Hi all,
I hope you can give me some opinions on this because it has been driving me crazy for a while now.
I am an ex-teacher, now a full-time stay at home Dad, with a gorgeous 7 month old son. My wife (who is also gorgeous) is an accountant.
Every year I dread the organisation of where to spend christmas. My parents live in a different country, requiring a boat or plane journey to get there at a cost of perhaps £100 each return - about a day's travelling) whereas my wife's parents live just down the road, 2mins drive away.
My mum in particular feels like she misses out on getting to know her grandson despite lots of facetime calls etc. and she would love for us all to visit at Christmas.
My wife and my mum don't really get along that well - although they are both pleasant enough to each other... it's not a war or anything!
Whenever I suggest to my wife that we should visit my parents at Christmas, she has various reasons why she can't... She is very active at church at this time and puts on a crib service with Guides (she is a guide leader), so this is a problem. She also says she usually has deadlines with work clients wanting stuff done by Christmas or New Year. She has suggested that my parents could come and visit us instead, but we don't have room to accommodate them and this means my folks would have to buy plane ticket and accommodation which gets expensive. (especially if my sister and her family of 5 want to come too). It is far cheaper for us to go to them as my parents can accommodate us. She has point blank refused to do any kind of arrangement where we did alternating years at her parents, then at mine, because she feels it would be inflexible if we ever wanted to go away on holiday at christmas time, and there would always be the expectation of who would have us each year.
So we always end up with a lovely Christmas at Her parents, but I miss my folks and sister and my nieces and nephews who often do go to my parents for christmas or boxing day. I also feel that my parents are missing out on their grandson at christmas too.
My take on it is this- I think the bottom line is that she just doesn't want to be away from her own family and the Christmas traditions that she likes. Being with my family at christmas time is less within her comfort zone, so she finds ways of avoiding it.
What I want to ask is - Am I being unreasonable to ask her to:
- consider a year on year off arrangement with each family
- find a way to get time off work and arrange for someone else to cover her Guiding commitments (as there is another person who could do this at a push)
And thirdly - is it unreasonable for me to feel upset that her parents get to see their grandson regularly - often daily - throughout the year and then have us over for Christmas, but my parents - who might have only seen him once or twice in the year don't get to see him at Christmas because it's 'too difficult to organise at this time of year'.
I'd be grateful if you could let me know your thoughts.