125 : There will be Growing Pains

For reasons, I won't get into, my Ex was supposed to have the kids this weekend, but he had to cancel.  Of course this happened to coincide with my older son's birthday and I had nothing planned (as I thought they would be with their dad).  Additionally, I was slightly looking forward to having a little relief.  The past week had been exhausting (see posts #123 & #124).  In my Ex's absence, he had offered up his parents to take the boys. I felt torn about this option.  I wanted to have my son with at least one of his parents on his birthday, but I had been working all week, had nothing planned, not even as much as a present purchased.  I already had a growing list of things I was planning to accomplish over the weekend (change out summer clothes for fall clothes, buy new socks & shoes for older son, get birthday gift, etc).  Despite my uncertainty, I did trust his parents would be wonderful with my kids and so I proposed to my Ex what would work best for me and the boys.  He was cool with my proposal.  Now onto the inlaws to coordinate.  The inlaws.  People that you are forced to accept as "family" under marriage despite the fact that they might drive you crazy.  That's just part of the package.  As I had previously written (see post #72), I liked my former inlaws and had become particularly close with my mother in law after I had kids.  There were still ways though in which we were very different.  I was an early bird, organized, and extremely type A.  They were not.  I'm sure my eagerness was just as annoying to them as their more laid back pace was to me. But I had grown to accept this in the past because they were my family.  But it was different now because technically the family had changed.  Yes, I still had to work through logistics with them which wasn't their strong suit.  I found myself getting particularly frustrated as we attempted to work out the exchange of my kids for this weekend. But after a good nights sleep (see post #124) I was able to see that they were adapting to this change as well.  They never wanted their son to leave his family.  They were doing everything they could to maintain a relationship with their grandkids (and with me for that matter).  Turns out we all had growing pains with this situation.  And it wouldn't be the last of them.  I met my mother in law for the 'exchange' and as I watched them drive off, I reminded myself how much she adored.  But more importantly, they adored their grandparents back.  That was all that mattered.