My nieces and nephews live an hour away. We see them a few times a year and send them birthday/holiday gifts. I don't call them just to...chat. I like them fine when I see them - what else should I be doing?

Anonymous wrote:I would like to have a closer relationship with my niece but I am poor, single, fat and rent an apartment while my brother and his wife are rich, own, skinny and haughty and they don't really encourage us to have a relationship. Though my brother talks all the time about how sad it is that they don't have extended family for her to be with.

Wow. Sorry pp. Your brother is a jerk. I won't touch on his wife.

OP - just b/c they take a few nice vacations a year doesn't mean they have a lot of extra $$. My DH and I save throughout the year to take a nice vacation yearly, but we have to budget for everything else.

Anonymous wrote:I would like to have a closer relationship with my niece but I am poor, single, fat and rent an apartment while my brother and his wife are rich, own, skinny and haughty and they don't really encourage us to have a relationship. Though my brother talks all the time about how sad it is that they don't have extended family for her to be with.

I'm fat, too, so I understand how isolating and excluding it can be. Do you ask for time alone with your niece? Do you invite her to do things with you? If her parents are haughty and negative about fat people, it might be a real gift to this child to see a loving, active, positive fat person in her life. I don't see how being a poor, single renter would make any difference, unless you can't afford to travel to them. What do you say to your brother when he bemoans the lack of extended family? ("Ralph, I would love to be closer to my niece and spend more time with her. How can we make that happen?")

I honestly don't get you, OP. Your daughter has a loving aunt and uncle who remember her birthday with a gift, send her a gift at Christmas, and see her at least once a year. When they see her they are attentive and loving. That sounds awesome!!!! You sound incredibly entitled and frankly a jerk...that is a LOT of generosity and love from an aunt/uncle who are not actually close to their sibling. They don't live physically close and they're not emotionally close yet they make the effort to be generous and thoughtful.

(As an aside, I send my nephews Amazon gifts every Christmas and birthday. I take hours to choose each one, trying to find a good one. The idea that I would get marked off for something like not wrapping the gifts myself makes me physically ill. But it sounds just like my bitchy SIL to make this conclusion.)

If you want a closer relationship, I think you have a good "in" with the guardianship in the will. Maybe your DH could start a conversation like, "Candi and I are working on settling our wills and other matters just in case anything happens to us. There is no one in the world that we trust more to raise our daughter than you two, and we would like to be able to name you as guardians if you would agree. If we do that, though, we'd really love for Brittani to have a deeper relationship with you. We would love to visit with you more often but we can't afford to fly to you more than once a year. Would you consider maybe taking a longer vacation with us each year in Florida when we visit Mom and Dad? Or maybe we could start a tradition of meeting at a beach house for a long weekend every year? We would also LOVE it if you would come visit us at our house -- you are welcome any time."

Then invite them often.

FWIW, only one of my many aunts and uncles ever sent me a Christmas present. A flannel nightgown every year. It was so incredibly nice of her. But I still loved my other aunts and uncles and still developed relationships with them even though I typically saw them no more than once a year until I was an adult and visited on my own. I think your expectations are way out of whack for an aunt and uncle who aren't local.

Anonymous wrote:Yeah, the shipping from Amazon is really petty OP. Your post makes you sound like a PITA...no wonder they don't want much to do with you!

+1 I'm close with my sister and you'd hate me as an aunt...not only do I ship through Amazon, I don't even pay for gift wrap! But my sister doesn't either when she sends gifts to my kids. We're cheap and the kids have fun just opening the big brown box. For xmas, we wrap each other's gifts to our respective kids.

Anonymous wrote:You chose to have a child. They didn't. They have absolutely no obligation to you, your DH, or your child. You can be sad that your DD doesn't have a loving aunt/uncle relationship in her life, but also be aware that you have no right to expect it. Don't try to force it.

Agree.

Regarding the issue of guardianship, I'd talk to your husband about selecting someone who has a closer relationship with your children if that's what you would want in the event of your deaths. A guardian doesn't have to be a married couple, nor does it have to be a family member.