Hi everyone,

I had a great week last week, but it's set to go downhill this week.

I'm re-organizing my life. I have 3 children, 5,3, 7mths. I'm breastfeeding my little girl. We moved into a new house and neighborhood last march when I was 6 mths pregnant. It's smaller than our old house and has way more windows so very little room for furniture. Result: 2/3 of our things are still in boxes in the garage. I recently started taking a multivitamin, and I think that, combined with the 2:5 diet, has given me the energy I lacked to reclaim my life. I've just been coasting along until recently, going with the flow, accepting everything because I didn't have the strength to do anything about it.... I found a thing called fly lady on the internet 2 weeks ago and I'm beginning to reclaim my house. The diet is helping me reclaim my body. Hopefully, the energy will help me put myself out there and make some friends (I'm in France and sahms seem to be very rare here!).

So here's the hard bit: my inlaws (french) keep visiting. It started when I was due number 3, they came for a month. Then, for 3 months dh had to go abroad every 2 weeks for work. He asked them to come help out. After the first trip I asked him to tell them not to. Of course 2 days into the trip dd ended up in hospital and we all (except the baby) got foot and mouth. Dh called them and asked them to come back. They came again for Christmas from nov to jan, and just came back on Friday for 2 weeks. Mil doesn't like my cooking and takes over the kitchen when she comes - which was fine, she's a fabulous cook. But, she uses at least a liter of oil every week! That, I can handle. She also passes comment on everything I do / don't do. And everything everyone else does/doesn't do. This is much harder for me to handle. Actually, I think some of my fresh energy came from 6 consecutive weeks of not being knocked down all the time. Everything I try to do, or every idea I have she finds a dozen reasons why it won't work and is a stupid idea. She even talked dh out of buying me the clothes dryer he promised me for Christmas! (I bought myself one 2 weeks ago).
I don't want to tell her I'm trying to loose weight as she'll just convince me it's a waste of time and redouble her comments about everything I put in my mouth. She has no sympathy for my chocolate problem She never says anything nice about anyone and you'd think she hated her husband the way she gives out about what an idiot he is, "you have to tell him how to do everything and even then he gets it wrong, he's worse than a child, he can't even blow his nose without being told to".

Sorry about the long, irrelevant post I really need to vent, she upsets the kids too. My 3 year old constantly sucks on his hand when she's here and refuses to eat if she's watching him. Today I ate about 7 crepes with raspberry jam and Nutella while she commented on how I'll eat jam but not real fruit... I think I ate the last 2 just to spite her? 3 days down, 9 to go...