Just Thinking

All flowers in this post are from last year.

I have been AWOL from blogging for a while. Have you noticed that if you aren't blogging every week, it gets easier to just not blog? That is how it is for me right now. Also I am having that malady that Thumper was warned about in Bambi, the movie not the book. If you can't say anything nice don't say anything at all.

 

 I am going to write about something today that is on my heart. When I was little and I would play,"When I grow up" I loved playing house. I loved cleaning and arranging and my favorite things to play with were stuffed animals and Raggedy Ann and Andy. I did have fleeting ideas of growing up and being a mother. Then when I did grow up and began this lovely part of my life as a mother. I can tell you the one thought I never had in my whole life was that I would be a mother-in-law. Not a single one! Ever!

 

I remember the morning when it dawned on me. I was one. There aren't too many books written on that.
I realized that I had two choices, I could be a good mother in law, like my grandmother was to my Dad. Or I could be one like Agnes Moorehead in Bewitched. I pondered that.

 

I am now a mother-in-law four times over. Here is the best advice I can give to those of you have not entered into this phase of your life. It isn't hard I don't think, it is just a matter of choice. Be nice.
Don't give advice until asked. Bite your tongue off if you have to. Love your new family member with your whole heart. See only the good and keep your eyes firmly shut to the things you don't. But most of all.
Love them, and love them and love them some more. Do not tell the mate the shortcomings of the other one.
Its their life, a new family. They will do things different from you. ITS OKAY!  They are learning and growing and trying new things.

When you get your feelings hurt, and you will. Go into your shower and cry your eyes out, and put on an happy face and forgive. Open your hands and don't hang on to your child that is now a man or a woman. They are grown up and they need to be treated as such, not a child any longer. Most importantly, the person God has brought into your family is a gift. They are a gift to your son or daughter and they are a gift to your family. Treat them as that, not as a enemy who has stolen your child.

 

I can tell you from experience now. It is so much easier for me to act like a A** That just comes natural to me. Being nice on the other hand is not. I make mistakes, and say things I shouldn't. Most of the things I stumble at are when I stop taking my own advice. Just ask Kessie and Ryan at Thanksgiving. My Mom part was in overdrive. I did and said things I shouldn't just because I was like a Momma Bear. When my girls have babies, I get pretty bossy. The one thing I have found, is my lovely family by marriage, is so forgiving and loving and understanding to me and my foibles.

Well now that I have that off my chest, I will get back to this mundane stuff I do around here. Like I have three rugs I need to get bound.

I hope your day is lovely, thank you for stopping by. I keep learning these things, and I just thought I would share them.

~Kim~

“She turned to the sunlight
    And shook her yellow head,
And whispered to her neighbor:
    "Winter is dead.”
― A.A. Milne, When We Were Very Young