A former boss of mine with a HILARIOUS sense of humour used to refer to my (and everyone else’s) in-laws as “the out-laws”. He also used to use the oft-used-at-that-time-in-business-circles phrase “open the kimono” which just gave me a mental image of him that makes me shudder just writing that. I actually had to stop typing for a minute to shudder. Anyway. The in-laws are visiting this week, which is fine: I get along with them just fine and they dote on the boys, who are their only grandchildren.

But despite the above, I always get a little anxious before their arrival getting things ready and it is ALL FOR NAUGHT. These people are incredibly laid-back about planning their visits. They don’t stay with us, they stay in a hotel, so they come over for a visit…whenever. They will go out to eat dinner by themselves or they will come over…whatever I want. This level of easy-going-ness is what makes me anxious.

You see, I come from a very large extended family who are (and I say this lovingly) a little crazy and very family-oriented, and there is always, always, some sort of feud going on between some members of the family. Someone is always not talking to someone else because of a real or imagined slight, or some kind of offense is taken, or someone doesn’t like someone’s spouse. You get the picture. Despite this, like I said the family is very clan-oriented and there are a few unspoken rules: a) if you visit, you stay at someone’s house, and b) you spend as much time as possible with the person you are visiting.

So you can see why my in-laws’ good intentions make me anxious. They like not staying with us, and truth be told, I like it too. They like eating some meals in restaurants, and hey, I don’t mind. But still, I have this constant feeling like I should be doing more, cooking more, making them at home in our (teeny tiny) spare room, just the way it was when I was growing up. This is why I think so many people have problems with their in-law relationship – it’s the melding of two different family structures and two different levels of expectation.

What do you think? Do you think most in-law issues could be solved just by accepting the fact that your spouse’s family does things differently?

“I need a spoon!” Jake said brightly this morning, retrieving a old plastic baby one from the drawer. “What do you need a spoon for, honey?” I asked. “It’s my dolly!” he replied. I smiled and continued on with the dishes.

A few minutes later, I looked up to see him, a toy monster truck in hand, driving over the spoon. “Take that, dolly!”

The past few days have been just lovely around here. Snow has been melting and the sun has been shining. “Spring has sprung!” was the ill-informed chorus on the street. I was walking the dog yesterday through a brisk, cold wind that was surely an indicator that the weather was changing. I spotted many joggers of that particular breed of Calgarian who disregard all thermometers and wind chill factors in favour of sunny and clear skies, and as a result are in shorts, their bare legs purple with the cold. And, sure enough, I woke up this morning to a foot of heavy wet snow. It’s still snowing.

MARCH IS NOT SPRING. At least, March in Calgary is not spring. Nearly every year, the poor misinformed spring bulbs will make their appearance in March only to be destroyed by heavy, wet snow. Sadly, this year has been too cold for those bulbs to pop up. But, spring is coming, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Today marks the end of the family clay class that I have been taking the boys to, every Thursday for the past nine weeks. I breathed a sigh of relief as we walked back to the van, clay turtles and volcanic islands in hand. You see, I hated clay class. I dreaded it every week. The boys, on the other hand, loved it, and so I kept my feelings to myself.

I was the only mom there with two children to deal with. I would look around and the other moms would be focusing their attention on their child and their clay sculpture, which would inevitably look like what it was supposed to look like. Suns would look like suns, complete with rays and smiling faces. Then I would look down at my little hyenas, one of whom would be adding a fifth eye to his sun, the other sculpting a sock to stick to his sun’s face. I would look at the other moms, painting and glazing with appropriate colours and detailing, and then I would look at my children, who had apparently ingested a hallucinogen of some sort, painting their sculptures in a strange and alarming array of colour. The entire class I would be crazily busy keeping up with them, helping them in their bizarre art, and not giving either of them very focused attention. On bad days, it sort of felt like a metaphor for my life.

I never for a moment have regretted having my children so close together. They are true playmates who share so many similar interests. However, I do feel that most days it is just impossible to give solid, focused attention on just one child at a time. I once read a parenting article that advocated spending thirty minutes per day giving one-on-one time to each child. I remember after reading that wondering how anyone could actually feasibly do that. Maybe by locking one child in his room for half an hour, so I could do a craft with the other? Hmm. That just doesn’t seem right.

Most days, I feel that the constant existence of a playmate in the form of a sibling more than compensates for the lack of one-on-one attention from me. And so even though the session is over, I will have many haphazard, colourful, crazy pieces of art to remind me of this time, when it was the three of us, together in our clay class.

In one week, Rob and I will have been married for seven years. For weeks I’ve been joking about getting the seven year itch. “Uh oh,” I’ll say, “I’m getting itchy!” and he will smile at me indulgently. That smile, that indulgence, is one of the many reasons I love him so much. He is indulgent and patient when it comes to me: my moods, my occasional crying jags, my wine consumption. He brings me Gerber daisies and listens to my stories, he buys me wine and rubs my back. He is a very good husband.

We have been parents for five out of the seven years that we have been married; in fact, our first child was born on our second anniversary (although I do not actually recommend the delivery room as a romantic anniversary destination). When Mark was a baby, and I would get together with my new mom’s group, conversations would always start out about nursing, and diapers, and our lack of sleep, and then they would morph into discussions about our husbands. “He was complaining about being TIRED,” someone would say, and we would all nod our heads in agreement, since moms have the market cornered on tiredness. “He went for a beer after work!” someone else would say and we would commiserate and talk about how we had to make dinner one-handed, with a baby on one hip. We were exhausted, hormone-deranged, overwhelmed with our new motherly responsibilities, and a little resentful that our husbands’ lives had not changed so entirely and absolutely, as ours had. Looking back, I can see that our husbands’ lives did change in just as substantial a way, even though they were still heading out to work in the morning instead of facing a day in the house with a newborn and a mountain of laundry.

Having a baby can put an enormous strain on a relationship, but it is also such a blessing. When I first met Rob, almost thirteen years ago, I would smile when I saw him, so ruggedly handsome in his CAT boots and jeans and fleece vest from Mountain Equipment Co-Op, with his longish hair on his forehead. Now he comes home from work, still ruggedly handsome, but in a suit and with much shorter, greyer hair. And I smile, and marvel at my fortune.

What, did I leave you hanging? I’m happy to report that Mark is 100% healthy and Jake is approaching that point. Mark had one of those illnesses I always hope for when the kids are sick, in that he was feverish, non-eating and sloth-like for one day, and completely well again the next day. I love when that happens! I mean, I don’t love the sick part, but it’s great when the recovery is quick and not like our Christmastime let’s-be-sick-and-have-it-drag-out-for-weeks fiasco. Jake was slightly slower to recover but it seems like they will be able to attend preschool tomorrow afternoon THANK YOU LORD. Because I don’t know about your children, but mine are kind of horrible to be around once they have passed the lying-around stage and are in the getting-our-energy-back-but-have-cabin-fever-and-must-shriek-and-whine-all-day stage. So I’m looking forward to tomorrow.

I’m really happy to be over it though, because as I mentioned, I have a birthday party to throw on Saturday! It’s Mark’s fifth, although his actual birthday isn’t for another week. This is the first party where he was really particular about his guest list (“I only want to invite boys. Except you, Mom”.) My lovely, dearest friend is the queen of party planning; her daughters’ parties always have themes, and often destinations, and appropriate activities, whereas I am decidedly NOT the queen of party planning, if you know what I’m saying. But – and who knew! – the internet is just full of party ideas! So we are having a superhero themed party, complete with the afore-mentioned “decorate your own bat” craft, “Mr. Freeze Dance”, and a superhero obstacle course. Also, my mother sewed little capes with each child’s initial on it for a party favour. Let me tell you, it is handy to have a mother who likes to sew and who also likes to do things for her grandchildren. Props to Grandma. This is especially nice since my lovely, dearest friend can tell you I am no seamstress, as well as no party planner. We met in ninth grade and sat next to each other in Home Ec (do they still have Home Ec?) and chatted while she sewed her actually-wearable t-shirt and I ripped out stitches over and over until my t-shirt was a shred of material with holes in it. Also I am completely unable to sew on buttons. I digress.

Thanks for all the finger-crossing, it looks like we will make it until Saturday! That is, unless I commit myself to the asylum from all the shrieking and whining around here. Cross your fingers that won’t happen!

Did you know that there is a huge upside to minus twenty temperatures? If you have two sick kids, and they don’t want to drink the amount of liquids that they should be drinking, you can rummage around in the basement to find the box of Freezies left over from the summer, put them outside, and within the hour they will be frozen! Freezies! In the winter! The novelty alone caused the boys to consume many, many of the frozen treats, which caused a mid-afternoon attitude rally. I call THAT a small, sick day miracle.

Oh Lord, I’m bored. I am almost writing a song about being bored. The boys are the kind of sick where they don’t feel like doing anything – stories, crafts, etc. – but watching TV. So, being the great mom that I am, the TV has been on almost all day. Mark summed it up by saying “I don’t want to watch this show. But I’m going to watch it.”

So I’ve been spending the day baking awesome peanut butter cookies, opening Freezies, and tracing and cutting out outlines of bats, the template for which was very kindly made by my younger brother, since my own artistic rendering of a bat looks more like a circle with two lopsided triangles attached to it. And why would I be spending hours cutting out construction paper bats, you might ask? It’s for Mark’s birthday party on Saturday, of course! Because getting sick for your birthday is the COOLEST. Cross your fingers we are all better by then. Mine will be.