BWA-HAHAHAHA!
Hehhehbeh…heh…geh.
my jaw hurts
Since when did thrift become something to frown upon? I’ve always considered in a mark of extra cleverness. I figured most other people would, too. 
I’m with you, Tom. This rant to me comes off as scoring points in some obscure parenting competition. Esp the kindergarten entrance thingy. Spewing vitriol over someone who doesn’t share your values is pointless. It’s a free world - she is allowed to value store-bought stuff and designer clothes over homemade stuff. I’ve got this vision of her somewhere on some other messageboard doing a rant over her CIL who actually makes cakes and clothes and getting a thread running which praises her values… OK she’s got bad manners but why not just ignore her? God knows my sister and I don’t share any common values but I don’t listen. She does her thing, I do mine. Her family are sporting mad and we’re ::ahem:: more into things of the mind. Her kids wear expensive clothes, mine wear what comes to hand.
As was said before, to each her own, but I can’t imagine someone getting dissed for doing things the “old fashioned way” for their kids. My four-year-old started preschool this year (it’s a new program at the elementary school she and her little sister will be attending; it’s also the same one I attended as a child). My mom, my husband, our three-year-old and I all attended Chloe’s class Halloween party this week. We brought homemade caramel apple cupcakes and six dozen homemade sandwich cookies. The kids went nuts over it. They had tons of other stuff too, but they really chowed down on the cupcakes and cookies.
I can’t sew a stitch, so we bought costumes. But I can cook, so I do. The kids love to help with the things that are age-appropriate for them in the kitchen. I think it gives them some good ideas about exactly how dinner got on their plates. A decent meal doesn’t just cook itself, and I think that’s something important to know even as young as they are. They appreciate the time and hard work required to make something turn out right. Luckily, neither of my kids have ever been picky eaters, and I think letting them help and observe in the kitchen is one of the reasons.
Re: packing school lunches - I’ve been on two field trips so far with the preschoolers this year. I cannot believe for the life of me the number of parents who have the school cafeteria pack a lunch for FIELD TRIPS. For shit’s sake! We allow Chloe to buy her lunch at school whenever she wants, but I pack her lunch fairly often. For our trip to the pumpkin farm two weeks ago, the two of us had homemade chicken salad sandwiches, celery sticks with peanut butter and cream cheese, apple and orange quarters, chunky macadamia nut cookies and juice (well, water for me, actually). I felt sorry for the little kids eating those Smuckers “crustless” PB&J’s that you buy frozen at the store, previously unheard-of brands of potato chip crumbs and fruit juice “cocktail”. How friggin’ hard is it to throw a tiny little lunch together the night before? Gah! Some people’s “least I can do” is a lot different from others’.
—And no, I’m not saying I’m a perfect parent. Of course I’m not; not even close. I’m just saying that a little effort goes a long way with kids and the relationship you build with them. I think time is the most precious gift you can give a child. And folks like the OP’s relative will figure it out like the rest of us have, one day, only then it’ll be too late. Kudos to you, skyblukat, for not taking the easy out.
Well, I wouldn’t want to push this the other way and make it seem that the rant was wrong. I guess I just have a different reaction to people (such as my SIL) who spend time trying to demonstrate their superiority by professing what I perceive as inferior traits.
My personal reaction is to laugh (privately) rather than rant. YMMV
I went through something similiar with a past girlfriend (well…sorta past…complicated stuff) She was seriously the most materialistic person I’d ever actually tried to connect to. It wasn’t so much in the money way, but just “stuff”. She cared way too much about material things than I could imagine, to the point of criticizing me for not understanding. I eventually chewed her out and basically said she was an imbicile for thinking the way she did. As the more able arguer I ended up convincing her to see it my way, and she cried numerous times because she was so ashamed that she could be so petty, and eventually I destroyed all the self-esteem she had come by over the years. It was truly pathetic.
So what’s the point to my story? It may totally suck of that person to act that way, but should you openly object and plead your case effectively, be prepared to deal with the reciprocal baggage that goes along with it. Then again, since you aren’t lashing out at her, this forum is a good place to let loose your frustrations and avoid the bottling up effect.
That said, your cousin in law is a troubled person.
I bet her kids always go to the neighbors house to play,
you know the house where the mom MAKES the Cookies.
to this day the best costume is a pirate - yup -
some torn blue jeans (hand me downs)
a red bandana on your head, some char coal smeared
on to look like a beard and a patch over your eye.
I did this last year and all the other folks thought
I was dressed as a biker…ahh well it was my moms
idea I would say. (Im like 38 you understand)
and to this day the best food in the world is the
stuff I find in the tupperware containers in the
frige when I visit my moms house.
And I dont care what ANYONE says, the cheese cake
she makes is the stuff they feed you when you
go to heven.
I would guess there are no tupperware containers
at your cousin-in-laws, to bad for her kids,
they will no doubt have to deal with the idea that
their mom was negligent as they grew up.
Sounds to me like she is jelous, maybe we could put her on the Martha Stuart mailing list, in hopes that she some day
gets a clue!
I think it is well worth ranting about, Sky-baby, because so many of us experience the same thing. People who just can’t mind their own business and have to put us down.
A friend of mine calls them “spoilers”; the folk who, as you raise that delicious fresh chocolate eclair to your lips screech “Do you know how many calories are in that??”
Your kids are so lucky to have food cooked with love for them, and I can only imagine breast-feeding as the most loving and tender form of giving. This poor woman’s soul is shrunken, but she shouldn’t make you suffer for it.
The only form of revenge I can think of, and it’s not really that terrible, is to bake some kind of gingerbread figures or something like that for the next family get-together.
Then you bring them out and say “here’s your gingerbread boy Tyson - see he’s got black hair like you and a baseball cap like yours, and “Tyson” in icing on his chest. Just for you! And Tiffany, there’s a beautiful gingerbread girl here for you, with a pretty pink dress like yours, and red hair like yours, and “Tiffany” on her apron.”
This way you give her children an understanding of how home-made things can be much speciall-er than things from a store, and the memory of this may help them do special things for their own kids when they are older. All the family will enjoy this.
And your cousin-in-law can’t do anything but smile through gritted teeth, and get a head-ache.
You go girl!
Redboss
When she gets old, she’ll have receipts…you’ll have memories…
There’s an old saying, What goes around, comes around, i.e., payback.
It’s also cool that you can sew.
OMG, how could bought stuff compare to homemade made with love stuff. I agree with what has been said about the low-self esteem, it’s how some people make themselves feel better, feel sorry for her. I will never forget when I was about 10 and doing a school play, my Mom sat up till god knows what time in the morning sewing little frills on the dress I wanted to wear. I brought it up awhile ago, and she doesn’t remember, but I sure do.
[quote]
Originally posted by Skyblukat
I would like to add that my wonderful husband did all the work on the costumes.(Except for the simple baby pumpkin one) He is really great isnt he?(he is going to kill me!)I love you Krotchkritter!
[quote]
Originally posted by Krotchkritter
:eek: :o :o :o :o :eek:
OMG
Yes ,yes thats right I know how to sew, Im a crafty kind of guy. You got something to say? well then just let me put down my cross stitch and kick your ass.
I love you too baby
::sniff:: I’m all teared up.
I just have to register my astonishment that anyone can market and someone would buy frozen PB&J! I’m hardly a Martha Stewart in training-I am only slight less lost in my kitchen than I would be in the Amazon, so I understand a reliance on some frozen foods. But, cripes, how hard is it to make a PB&J?
Besides the ewwwwwww factor, the idea raises logistic questions. Do you let them thaw out the night before? Let them thaw out in the kid’s lunchbox? Put them in the microwave?
Skyblukat, by making your childrens’ Halloween costumes you are making memories and traditions for your family.
The MW, is just buying more cheap stuff that looks like everyone else’s costume and will eventually end up in the landfill.
You are making your children tasty lunches that promote good health and proper eating habits. You are also creating memories of comfort foods for your kids.
The MW is probably paying steak prices for the malnutrient trash known as Lunchables. Her children will gain a taste for high fat and salt content in their foods and pay dearly for it in later life with obesity and high blood pressure.
By breastfeeding your kids you are making sure that their immune systems are in the best possible shape to face the world around them.
The MW is not only giving her children less nutrition when they most dearly need it but is also depriving them of one of the strongest possible mother-child bonding activities on earth. Do not be surprised if her children treat her like a stranger later in life.
Frozen peanut butter sandwiches! Jesus eating a nacho platter, i was making pb&j for myself back in 3rd grade!
Induce vomiting, if a kid can do it then why can’t THE PARENT?
pb/j sandwich
aha, so that is how you invoke the happy orthodox jew smiley.
Not to mention sending their nitrate levels through the roof.
Homemade doesn’t have to mean sewing, either. My daughter was Wonder Girl[sup]tm[/sup] for Halloween, and you can just guess that Wonder Girl costumes don’t just show up on the store shelves! Mrs. Tranq scoured the earth to find and aquire the components for the costume (focused internet shopping at it’s finest!), getting assistance with the spats from a very near-term hedra, and getting my mom to help with a cape and stars. She assembled the materials, ironed on the stars, decorated the tiara, and generally pulled the componets into a highly credible, unique, and memorable costume. At the local Halloween parade, complete with a thousand or more kids in costume, there wasn’t another Wonder Anything in sight, and if my wife hadn’t focused on this like a terrier after a rat, there wouldn’t have been any.
(Her cousin Gabe was a homemade PB&J sandwich for Halloween. Go figure!)
I guess what I’m saying, is, you don’t have to be Miss Handicraft to put a personal touch on something, and the effort you spend, whether it be on collecting store-bought materials for something special, or sewing your own from scratch, spending the effort pays off.
That goes for lunch, too.
You know, some of us buy stuff because we’d rather use the limited time available relaxing with our children instead of being pressured with more projects. Love for children is not only expressed by cooking and sewing.
That wasn’t the point of the original rant: It was that the Cousin-in-law was slamming Skyblukat for not doing so, while insinuating that the spending the money was the only appropriate way to parent.
Relaxing? relaxing? with four children?
It’s NOT good to give your kids valium. I’m sorry, but it isn’t.
Redboss
Yeah I understood what the OP was about and I agree that the CIL should be slapped.
It seemed that the thread was taking a tone that parents who do homemade stuff love their children more and that parents who buy stuff aren’t willing to put any effort into raising their child.
Just putting in my 2 cents.