My Mom, Your Mom

SCL's mother came to visit for the day yesterday. Too bad the weather was horrible, but she was a good sport about it. We went into the city for a few hours to visit some museums, an activity I always think will be more fun than it actually is. The Mall was ridiculously crowded (on a Saturday afternoon? Shocking!), but we visited some of the smaller buildings which were substantially less populated--and with good reason. They had very little inside them! That was perfectly fine with me because all I could think about was going home, putting on pajama pants, and eating lots of Milk Duds while watching Gossip Girl. Hosting on the weekend is challenging after a long week. And even though SCL's mom said, "Oh, don't worry about entertaining me," she did come to see us, so we couldn't very well leave her in our tiny apartment while we went on our merry way.

It's hard adjusting to another mothering style. SCL is an only child. I'm the youngest of three and the only girl. That alone constitutes substantial differences in parenting. By the time my mom had me, she basically had the whole parenting thing down to a science, and while she may try to give advice to my oldest brother, she rarely does so with me. I think she has figured out that motherly advice is usually not welcomed with open arms, even when it's asked for by a struggling child. Let's just say SCL's mom is not quite there yet. *grin*

Being a future daughter-in-law isn't easy. It's hard to just nod and agree when I definitely disagree, and I'm not particularly good at lying, even if just to put another person's mind at ease. I worry about how this will play out along the road: when we get married, when we buy a house, when we decide we'd like to have kids. When it is okay to say, "Thanks, but we've got it all taken care of"?