Top of the list

My least-favorite sister-in-law (actually, DH's sister-in-law, so does that make her a sister-in-law once removed?) made it to the top of my crap list this weekend.

I've ranted about her before, because for some reason, she seems determined to make snide little remarks about El Burrito every time she sees him. This is the one who doesn't speak to me at all, who has repeatedly ignored me when inviting the rest of the family to bring stuff to her yard sales, seems to believe that El Burrito is on the slow side regarding vocabulary and walking and basically everything, and so on.

We went to DH's parents' last night for another birthday party (two of his brothers, this time), and She was there, since her DH was one of the birthday boys. El Burrito was perfectly happy to play in the living room with some toys, while his cousins were running around screaming like banshees and locking each other out of the bedroom. The next-oldest cousin, a boy, is 2 or 3 years older than El Burrito. Then there are 3 girls, all between 6 and 10 or so, and 2 boys older than that. So really, not that many kids close enough to his age to play with, because I think at his age, there's a big gap between a 2-yr-old and a 4-yr-old.

So, because a not-yet-2-year-old is content to run a truck back and forth on the couch, and doesn't want to play with a bunch of hooligans that are at least twice his age, She was wondering if he was in any playgroups, or Parents as Teachers, and said she didn't think he was getting socialized enough with kids his own age. And that, by the way, her kids were all playing with puzzles at his age.

(Imagine me rolling my eyes, with a little steam coming out of my ears. )

This irked me for a couple of reasons.

First, because I was sitting not 10 feet away from her, in plain sight, while she was making these comments. She didn't bother to ask me if we do playgroups or anything, she was asking one of his other aunts. We could be going to playgroups twice a day every day, and they wouldn't know it!

Also, I don't think Parents as Teachers is in the habit of bringing a playgroup to your house every week. At least not around here. I know they do educational visits, but it's one person visiting, not a group.

Third, we do have puzzles. El Burrito has two of those peg puzzles, plus an alphabet puzzle and a numbers puzzle, the fit the shapes into the spaces kind. So not jigsaw puzzles. I wish I'd been able to pick my jaw up off the floor and ask what kind of puzzles her kids were working, because I really doubt that they could do 100-piece jigsaws at age 2. Just because we don't take a puzzle with us everywhere and make the boy perform on cue like a trained seal doesn't mean that he doesn't do Things.

In short, she's ticked me off royally, and she's now at the top of my Bite Me list (for lack of a more polite way to put it). DH said last night that it bothers him too, so at least it's not me being bothered by things that aren't really there.