I’ve ranted before about my mother-in-law. Well this blog is in appreciation of her. She loves her son very much and has bent over backwards to be nice to me even after we had nasty fights. She loves my kids unconditionally and has always treated my 2 older children just like my youngest, who is her actual bio grandchild. I will always be thankful to her for that because I know women whose in-laws don’t accept the step-grandchildren as relatives and won’t embrace them as family or spend time with them.

She takes the kids almost every week for a day after school, they stay until bedtime. They look forward to this so much, and love her so. She has other traditions for the kids like every christmas season she takes them to the big mall downtown and they spend the day. They have a special breakfast and lunch and go shopping and stuff. She also does special outings for them that me and Brian don’t do or can’t afford to, like she will take them to the movies often.

She is our emergency contact person for the schools in case they can’t reach me or Brian or in case we aren’t near home and can come get them, which has happened before with each child. When Scott broke his thumb on the playground a few years ago, I was in the library and had mistakenly turned my cell phone off rather than on silent/vibrate. Once Todd had a very high fever and I was working 20 miles away, so she went and got him. Iyende had mild food poisoning and Brian and I were both working, so she went and got her and took care of her.

She is a good cook and has given me some really good recipes over the years. and she taught me how to make apple sauce! She has also given us a lot of nice and useful gifts like a microwave and rice cooker, and plenty of clothing for the kids. A few times when we were short on cash and had little food she would give us food after bringing the kids back home, saying stuff like, This is way to much for just us two (like a 20 pound bag of rice) can ya’ll use it? Or I had a taste for oranges but we can’t eat up all of these (like 3 bags clementine oranges). To this day I don’t know if she knew (because Brian and I were both too ashamed and proud to ask either of our families) how little food we had or if she was just being nice. Very kind either way.

I am very glad I have her to depend on and help me with raising our kids. She is a wonderful woman and excellent grandmother. I was musing about having another baby and posted a pic of me and Brian from when Todd was a newborn the other day, these are from the same set of pics. I love this pic of her and actually have it hanging in my kitchen. Seeing it again close up though I realized how big a part she is in my kids’ lives and how much that means to me, hence the appreciation blog. My MIL is an ok lady:

My father-in-law holding Todd in this one, Brian is holding Scott (who had just turned 3 four days before!) and Iyende is in front. She was 8:

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.