Santa and the Easter Bunny Visit Nonna's too!

[jkm426]

Since reading some of the posts here I have come to realise how very fortunate I am with my DIL and DD.
You see Santa comes to Nonna's house early on Christmas Eve before we(all extended family)go to my sisters for our family celebration.  The Easter Bunny visits and leaves a basket at Nonna's because my grandkids are very special.  Cupid even gets in on the act. The best part not only does no one mind,  everyone loves it. 
I get to buy the big gifts(as well as DIL's parents)like the trampoline, basketball goal and bikes.  Games systems and electric Jeep.  For my DD's child(she is just 2) I have gotten to buy several large gifts.
My house was set up with all of the baby necessities and with toys which just stay here.  I take the kids(especially the older ones) to do all sorts of activities and have had my own car seat for each one.
That is why FDIL's "you are not going to get to XYZ(with children they don't even have)"I so hard for me.  Also why I don't do back flips to make her happy.  I have one great DIL and a SIL who are truly my bonus kids.  I am also the honorary Nonna to several of my DD's friends children.  I am not going to "kiss-up" to anyone.  I know my son is hurt because his future wife and I don't mesh like his brother's wife and I do, but this point not too much to be done. 

[elsieshaye]

My parents and ILs always gave gifts from Santa and the EB, even to me and then-DH!  DS didn't find it confusing, and it was cute.  After he no longer believed in either Santa or the EB, he asked if his aunt knew there was no Santa, because she still was addressing his gifts that way.    She still does, and he's 16. 

[Hope]

Franklyspeaking, I sense your regret that your family traditions caused problems between you and your dil.  My heart goes out to you and I feel I've had the same situation.  Could you continue your traditions w/o any expectation that everyone would be there together?  I am very interested in your post b/c we have family traditions that I feel have been trampled on and because of this forum and reading other perspectives, I've come to realize that I in no uncertain terms really expected that everyone would continue the traditions.  For instance, we have always throughout our children's entire lives went out to eat to celebrate our birthdays.  We continued to do this (our treat) even with our adult dc, but our dil told us we didn't have to do this for her on her first birthday after they were married.  I came back with, "of course we want to do this - you are an important part of our family" and we ended up compromising by celebrating both her and our ds's birthdays together since they are a month apart.  I have no reason to believe that anyone else in the family wasn't excited to have dinners out to celebrate the birthdays.  That was our tradition, but now I realize that I should have put the invitation out there w/o expecting that everyone would want to do it.  From now on, I'm just going to invite without asking everyone about their availability (no matter the occassion).  If someone wants to come and there's a conflict, they can tell me and I will reschedule - but if they say they can't come I'll understand.  That is what I've learned from the good people on this forum.  Maybe you already knew this, but it took one of Orly's 2x4's over my head to see it.  Sending you hugs - Hope

[Pen]

Hope, thanks for pointing this out to me - not that others haven't tried, LOL, but sometimes it takes a different approach to get through. That's why it's important to have thoughtful input from all sides.

A few months ago we found out that our DIL didn't like us. (I've posted elsewhere about this shattering turn of events and don't want to bore anyone unneccesarily.) The next Christmas, we asked DS what DIL wanted - he said,"Don't go overboard on her, Mom, really. You don't have to get her anything." I replied, "Of course we'll get her something, and we'll spend on her what we spend on all our kids." I was so convinced that was the right thing to do! But now I'm rethinking my actions - I didn't ask him why because I didn't want to get into a situation where we would be talking about her behind her back. I wanted to show him that we accepted her. Also, I didn't want her feelings to be hurt when everyone opened nice gifts and she had either nothing to open or something generic and meaningless. We didn't want to take the low road, etc. etc. Those are all admirable reasons, but they ignore the main point - that he asked for something and we didn't listen.

I don't know if he was trying to set us up to look bad; I don't know why he might do that, but it's one possibility. Maybe he was still ticked off at her attitude towards us. Maybe she'd stated to him that she hated us so much she didn't want us to acknowledge her materially - like we'd give her cooties or something. Maybe she knew she'd feel guilty for giving me and DDD cheap, thoughtless presents (DS bought something nice for his dad, but left "the girls gifts" to DIL.)

We should have listened. It made us feel good to do what we thought was the right & kind thing to do, but maybe it made them feel worse. 
What do you MILs and DILs think?

[cremebrulee]

I don't know how old you gals (MIL's) are, but I'm 61.  Today, I was thinking about some of your posts, and how I grew up...Yanno, years ago, when we were growing up, families were closer, we didn't drive that far...go on many vacations, except to the shore.  Anyway, we all grew up in a very small town...when we graduated...some went off to college or the military, but they came back to town, got jobs and stuck to those jobs for the rest of they're lives...family was priority, as well as traditions then...

However, its a whole different world now...people get jobs in other states, they move away, they move around, and go from job to job.  Along with that change, came a new generation...our DIL's with different traditions, perhaps they grew up in a larger town, without large families...or traditions like ours...?  While our traditions are sacred to us, and they are, they are not to our DIL's....our children are busy, raising they're kids, working, cleaning, and doing what parents do...and maybe that has a lot to do with it?  I dunno?

[Scoop]

JKM - I've been thinking about this all weekend.

First off, I don't think you should argue with FDIL about future-potential-not-even-conceived-yet babies.

Then I think you need to figure out WHY your DIL doesn't want you to do Santa gifts.  Because some people have really different ideas about Santa.  For example, in my SIL's family the Santa gifts were not wrapped.  In my house, all the Santa gifts have the same wrapping paper, and the same 'kind' of tags (that I had a coworker sign so that the writing is not even close to any DD's ever seen).  For my DH, Santa came while MIL was at midnight mass.  So if DIL's idea of "Santa" doesn't jive with yours, are you willing to compromise?

I think (when the time & the baby comes) you should tell DS and DIL that you can't stop giving Santa gifts to the other GC's when you've done it all this time.  And that you think they would notice and feel bad if their new little cousin were to be left out.  So what can you do to make it happen?  It could be having them approve the gift, it could be having it wrapped and tagged to match theirs, it could be a special letter explaining the circumstances in gold ink (approved by DIL).

I also think that if the older GC's no longer believe in Santa at the point that DS & FDIL's kids come along, it would be in your best interests to drop the rope and just make it an extra gift from Nonna.

[luise.volta]

Horror stories. True and terrible. And we can't change things sometimes. We can't fake closeness or fairness and we can't ignore rudeness and closed doors. What I did, when this happened to me years ago...was to collect my dignity (or what was left of it) and create distance most of the time and politeness when distance failed. My son eventually wised up and moved on but I never said a word until it was all history. (Since I am very verbal, I pictured invisible masking tape over my mouth! I'm serious!)

[Pen]

After my parents divorced, my mom and us kids had to come up with new ways to celebrate holidays and other events. When she passed on and us kids moved away from each other, we all made new traditions with our new families. Because of this history I'm not super-rigid about what we do or when we do it, thank goodness. We have little traditions like stockings, and the contents thereof, and not opening anything until Christmas morning that we must follow or the kids (big grownups that they are) mention it with sad puppy eyes. Leave the orange out of the toe of DDD's stocking and you'll hear about it! DH is a bit more stuck, and I respect his feelings, but now that DS & DIL are bound to do whatever her parents want he's got to change his ways or go without seeing DS for those special times.

I think the difficult holidays will be ahead - watching DIL's family get the big fun while we get an hour here or there. I remember knowing which grandparents were important and which weren't by the amount of time my parents spent with them, and I'm afraid I'm going to be in the not-important category. I'll just have to make sure we have quality time since I'm fairly certain we won't get much quantity.

[luise.volta]

Oh, Pen. The rest of my story above is that there were no grandchildren. I could never have been so cavalier if there had been.

[Pen]

That's such a great word, Luise - "cavalier"  - I picture you doffing your befeathered, tri-cornered hat and riding off into the sunset