So my in-laws recently stayed with us for a month to hang out with my little. A month is a long, long, long time to have any kind of house guest but it’s an eternity when said houseguests are a little, uhm, overbearing and neurotic? I’ve heard. I wouldn’t know. Because my in-laws are lovely.
While at my house for a month, we experienced the usual criticism from my MIL. Starting with, “Why isn’t your house more clean, ugh, I guess I’ll have to clean it” (we hired a professional house cleaner the morning of the day they arrived and the women spent 7 hours scrubbing every centimeter of my house while I followed them around going “don’t forget the baseboards! She’ll check the baseboards! Like I have some kind of dust PTSD), and “why do you have this dog that I hate,” and “why are you both fat,” etc. But this time there was an extra dose of nagging regarding our parenting style which is, apparently, the worst in all the world.
According to my in-laws, it’s amazing that any baby has ever survived to the age of kindergarten considering all the things that are fatal to them but ours has like no chance at all. Our baby is especially at risk due to my evil genetics and Persian/American culture. For example, at the time, my then three-month-old son liked to chew on his hand and apparently this will ensure him a life of crippling thumb sucking dependency. Also, I take my baby outside in seventy-degree weather which is deadly because of the infamous Italian enemy the wind. Mind you, a package of leaking raw chicken swelling with bacteria up against clean baby bottles is not a cause for concern because where the wind has stolen many lives salmonella is a made up thing by BIG HYGIENE, apparently. So for three weeks, we were bombarded with constant panic and concern like a broken record. A terrifying record, warning you about the imminent demise of the person you love most in the world, your child. So basically what I’m saying is it was very pleasant and in no way caused intense anxiety 24/7.
Italian Grandparent’s Top Ten Greatest Hits:
- The wind will kill your baby. Cover the baby!
- Are you outside in the wind? It will kill your baby!
- Quick! Duck into a store! There is a breeze and it will kill your baby!
- Is the heat on? Moving air will kill your baby.
- Is he chewing on his hand? Great! He’s going to suck his thumb until he’s 80 if he survives the wind.
- He probably got a bladder infection from being outside in the wind.
- [Stomps feet and screeches] the wind! The wiiiind! Cover the baby! coooooveeeeerrr the baaaaaaaby. AAAARRRRGH!
- Oh, playboy! Playboy! (Basically like calling an infant a pimp or gigolo…gross). You’re not American (said like there is vomit in the throat) like your mother! You’re Italian like your father! Also, the wind will kill you.
- Do you hear the rustling of the leaves?
- [Pulling giant down-stuffed puffy coat up to ears in sunny, seventy-five-degree weather] Does anyone else feel a slight draft?
After weeks of listening to the daily panic over the wind, I found an Italian article online that was like, “the wind cannot hurt your baby. Germs hurt your baby. Here is science!” and I sent it to my MIL to which she shrugged and five minutes later told me to cover the baby’s head because in the distance she knew that even if we couldn’t feel it, or hear it, the air was moving, somewhere.
