Monday, August 13, 2007

Who is the bad mother now?


A couple of years ago I got into an argument with my FIL about where the girls should sleep when they were out on Long Island.

See, when the girls were small my ILs thought that les filles would wake up in the middle of the nights, get disoriented and fall down the stairs (since of course, we have no stairs at our house in Chicago) Fun Daddy and I indulged his parents and the girls ended up sleeping in their very large walk in closet. They even outfitted the closet with two twin beds.

Several years later, this system was less than ideal. See, the girls were used to being able to get up in the middle of the night to visit the bathroom. And they were used to their way being guided by a series of night lights. The problem? Well Nana and Papa need an absolute blackout to sleep and the night lights were not acceptable. What did this mean? The girls would wake up try to figure out where they were going in the pitch dark, give up and wet the bed. Surprisingly enough this irritated my ILs.

So one day when the girls were 6 and 5, and my ILs were not at home, I switched their rooms from the traditional closet to the upstairs bedrooms that had always been referred to as "the girl's room". I even bought waterproof mattress pads lest I was mistaken.

Instead of viewing this as my right as their mother, I was berated by my FIL for blaming him for the girls accidents and because I was exposing them to sure death. See, in the room next door,(not their room) in a closet that had no knobs (duh)was his rifle for skeet shooting.

Yes, I was the bad mother. Purposely endangering my children just to defy him. Naturally, when I raised my voice, Fun Daddy complained that I was picking on his poor defensely Daddy and should knock it off. (and yes, my life often appears to be taking place in a parallel universe like that)

This week, Fun Daddy and FIL decided to try to get in some skeet shooting... Unfortunately it rained. But when I got back from running my errands that morning and came upstairs this is what I found.

Yup.

Not in the closet

Just sitting right there.

I hate my life

2 comments:

Randy said...

I have called Child Protective services for you. They will be there in the morning to arrest your FLI and kick Fun Daddy in the balls- oh wait, he doesn't have any!

camccune said...

My spouse also wants a gun in the house. We have no kids, so that's not the problem...but I don't like them and don't ever want to see them. So that's our deal: the gun remain out of my sight (and, thus, out of my mind).

By the way, I have a couple pics of you from BlogHer at my Flickr page at http://www.flickr.com/photos/cynmccune/.