To be miffed by mil's birthday video made by sil!

[TheUnyummyMummy]

For my mil's 70th birthday, her daughter put together a video of messages from family and friends. We made one with dh and both dc (just because one is a toddler and the other is a baby on the move) and we made one with me, dh and dc1. Both videos were cute and not too long.

So we saw the final product after mil had seen it which was lovely, except sil had left out the video with dc2 in it and had cut the length of the other video. I was surprised because other people's messages were longer than ours and some had also done more than one. Plus, sil had also included a video of her cats 'saying' happy birthday!

Surely mil would have wanted her second gc to be in her video too? And why cut our other message. Is it just sil being a bit thoughtless or aibu for overthinking this?

No, i just don't think reproducing is a marvellous achievement that makes you a more important person, you sound like the sort of person who thinks it does.

and of course cats can't talk what a strange thing to say.

No stranger than you saying that there was no point in op’s baby being in the video because babies can’t talk! The pp was, as you know, pointing out that the sil’s cats wouldn’t actually be able to say ‘Happy Birthday’ either.

So we have established that neither babies nor cats can talk. So glad you posted, people might have been confused.

Maybe she thought you'd be upset not to be included but the baby wouldn't know.
Make a little video with just the children and send it separately but time it nicely to not be competing.

@Eastangular2000 not really, it’s not exactly an achievement to have sex and get pregnant is it?! It’s human biology. It’s more that you seem to think it’s normal for a grandma to not want to have her grandchild on a birthday vid because they can’t talk but putting your CATS on it is totally fine. If it was your child you wouldn’t want them to be left out, guaranteed.

Yep. No good deed goes I punished, does it?

I have given up doing family stuff like this, too many complaints do it yourself then

I haven't actually said any of those things but you crack on with making things up. No one at any point has suggested that they think the grandma doesn't want the baby on the video because they can't speak! I also haven't at any point suggested that I think putting the cats in was great idea - odd that you would make things up

@Eastangular2000 ok go back to your cats 😂

Unlikely given that I am allergic 😂😂

You’re overthinking it OP. X

You want to leave a sarcastic remark about a dog singing, well read the first line of your post you silly little girl. Of course a baby can’t talk!!!!
and you seem the type to sit behind the screen and talk shit to people who can’t see you. Everyone has jumped on your comment 😊

I will just add that our baby is 12 months and can say a few words in her own way.

My pleasure!

OP - it could be any number of things - she could be the stereotypical mad cat lady who truly believes people are fascinated by her moggies and that cats are far superior to humans (you know, the kind that says ‘my cat owns me’), or she could have made a genuine mistake in the editing, or it could be a deliberate slight. I think all you can do is send your mil the omitted video, try not to get too irritated by it, and focus on your mil’s birthday celebrations. Families can often wind each other up, intentionally or otherwise, and these small things can easily become big things - not something your mil needs at her birthday 😊

It sounds like a simple oversight and that she got probably got overwhelmed with the task. You say she's nice? Or do you think she purposefully left out your second? Either way I'd let it go and offer to be the one to make the video compilation next year.

But none of this is about what makes a good video or not. You posted that the baby not being able to speak as a possible reason for SIL not including it in the video. Others have pointed out that there's no logic to that suggestion when equally non-verbal cats were included, therefore this is very unlikely to have been SIL's thought process.

Or were you making a different point there by pointing out that babies aren't vibrant conversationalists, that wasn't actually relevant to the video?

Do it yourself next time. You're way overthinking it. Assuming she doesn't do this for a living it can be hard. Give her some slack.

How many different videos was she was trying to put together? If there were a lot she probably didn't even notice she'd missed one.

Yup sounds like something my SIL would do. I’d send MIL the video separately.

Neither

It’s so weird to go on a PARENTING forum and tell a mother (said forum named MUMSnet) that thinking your child is somewhat important or interesting to their own family is wrong, self entitled and selfish. So so bizarre. If you don’t like people acting like their kids matter to them why are you even on here @Eastangular2000 🤦‍♀️

I think she probably ran through and checked she had everyone. Maybe she made sure everyone had one and used the video with you in first and just forgot to add your second

As the person in our family who does all this stuff with special videos and photo montages etc, it's high on impossible to please everyone and at certain times is almost like having another job. It's time consuming. You do your best but sometimes you might cock up. You have to trim stuff to fit to music etc.

You don't know what else has been missed / edited etc. Unless you have reason to believe otherwise I'd just leave it as it's unlikely to be an intentional snub.

I'd just send the extra video to mil with a nice message saying it didn't make the director's cut or something

Op wrote that the one of the baby was them "on the move" rather than trying to say "happy birthday". I suspect that may be the issue.
If the cats' one is a close up of the cat meowing it may well fit better than having a baby crawling/toddling around-they may have even thought that video was sent for general admiration rather than for inclusion.

Another time pop baby in high chair and ask siblings to stand next to them and sing "happy birthday" baby will probably coo along then you have them both wishing happy birthday. If you really want to do them separately then hold baby up to the camera and see if you can get them to babby into the camera, or call "happy birthday" yourself and see if baby will clap/wave or interact in some way.

I know when dh was doing a photo book for a friend, we asked for pictures of the children/grandchildren in action, doing things as a family, as the grandparents had asked. One of the couples sent a huge numbers of selfies of themselves. Almost always of their faces totally taking the whole picture. On the odd one where the grandchildren were involved it was a full length selfie of the two of them with child behind them in buggy, and all you could see was the buggy back.
It was odd, and wherever you put the photos on the page they looked wrong as they didn't go with the rest of the pictures. Then they complained that their picture wasn't on the front cover (the front cover was a picture of the grandparents with all the children and grandchildren so everyone was on it. They wanted the front cover just to be one of their selfies!) and that their children weren't in as many pictures as the other grandchildren-because they hadn't sent them! He used as many from the other children of those grandchildren as he could to get them in some.

OP, you say she's normally nice. So let it go. You don't know how much of the other messages she cut too. It may be an oversight, it may be it didn't go with the rest of them. It's not worth making a fuss. Send the other video to MIL with a note "thought you'd like to see dd crawling/walking/whatever" and say nothing about it being a birthday message, or record one as I said above with both in.