So my sister (37) has two kids, a six year old daughter and a four year old son. They attend the same school. She and my BIL have not been on a real vacation alone together since my niece was born, and they managed to score pretty cheap tickets to Italy a few months ago, they left last week on Wednesday night and they are gone until the end of this weekend. While they are gone, my niece and my nephew are staying with my boyfriend and I (both 26). I love my niece and nephew and they have had many sleepovers here, but I’ve never been in charge of them for extended periods of time before this, it’s always just been a one-night only type of thing.
My boyfriend and I have done a lot of adjusting to our lives to be able to host them for the next couple weeks. We are getting up early to get them ready for school, coordinating work schedules for drop off and pick up, skipping going to the gym after work to instead take them out to do something fun after school, making dinner way earlier than we normally would so the kids can eat before bedtime, etc. Although it’s only for a couple weeks, it’s been a big adjustment for us because we have never really had this type of shared responsibility before.
We live in a state where all public school students get free breakfast and lunch at school. My sister normally lets her kids choose whether to eat what they are having at school or whether or not they want to eat breakfast and home and pack a lunch. Last week on Thursday, both kids ate breakfast and lunch at school and getting them ready and out the door for school went pretty smoothly. The next morning, my niece told me in the morning that she didn’t want what they were serving at school that day and so she needed to eat and I needed to pack her a lunch before we could leave. After she said all this my nephew started insisting on the same.
I was not prepared for this and it turned into a mad dash of trying to throw something together and get them to school on time, and then they were late to school and I was late to work. I told them this weekend I am not doing that again this upcoming week, and that they can eat the breakfast and the lunch at school or they have to tell me the night before and I’ll make them a sandwich for school because it was too much for me to figure out in the morning. My niece was pouting yesterday because she didn’t want school lunch again, but she didn’t ask for a packed lunch the night before, and I told her I already told her I would not be making lunches last minute in the morning so she could eat what’s at school, and she set my nephew off again because I wouldn’t pack lunch for him either.
My sister called her kids to catch up yesterday and my niece told her about the lunch drama and my sister seemed miffed with me and told me she likes to let her kids have autonomy over their food an not feel like they “have” to eat anything. I told her I was super overwhelmed by the way the morning went on Friday and I’m trying to avoid that happening again and I also gave her kids the option of packing lunch if they just tell me the night before, and my sister said it’s unrealistic to expect the kids to think ahead for lunch the next day and that kids are very “in the moment” and I probably just don’t understand because I don’t have kids yet. I told my sister that she’s right that I don’t understand and maybe next time she shouldn’t leave them with me for so long if she wasn’t going to allow me to make my own rules and that really upset her. AITAH? This is my first time having any type of conflict with her over watching them.