My vent:

Every time I see my MIL she puts her fingers in my baby's mouth to feel around for teeth. Despite me saying "no he isn't getting any more teeth, I checked."

She even does this while we are out in public - why would she stick her germy fingers in my baby's mouth? I wouldn't stick my fingers in HER mouth to say hello. I don't even stick my fingers in the baby's mouth because a) germs and b) I don't want him to think it's okay to bite fingers.

*ahhhh*

Ew! Whatever happened to asking? My dad is a freaking pediatrician, and if he wanted to know about my son's teeth, he'd ask. If he wanted to see them, he'd make him laugh or smile. I only ever did it to feel for teeth, and I made sure my hands were clean first.

I don't even know where to start with this, but suffice it to say that my MIL and I don't really get along. We don't hate each other or anything, but she just gets under my skin, and she pushes me past my comfort zone to force a relationship that really shouldn't be forced. I probably wouldn't mind so much if she didn't try so hard.

But I have to share this story... Imagine it's 2005.

My husband and I were engaged, and we were in Georgia for the summer, since that's where he is from and where we had planned to move after we both finished law school the following year (after which point we would get married). We had a wedding date set and everything, so it was clear that this was not something we were taking lightly.

We were living with his grandmother (ugh), but my MIL and FIL's lake house was about an hour away. The policy on the lake house is that any of us can use it, just be gentle with it, clean it up before you leave, and if there's something that needs to be done (like a gutter is clogged and needs attention), do it. It's worked for years, and the rule went that if you needed a specific weekend at the lake house to yourself - say you just want a weekend alone or you want to bring friends out there or something - just say so, and no one will bother you. My FIL (who's easy-going like my husband and his two brothers) even told us that we should set aside a couple of weekends to go up there by ourselves to sort of "honeymoon," since we both had stressful summer jobs.

So we decided we would do that. Long story short, we would tell everyone the lake house was off-limits because we wanted to be up there, everyone would agree, and then someone would show up. So we'd say, "Ok, then, next weekend is ours." And someone would show up. This happened no less than 5 times before we gave up. Every excuse in the book was used to justify their presence, but honestly I believe that my MIL didn't want us to be alone up there because we weren't married yet and would convince someone to make up an excuse to be there.

I guess it's probably pretty important to mention at this point that my MIL is a Methodist minister.

Now the lake house isn't very big. There are only two bedrooms plus a loft area, so when everyone goes up at the same time, it's rather crowded and means that some people have to sleep on couches or on the floor.

One time we were up there on a weekend where everyone was to be up there except the one brother who lived farther away. Besides us, that was one brother, his wife and son, Grandma, and MIL and FIL. Grandma went to bed early up in the loft area, and since she is a loud snorer, no one wanted to sleep up there on the other bed. MIL and FIL took the master bedroom, as usual, and my BIL and his family *insisted* that we take the other bedroom, since there were only two of us, and the three of them would happily camp out in the family room (plus my nephew was younger at the time and got up really early, so if we had slept in the family room, we'd get woken up pretty early).

I guess my MIL did not realize that my husband and I - again, engaged but not married - had gone to sleep in the other bedroom. Alone. In the same bed.

Now we are respectful people and were not doing anything, um, unholy, but when we sat down to breakfast, my MIL sat down with us and said that she didn't approve of our sleeping together in the same room because fornication is a sin, and the devil might force us to fornicate, thus using us to get to her.

I think my cereal nearly fell out of my mouth. I was being given a "sex talk" at 25.

She offered to marry us privately at her church, and then we could have our wedding the following October (over a year later). I said we needed to talk about it, and my husband and I quickly hurried out of the house to take a walk. He was as mortified as I was, and we decided that her solution would not work because it would essentially be lying to all of our wedding guests the following year, nor did we want our wedding to be basically us and her and no one else important to us.

When we got back to the house, FIL basically met us at the door and said that he didn't agree with her assessment of the situation but suggested that we all sit down and pray about it to reassure her that although we were not yet married we were indeed committed to marriage. (FIL's thought process was that by being engaged we had already agreed to marry, so, you know...)

MIL was fine with that, so we complied, and she married us in October of the following year.

But I have never forgotten it, nor do I think I ever will.

ETA that the TL;DR version is that when my husband and I were engaged but not yet married, my minister-MIL decided to have a premarital sex talk with us because she was afraid the devil was making us fornicate, in other words, using us to get to her. I was 25, and my husband was 27. And that's more or less how she and I started off our relationship, which has never quite been on the right foot.

I guess my problem is my MIL made all these promises to us to get us to move up here. She lured us with free babysitting, helping me out with our son ( we only had one at the time). Both my parents were still working at the time and getting ready to retire so I was excited to have help so I move 12 hours away from where I am comfortable to be in a strange town where I know absolutely no one. Needless to say all her promises were empty. She lives 4 miles from me and has never seen where I live. Keep in mind I have been living in the same place for 6 years. I have to bring the kids to her when she has time regardless of what I am doing. I have to drop everything when she or her sister need something or want to see the kids. Also her sister who lives only 2 miles from me has never seen my daughter and she is 5 months old.

When I do take the kids to see my MIL all she does is complain about my SIL who is forever pregnant and who I can't stand anyway (she says that I let other people raise my kids since I work full time). Needless to say I live in a town where I still do not have any friends because I am considered a southerner and I am supposedly slow and lazy my closest relative is 7 hours away and my son hates it here too. My hubby and I have been looking for jobs elsewhere for over a year. Can't wait to get away from this woman. My parents are both retired now too and they see my kids more often than the woman who lives 4 miles away and they are 7 hours away. Pretty sad huh???

my daughter is 10 months old and every time we go to their house, despite me telling them she cant have certain foods, they just stick ANYTHING in her mouth. I find myself telling them all the time. Ugh, so annoying.