Tonight there are just four of us for the first time since Andrew was 5 days old: George’s mom is on her way back to Hungary. It was great to have her here, but two months is a long time for ANY visitor, and I must say it’s a bit of a relief to have the house back to ourselves.

Many people have called me a saint for hosting my mother-in-law for this long, and right after having a baby. I’m not a saint. I’m just tolerant, I guess. She IS the woman who let her son go 4600 miles away to America, and he is now my (amazing) husband and the father of my children. It’s only fair that she gets to descend upon us for an extended stay now and then to offer lots of unsolicited advice, share my hair dryer (I rarely use it anyway these days), and help us exceed our daily caloric requirements every day… right?

In the spirit of sharing, here are some tips for surviving 9.75 weeks with your mother-in-law!

Things will go more smoothly if:

1. She keeps busy. Oliver did not warm up to her very much (not entirely her fault—he’s not good with strangers, although I DO think she gave up on him too quickly), and I was doing 99% of caring for Andrew (he’s my last baby, and I wanted to, you know?). So instead of playing with the kids, she… painted. A LOT. One mention of the Eternal Bathroom Project (*cough* slacker husband *cough cough*) and she took over. Here are a couple before-and-afters:

The flooring still needs replaced, but we’ll worry about that later. It’s already MUCH better. No more Scary Bird Nest Border, woo!

She also repainted our entire living room/dining room, which used to be blue (as seen in the background of our 2007 Christmas photo). It is now a neutral “pearl” shade in preparation for selling the house. (Ignore all the books on the table in the back of the top photo–we’re reorganizing our bookshelves!)

To top it off, she painted the hallway and ALL the doors/trims AND all the ceilings in the house, so that was a HUGE help and we’re very grateful for her hard work!

2. She speaks another language. It’s easier to ignore those passive-aggressive comments when you don’t understand what she’s saying! heh. For example, most people who see this on our piano say, “What a cute picture!”

But my mother-in-law, to George: “I don’t understand why she likes black picture frames so much.” (I happen to have a collection of black and white photos in black frames in the living room, as seen in this living room photo from tip #1. But the rest of the frames in the house are other colors, so…?) That’s just a fairly benign example. She criticized me for a million things; thankfully, I was oblivious to it most of the time. BUT—she told George I was a good mother. And in the end, that’s all that counts, to me.

3. She snores loudly. No, seriously. I wouldn’t joke about this except that she jokes about it herself. Between her snoring and the fan we run on a low setting in the hallway (so Andrew’s night wakings don’t wake up Oliver), we didn’t have to worry about the baby waking her up. Also, George and I weren’t exactly, umm, chaste or anything, so it helped that, too… lol.

I won’t say I’ll miss being witnessed in all my unshowered, bleary-eyed glory every morning, but in the end I can’t begrudge her a single day because she missed most of Oliver’s growing up for the past 3 years and we don’t know when we’ll get to see her again. I know she loved being with her son and grandkids, although she probably wishes we either a) had another summer baby, or b) lived somewhere warmer! Being stuck indoors most of the time was hard on all of us but I hope she at least enjoyed spending the holidays here.

Now that she’s gone, I’ll have to cook for the first time since October. Thankfully she left me a bunch of her recipes! YUM.

First thing’s first, though. Time for a big glass of wine. Here’s to a return of “normal” family life!