us.

We agreed to all sit down and talk about this in a few nights bc the relationship is important to all of us.

My perspective: you did us a HUGE favor and it did not go as easily as planned and was actually quite difficult. But they are your grandchildren and you lost a couple hours of sleep and did some extra laundry but its over now and cant we all move forward?

Does the (harsh/judging) DCUM world really believe that DH and I did anything wrong? Obviously, we could always have planned better. We warned them the kids might have accidents and gave some strategies for preventing them or making it easier to change them at night, but the blew off our suggestions. The baby has been sleeping through the night for 3 months, obviously, he might wake up but how was I to know that he would get up at 3 (at which time they fed him 2 oz of milk and he went right back to sleep)? They acknowledged the kids were really well-behaved, cooperated, didnt talk back, were very sweet, but the logistics were too much for them.

What do you think?[/quote]

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