Just Wrong

http://www.chiaobama.com/
I have no words. This is just wrong.

Paternity Leave

Ok so this is probably not going to be a very welcomed notion but I honestly believe that in MOST cases extended paternity leave is stupid. I'm not talking about parents of preemies, sick children, multiples, spouses with massive post partum depression or complications, or couples that are waiting to get into daycare. I can understand the leave in these cases. However, people who take leave months after the child is born who are not doing it for bonding purposes but rather for an extended vacation are ridiculous. I'm sorry. My husband took 2 days off with our first child and 1 day with our second child. I just didn't need him to be at home with us during that time. All the baby is going to do is eat, sleep and poop. Sure he can change a diaper but he wasn't going to breastfeed the little nugget. After 7 weeks of maternity leave I went back to work. The first time I didn't have an option. I didn't qualify for the Family Medical Leave Act since I had only been at my job for 4 months. With my second child, I could have stayed home for 4 months. I was so antsy, I couldn't do it. I'm not busting on moms that take more time. I'm not busting on stay at home moms or stay at home dads for that matter. However, there are a lot of men where I work and where WonderDad work that view this as vacation time. F*CK OFF! Be a man and go to work you lazy bum!

Will this frustration never end?

So I've been irritable again lately. Big surprise. Mostly I've been agitated at my family. Not Wonderdad or the kids but rather my Mom, Dad and sister. Here's the deal. Last Thanksgiving Opa said that he and my mom would come visit this summer. We had taking the kids out there for the umpteenth time and they promised. Thus far no scheduled trips. They actually have not been here since Wonderboy was 2 months old.

My mom and I got into an argument back then about the fact that she could not press on my newborn's belly to get the gas out and that it was not a good idea to have a just fed baby in a verticle incline. She said she had been a mother longer than me. I said that's my kid. She threw a fit and locked herself in her bedroom. The next morning she started screaming at me like a maniac and tried to hit me while I was holding the baby. She then tried to swallow a bottle of pills. Well not really. She put all the pills in her mouth but didn't swallow any of them. She was just being dramatic. What can I say? The woman is insane. She then locked herself in her room and refused to come out and made my dad leave 8 hours early the next day for the airport that is 15 minutes from my house. She didn't speak to me for a year. It was a quiet year. She finally started talking to me again but she never apologized for her behavior. Wonderdad put his foot down and said that until she apologizes she can't stay in our house. They can come see the kids but she has to stay at a hotel. They have never been back.

Anyhow, they promised and they lied. Oma started saying that Opa had to go to Switzerland to get the steamer trunks that have been there for 30 years! How that prevents them from taking a 2 hour flight to see their grandkids I don't know. I was talking to her about Thanksgiving this year. She starts talking about how she has to go to Singapore and to go help my sister who is pregnant with her second child. I said that if she goes to Singapore this year she will not have seen the kids once this year at all since we won't travel to New York for Christmas. And I was annoyed about her going to see my sister.

I'm not evil and all but here's the thing. When I was due to give birth to the Alligator I asked if she was going to come down like she did with Wonderboy. She said, "You've done this before you don't need me." Thanks. So I was irritated that she was so adamant about having to go see my sister. Plus she said that now that my sister's husband is working full time they will need her help. I was pissed because my husband and I have always worked full time. She didn't even see the Alligator until he was 6 months old. She skipped his baptism. She skipped everything else. She only saw him at 6 months because I begged my folks to join my family on our family vacation to Tampa. If I hadn't she would not have seen him until he was a 1 year old. And we were talking at that time! Not that my dad is innocent in all of this either. It's not like he came to see the kids either.

Anyhow, I was talking to my sister and I mentioned that mom was going to visit her. I started to say that I was annoyed at first about the idea but I didn't even manage to get the sentance out. She cut me off and said that she didn't want to hear it. I told her that she could at least let me get the rest of my sentence out which was to say that I was annoyed at first but then Wonderdad reminded me that she was going to have a C-section and her daughter doesn't go to daycare like Wonderboy does so she probably would need the extra help. My Sister just continued to bitch me out and say that she wasn't choosing sides and she didn't want to hear about any of it. I got so annoyed at her yelling that I just hung up. I didn't feel like arguing with her. I didn't feel like pointing out that I wasn't asking her to choose sides. I just was talking and wanted to tell her how I felt.

The thing is that I know my mom doesn't like me. She is only nice when she wants something. It's always been that way. She likes my sister. My sister isn't a bad person. She's just self involved. She never visited me in college. She never let me visit her. She never cared about anything in particular in my life. Hell she wasn't even there when I graduated as salutatorian from high school. When I was a freshman in college I knitted her a beautiful blanket in her school colors. She put it UNDER her mattress so that her mattress wouldn't slip. She's seen the Alligator once at her daughter's baptism. My husband was a godparent. At her wedding I was told the week before that I would be doing a reading and I wasn't given the reading until the morning of the wedding. After saying that she wanted me there when she got ready, she decided that her friends were enough and told me not to bother. There was one family picture. Are you getting the picture here? I've really questioned whether it's me but I seem to have friends and most people I know think that my mom is insane and my sister is a princess. Not just my friends. My friends parents. Hell even some of my parent's friends that are closer to my dad think so.

So why have I spent nearly 32 years of my life trying to be my sister's friend and to get my mom to like me? I don't know I'm taking suggestions.