Wednesday, April 11, 2007

I'm not the greatest friend in the world, and I really don't have a lot of close friends. I'm OK with that (For anyone reading, I really like that friends I do have). I am able to socialize with people that I don't really connect with and am civil to people I don't really care for. And when it comes to family, I think this skill is very important.

As I've said before, I come from a very big family, and obviously you are going to have many different personalities. Some of the people are crazy and others are just dense. Some of them I actually enjoy chatting with and others cause me to keep any conversation as brief as possible (I must remember to share the story about stealing candy from a baby -- it really happened to Jack). And that's just my family. My husband's family is another story.

Over the years, D has encouraged me to spend time with certain people in his family. I'm not talking about a group activity. He would tell me I should call certain people up and get together for dinner or something. The problem is I really have nothing in common with them. As women, we are quite opposite. Almost every conversation feels awkward, but after almost 12 years, I've learned to deal with it. I can suggest grabbing a bite to eat with my MIL and SIL without D tagging along, but I don't do it often.

I don't think it's important that I become best friends with D's family -- only that I don't come between him and his family. I've seen the problems daughters-in-law can cause when they shut out or limit time with their husbands' families. I see it happening now in my extended family, and I just want to shake the girl. Life is too difficult enough to cause additional familiy drama when it doesn't have to be that hard. Nobody is too good that they can't apply the old saying "grin and bear it."

As long as I don't have to be best friends with my in laws and D can accept it, we will get along fine. My relationship with my MIL hasn't always been perfect, but what relationship is?

In other news, Baby has his first official illness -- bronchitis. He's on two prescriptions. I didn't hesitate to give him the first, but I wasn't looking forward to giving him the second. When Jeremy was on the same med as a baby, he hardly slept during the night. We found out later one side effect is hyperactivity! However, so far, baby is sleeping with no problem. Hope I didn't just jinx myself.

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