So I'm putting together these little goodie bags with pink and white M&Ms, featuring the name of Twinkle Baby #3. I set the M&M precedent when Twinklette was born; continuing the tradition seems an important thing to do in the name of sibling fairness.
So here I sit, decanting M&Ms into small plastic bags, and I started to wonder if these M&Ms will cause a controversy with my SIL and niece. The Twinkle family M&M tradition has never been an issue for them before, because they weren't here when Twinklette or Tiny T were born; they'll be in town this time for a conveniently-timed wedding. These bags contain probably 1.5 ounces of M&Ms...they are merely a friendly gesture from us to visitors at the hospital, and a way to announce the name. We really don't mean to contribute to the American obesity epidemic; for us it's just a fun way to celebrate the birth of our child. But I wonder if Sophie will be allowed to have a bag. I wonder if she can even have one or two M&Ms. Sadly, I may never know. I'll probably be on a table having my abdomen sewn back together when the sh*t goes down.
I also forgot to discuss my sister- and brother-in-law's Great Chair Controversy. I'll make it concise as it's not that interesting: they needed some chairs for their living room, so my brother-in-law basically had to sit in every chair on the eastern seaboard to see which ones were best. The chair search has been going on for more than a year and has spanned several states. I think they finally found some; I don't really know or care. I just know it's over, and even though I haven't seen the chairs, my guess is they're butt ugly.
What's interesting to me is what it says about their relationship. Because, if I were in the market for chairs, I would go pick out some damn chairs and that would be the end of it. I would choose chairs I thought were pretty; I probably wouldn't even sit in them. It depends on what kind of chair, actually...if it were a chair for reclining and watching TV, that would be different. I would probably involve Mr. Twinks in that choice. But I don't see comfort as the over-riding factor in choosing living room chairs. Mr Twinkle wouldn't be involved in the process and wouldn't want to be. He'd be happy when the chairs arrived--happy he didn't have to help me choose them, and happy to have a place to sit. He would say "good job on the chairs--they look great" and we'd move on with our lives.
I know my sister-in-law's taste isn't developed enough for her to know what she really likes or why she likes it, which has to make chair selection harder than it should be (that's why I want my children to know what they like and why they like it from an early age). But the Great Chair Controversy is more than that: it makes me think that my brother-in-law hasn't been trained well, and that my sister-in-law hasn't been well-schooled in how to handle her husband--and that's got to be Fun Sink's fault. I've even said in front of my MIL and FIL that I think the ongoing chair controversy is dumb (they complained about it all the time it was going on), and I don't know why my SIL even gives him a say. Of course my MIL doesn't like this kind of talk--as dumb as she knows the chair controversy is and as much as she has complained about it, she still can't stand to think that her precious son would be left out of decorating decisions in his own home (even though he wants to be left out). She thinks she raised a daughter to be magnanimous and egalitarian about household decisions, but it took them more than a year to choose chairs, so it's really more of a pyrrhic victory. Meanwhile, Mr. Twinks and I seem to realize that home decor is not the place to take a stand for feminism. Maybe I don't have the moral high ground here, but at least I have the autonomy to choose my own chair without any male interference--and Mr. Twinkle wouldn't have it any other way.
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