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@karenbme: We have an 8 week old and a 5 year old. The baby has only ever been held by DH and I and my mom. The other grandparents have too much exposure. They all know that if they quarantine themselves as my mom has, they, too may hold the baby. In my dad's case, he is not retired so that's not an option. We visit with him outside. DH's parents are retired, but have choosen to continue to visit with and care for their other grandchildren (over meals, inside, etc.) and those grandchildren have MULTIPLE points of contact (parents that do patient care, joint custody with step sibs that also have joint custody, etc.). So...we only visit outside with them as well.

I honestly feel more comfortable with my dad than DHs parents. My dad does not interact with anyone unmasked and he is able to maintain social distancing at work also.

We also live in an area where Oct-Apr/May does not lend itself to outdoor visiting. I mentioned Christmas with DHs family to him briefly and he basically said if there are case counts at that time, we will not be doing Christmas with them.

I anticipate serious pushback on Christmas if we were to do that, since DD will be in school and DS will be in daycare. BUT they are both in pods and just because we choose to enroll them in that care does not mean we have to open the floodgates. I also think that if we skipped Christmas, we'd invite just DH's parents over for a masked celebration/gift exchange.

It's all so weird and I feel like we're making up all these fake rules. On one hand, I feel horrible about all these restrictions we impose. On the other hand, our #1 job is to make the right decision for our kids well-being. 🤷‍♀️

Everyone says they understand our decisions. We skipped a sibs birthday party even though it was outside because the guest list was bigger than we were comfortable with, we didn't know how big the backyard was and a meal was served.

Can you tell this consumes me?

ETA: To be clear, DH and I respect our family's decisions in regards to quarantine and social distancing, none of them are especially frivolous. We certainly don't expect that the grandparents isolate from the other grandkids in order to hold our baby. But, we have established those boundaries.

This is so tricky. We've had some family drama around here because of people disagreeing on how careful is safe enough (i.e., my brother is being extremely cautious and was even upset at my parents for walking into a store briefly with everyone wearing masks to pick something up) and having to push back with my parents because we couldn't quarantine enough (due to work) and didn't feel safe with them holding the kids. Long story short, our ability to stay safe will change once school starts because I will go back to teaching in a relatively high-risk environment, DS may go back to school, and we will start a nanny share for DD. So we compromised and stopped social distancing with my parents so that they could snuggle the kids for a few weeks before everything changes. But we are staying outside and DH and I are not having direct physical contact with them. The only issue is that my 8 month old wants nothing to do with them holding her right now, which makes sense given that the only people who have been holding her for the last however many months have just been me and DH.

MIL wants to come visit, but it would involve a flight. My husband just flat out said no, under no circumstances - that given that she's in her 70s it is not safe for her to fly at this time, and not safe for our infant and toddler who has asthma, etc to see her after she'd been exposed on a plane/in an airport. She wasn't happy... but we weren't comfortable with the risk for us or for her just for the sake of a short visit, and she's formed a very sweet relationship with our son over daily facetime talks (I know that isn't so feasible with an infant, of course...)

@karenbme: I base our decisions on interactions on our area's infection rate. What's happening in LA county is literally another world than upstate NY where I live (maybe not far from you??). I actually heard the VT governor reporting today on how super low your rates are so that's a good thing! When infection rate dropped we started seeing our parents. Now we do very often- they are in our "bubble". My mom watches my boys and we swim 4 days a week in her pool. My 4yo has done sleepovers with the inlaws. All fine.
Covid will be here at least another year or more. I can't not see family for that long, where there are literally 14 cases in my county of 230k people. I feel pretty safe and don't do any risky ventures. I've weighed the risks and to be it feels ok. I have friends who are way more cautious and I absolutely understand that. I am scared this winter if things get worse we won't see family again, so in some way I am taking advantage of the low infection and outdoor interactions now.

We've been struggling with this so much as well. Lately, we've said a lot of difficult "no's" to family...and it really stinks, all around. 

We recently settled on setting up some visits later in the summer/fall that we can each block off on our calendars ahead of time to visit as "safely" as possible and plan for. One of my major sources of stress was that my mom kept trying to plan get-togethers on the fly, like calling me on a Thursday to see if I could bring the girls to visit that weekend. I felt terrible as I kept saying no, or trying to analyze what they'd been up to in the time leading up to the weekend as I weighed whether we should visit - and she felt like I was overreacting...it was a mess. I eventually brought it up more head-on about what it would take for us to visit "safely" and how we could plan ahead to make that happen. We settled on a couple of times to block off on the calendar for visits and are on the same page about what we'll do around then. It felt a little ridiculous to spell out what we were comfortable with and what we weren't for the two weeks leading up the visit. But it feels much better (for both of us) to know that we have a plan to get together and can look forward to it.

We’ve struggled with this too, and I feel like we’ve been back and forth on it. We’ve seen my parents a fair amount, but only outside from a distance. We’ve only seen my mother in law a couple of times, and I feel badly about it, but she’s a hair stylist so we’re a little more cautious with her. She’s such a wonderful MIL and grandparent so it makes me feel terrible. I know it saddens her, but she would never say anything.

What I’m saddest about is that we were supposed to go to my family’s cabin this summer with my entire family and its cancelled. I love having this time with my family, and specifically for my kids to play with their cousins. We had still considered going with my sister’s family, but they aren’t being careful at all. I just saw a picture of them with a bunch of their friends. 30+ people all scrunched together, no masks. So, that’s out.