Family comes first

Dear Aidan,

So it looks like both mommy and daddy are sick now. I woke up today with a huge headache and a sore throat. The good news is that you seem to be 5% better than yesterday. The bad news is that I got a call this morning from your Vancouver grandma asking me why I haven't been sending photos. Argh! I always get so annoyed when she asks me that because it's not like I'm sitting at home twiddling my thumbs. It's really exhausting to take care of a sick baby and daddy can attest to that because he was taking care of you all weekend. She doesn't know that you are sick because we don't want to alarm her because you actually got your cold from your Vancouver grandpa. Plus, because you are sick all your photos are of you with a runny nose. But, regardless if she knows or not, I was still annoyed. She also told me to play with you in your playroom for 2 hours every day. What the?!?!? Last time I checked I was the mom, not her. But the more I thought about what she said I realized that maybe this was more than her nagging at me. You know when your Vancouver grandparents were here your grandpa and I had a heart-to-heart talk in the car and he was telling me that when Dennis and Jane were younger they (him and grandma) didn't spend a lot of time with Dennis and Jane because they were always hosting guests at their house. I think your grandpa felt guilty towards Dennis and Jane because he told me to spend a lot of time with you because family always comes first. Maybe this is your grandma's way of telling me to spend more time with you. But she doesn't need to worry or tell me that. We live in a different generation than our parents. Our parents' generation had to go through the experience of immigrating to a foreign country and working their butt off to support us. Even my mom told me that when we (me, Jess, and Sara) were younger (around 8 and 3) it broke her heart when she came home late from work and she saw us all sleeping in the bed with the TV on and when she looked in the sink she saw empty bowls with gochujang (hot pepper paste) sauce in it. Basically Jess, Sara, and I were eating rice mixed with gochujang because that's all we knew how to make when we were that young. It was a far cry from how we were living in Korea when my mom was a stay-at-home mom and she would be preparing all the meals for us. I think she got a harsh taste of reality when we moved to Canada and she couldn't be the mom that she wanted to be. But, luckily, we turned out ok. And I know that whatever time my mom and dad had they would want to spend quality time with the 3 of us. I think that's what's most important. Not how much time you spend together as a family, but how much 'quality' time you spend with each other.