Every one of you is being a little ridiculous here, except the baby.
Dear Prudence,
My husband and I just had a baby. We didn’t want to know the sex beforehand and picked a neutral-sounding name, but my mother-in-law was obsessed with the idea of having a granddaughter. She’s always wanted a girl but had four boys and five grandsons. She got us everything in pink (my own mom said it looked like she robbed a cotton candy factory), no matter how much we protested. We ended up shrugging and accepted all the gifts. Then we had a little boy. We do dress him in the pink outfits his grandma gave us since it is too late to return them, they fit, and the baby resembles nothing so much as a potato.
My husband thinks it is funny, but his mother is very hurt. She hates it and makes comments about me “making fun” of her if I post a pink picture online. I tend toward deadpan humor and will include a caption about getting spit up on six times before noon. She is making a big deal about this, and it keeps coming up. I don’t understand why or what to do. The rest of my husband’s family even told her it doesn’t matter because the baby is going to outgrow everything anyway. She is still upset. What do we do about this? My husband tells me to ignore it, but I really don’t want to hurt my relationship with her.
—Angry Pink Mother-in-Law
Re: Every one of you is being a little ridiculous here, except the baby.
This is all I can think of:
However, why is it so hard to just not post pictures publicly on days when you've dressed the baby in pink? Are you explaining every time that these are outfits left over from when your MIL went out and bought all the pink?
If a picture is particularly cute, take it, and text it to your husband, and maybe more of the extended family. If MIL whines then, tell her that you just thought she'd like to see pictures of her grandson, but you can leave her off these texts if you'd like.
It's just a colour. Good lord. MIL could have waited to buy stuff.
There's a little too much schadenfreude here on the LW's part. Sure dress the kid in clothes but do you need to take the pictures in them? Surely you have other clothing items that you can use for peppering your social media so you're not deliberately pushing it.
You're not going to change your MIL. So rather than attempting to poke fun at her come up with a way to handle the things that she does that doesn't involve what she perceives as public taunting.
Even though it's silly the MIL feels she's being "made fun of" because...geez!...her son and DIL are putting the clothing to good use. Just to keep the piece, I'd probably just stop posting pics where the grandson is in the "pink" outfits.
I realize this is the newish social media "era" we live in. But it's really not necessary to post a 1,000 pics/week of one's children, lol.
IMO, unless MIL bought so many clothes that those are all the LW is using then keep using them. But post more photos to social media that aren't in the peony pink.
This is going to eventually go away assuming MIL stops trying to dress the kid in bubblegum colors.
I think the LW is being a little ridiculous in her expectations of her MIL. LW knows that MIL is sensitive about this and continues to post the pics. So own your shit LW and accept that your MIL is going to have feelings. But you can't post pics knowing that your MIL is not taking kindly to this, but then being all, "I don't want her to be upset and I don't know why she doesn't think it's OK/funny/whatever."
LW needs to ovary up and say, "MIL, I am not going to stop posting pics of LO in whatever outfit he's wearing. You so kindly bought us more clothes than he needs. Babies soil clothes several times a day, he doesn't know where his nose is, so we don't see the need to go buy a whole new wardrobe of 'boy' clothes when he's going to just grow out of them in weeks or a couple months. However, this is not being done to hurt you." And then bean-dip her if she brings it up again.
This is also where LW's H should be stepping in to back-up his wife since he doesn't have a problem with how they're dressing their son. He should also be telling his mother the same thing LW is about the clothes.
Maybe I'm off but I'm getting the impression that the LW is being purposely daft about this and feigning ignorance of "I don't get why she's so upset" when she knows full well.
So if you know this is a hot-button topic don't engage but instead be really thankful that you have so much and use your words with MIL.