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I would be upset. It's a bummer there's nothing that can be done about it.

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Well then, she is going to get back what she puts in. A close relationship with your SIL's kids and a much more distant one with your kids. They know when someone doesn't make the effort.

At least she's not favoring one sibling over another. That's even worse.

Our family is complicated (so many cousins for LO, but we live far away, and there's divorce, step-kids, etc.) ... BUT, I know I am not the favorite grandchild of one set of my grandparents, haha. I'm totally ok with it. My grandma shares things about my cousins ALL of the time, but rarely mentions me (I'm her step-grandchild, so maybe that's why)?

I would find that pretty unacceptable and would not bother trying to sustain much of a relationship. Why seek out opportunities to make my kid feel like second fiddle? No thanks.

@kiddosc: I don't know, I guess I'm the odd one out. But my mom lives in the same town as one of my sisters in another state. My mom is available to them for random things like early school pickup days, she sometimes cooks dinner for them, she takes my niece and nephew on vacations. Their gifts are much more expensive--like she got tickets to One Direction last year for my niece. And my daughter got some books. And that was MORE than fine with me.

The thing is, my sister and her husband also have to be a lot more involved with my mom. If something mechanical breaks at my moms house, guess who she calls? Hint...it's not me. If she gets locked out of her house, or is bored, or needs a recommendation, or has a day surgery/procedure.....she calls my sister or her husband for all of those things. My sister is doing the heavy lifting of parent care in our family, not me. It makes sense to me that my mom would be closer to her kids, just because they see each other more often. My niece and nephew sleep over frequently and my mom is the one that takes my niece back to school shopping for clothes.

I still think my mom is awesome though, and she still comes to visit us 1-2x a year, so I don't tally up $ she spends on gifts and things like that.

Also, the birth vs birthday thing. Since this is your MIL, I gather that she is SILs actual mother? It does make sense to me that her mother being available to watch her kids overnight or to be around post partum to help with other kids trumps a birthday party. I don't think you have a right to be angry at that. For the record, none of our parents came from out of town to our kiddos birthday parties this past year. And it was totally fine, we didn't expect them to.

Anyway, I think if you want to make it more even, you should ask your MIL to move in with you for 7 years. =) Then she'll be SUPER close to your kids! Totally kidding, but it's something you could consider. Offer to have her move closer and you'll financially support the move?

I just want to make sure I'm understanding - your MIL lives a 2.5 hour flight away? I absolutely would not expect somebody to fly in for a one year old's birthday party. I also don't think your kids are ever going to look back and feel slighted that all the grandparents weren't there. It also honesty makes sense to me that she would schedule her visits to you around other important events - if it's all the same to everybody why not come in a week when her other grandson doesn't have a school play? If she was missing the birthday party for a baseball game that would bother me, but it doesn't sound like that's the case. The inequality in spending would also bother me but that's not something your kids will notice for a while. And even that - if everybody got something they really liked that's more important than the precise dollar amount.

@kiddosc: Maybe it's just a case of different families having different expectations. Everything you've said about your MIL is true of my own mother, but we both like it this way and it's how my whole family is and luckily, my husband doesn't read much into either way. My mom only comes to visit when asked. We usually pay her airfare (generally, she is coming because we've asked her to come because we need her to cover a few days of nanny vacation or something, so paying her airfare seems fair). Even though my kids get less everything--less time, less closeness, probably less in terms of monetary gifts--I don't feel like they are deprived in any way. My mom also doesn't ask to set up skypes with us (DH's parents do), but I'm fine with that too because I know she's there when I want to reach her. Our relationship just operates on different givens than say, My in-laws to my husband. My inlaws do a lot of the calling to my husband. And they will ask for us to visit or will schedule a visit. And my mom will let us do our own thing and reach out when we have time....but she's always, always there for us when we need her.

You've said your husband is totally fine with his relationship with his mom. You can't change how your MIL interacts, so you can either try to adjust your own expectations or you can try extra hard to do all those things you mention she doesn't do on her own--facetime sessions, visits to see her, etc.

Maybe I find all this very normal because I grew up in Texas with both sides of my grandparents in Virginia. So I saw my grandparents 1-2 times a year whereas my cousins were all living directly next door and saw them daily. They had special nicknames "like Me-maw" for our grandma and we just called her "Grandma LastName" very formally. But even at that age, I understood that our relationship was more formal because we didn't see her as often. It didn't affect me...I never felt like I was missing out.

I grew up like this. My dad's family (3 sisters plus my grandparents) all moved to FL and we're in IL. Only one of my aunts had kids (4) and my grandparents clearly favored them as they had a big hand in raising them. It would bother me when I was younger since I would see things like the Christmas presents she gave them vs what we got. I mean, one year, I got a free gift from Mary Kay. And it's carried over to our kids as my cousin posted all of the presents my Grandma bought for his kids and let's be honest, I'm lucky to get a FB post 2 weeks late about my own birthday. This is coupled with the fact that my one aunt has taken all of my cousin's on lavish foreign vacations and I think has visited us once or twice in the past 10 years. So yeah it sucks but you can't change people.

@kiddosc: If it bothers you, the only way to do anything about it is to change it on your end. If you're not willing to do more, then it is what it is...and i mean this all generally, not specifically to you, I hope you understand.

I grew up with no grandparents around. There was not only a geographic barrier, but a language and cultural barrier as well. I didn't want that for my son, because I did feel I missed out so I work hard to have a relationship with my inlaws so that my son has a relationship with his grandparents. Now, my MIL and mother have both said that a relationship between a mother and daughter is different than the relationship between MIL and DIL. It's not that they can't approximate each other, but they respect that there are boundaries and such to navigate.