Update...
Again, as the weekend approaches, we have asked my MIL to sit with our son for a few hours this afternoon/evening while we clean house and decompress.
As per usual, she is babysitting my niece. Today, when my husband asked if she was planning to babysit our son this afternoon, she said that she isn't feeling well, and has asked her friend to come over and watch our niece while my MIL takes a nap.
To me, this is crazy making. We need help, my MIL lives two floors below us in the same apartment complex, and can watch my niece all weekend but balks at watching our son for a few hours.
It might be easier if she just came out and said "I choose to spend my time and energy watching my granddaughter, so I don't have much time or energy for my grandson", instead of making big claims about how much she just LIVES to spend time with both of them.
I asked my husband to plan in advance a couple of days per week that she could sit with our son...that way, she gets some time with him, and we have a bit of peace and quiet for a few hours to get things done, meditate, or whatever we need to do.
She agreed to this, and my husband is under the impression that Wednesdays and Saturdays were the days agreed upon, with reasonable flexibility as things come up for her.
And yet, every time we ask her to babysit, it feels like some sort of huge production because she is drained from working all week and watching my niece every weekend. That's how I see it, anyway.
I am looking for solutions...
Clearly, I cannot depend on my MIL as much as she would like to claim for simple babysitting efforts with her grandson, but I still need that personal time for myself, and I am sure that my husband needs it too.
I don't want to pay someone to watch my son, and I don't trust him with just anyone. I know that at least my MIL takes good care of him while she's babysitting.
I may be seeing this from a skewed perspective, I'm not really sure. What I'm experiencing right now is a knee-jerk reaction to what seems like a weird, unhealthy imbalance with how my MIL approaches spending time with her grandchildren, and it's affecting me directly.
Like I said, I'm brainstorming for solutions for how my husband and I can have some quiet time together in our home a couple of times a week (I don't think that's an unreasonable desire), but not pay a fortune for babysitting, or resort to leaving our son with people we don't know.
Sorry for the rant, but I'm really experiencing the affects of a trigger.
I can't place my finger on what the trigger is, exactly...maybe the hypocrisy that I am judging my MIL as having, or the feeling (right or wrong) that she is showing significantly more concern for spending time with my niece than with my son, and for helping my BIL and his wife whenever they need it, as opposed to helping my husband and I on what seems like the few occasions that we ask her for help.
Today, as usual, she has my niece for the entire weekend while my BIL is at work and his wife is doing whatever it is that she does with her weekends to herself.
I need to clean, meditate, think about my upcoming therapy appointment and what I want to talk about, etc., and it would be so nice if my MIL were as helpful to us as she is to my BIL and his wife (who, as far as I am aware, spends her weekends to herself getting wasted with her friends).
Yes, I'm feeling a lot of anger and judgment right now, and self-righteous indignation.
I will work on trying to find that place of acceptance that this is just how it is, it's not acceptable to me, but I can't change it, and try to find ways that I can take care of my own needs, my son's needs, and the needs of my home and marriage without help from my MIL.
