Grandma Troubles

I really appreciate having my mother close by. My parents are about 45 minutes away, so they're not right next door, but they're close enough to enjoy a few conveniences. They can babysit on days where Baby A is sick and can't go to daycare, or on days where Mama T is sick or wants a vacation day. It's very helpful. My mom has been coming over on Fridays to help me clean the house during Baby A's nap and frequently by the time I get home, around 1, she's already done the laundry and vacuuming. It's really so great and I appreciate it so much.

However.

My mother is a little opinionated.

Kind of like I'm a little opinionated.

Only, my mother has the 'Well I'm the mom' attitude about her opinions and feels she can pretty much tell me (and my husband) whatever she thinks about anything. And really, even in the rare cases that she doesn't say anything, she's not a very good liar and it's rather obvious when she disagrees with something.

We are getting ready to move Baby A into her 'Big Girl Room' so that we can continue using the nursery as a nursery for this next baby. I've been picking colors and deciding on what I want to do with either the furniture we have (all hand-me-downs that have seen better days) or what I might want to purchase. Every time I come up with a plan, my mother shoots it down. Which bed I was going to use. What height it was going to be. Whether I wanted to just buy a headboard, or buy a new bed frame. Whether I wanted to use a dresser we have already or buy a new one, or a craigslist one. The colors I picked for the sheets. The pattern I picked for the drapes. Everything seems to be a battle right now.

At first I was really excited about doing this with my mom and having her with me to go out shopping for things and putting together a cute but not 'baby' little girl's room. Now, I'm annoyed, frustrated and just want to do it myself and am even questioning sending my husband any of the things I'm looking at getting because I just don't want another negative response.

Add to that the fact that Baby A's birthday is coming up. I've been thinking about it and making some plans for a while and trying to be a little ahead of the game rather than last year where I ignored the fact that she was turning one until the week before. So then, all unasked and unplanned, my mother announces that she's going to make an Elmo cake for Baby A and that when I was little she made me a cookie monster cake and she had so much fun doing it that she was so excited to do it for Baby A. Well. That's great. And I'm glad she's excited. But what if I wanted to make my daughter a cake for her birthday. And what if I was excited to be able to do these things for her and have these memories. Now I don't know what to do. Do I say something and know I'm hurting her feelings? Do I keep my mouth shut and say thank you?

My mother is not alone in this. My Mother in Law has some similar issues. There are things that she so thoroughly enjoyed doing as a mother that she now wants to do it again as a Grandmother. She puts Christmas stockings together for Baby A and an Easter Basket each year. I don't know what to do about this either. I have talked to my husband about this, the issue with both mothers, and neither one of us really know what to do. He didn't get Christmas stockings from his grandparents while he was growing up.You get a stocking from Santa. That's it. That's the deal. How do I work stockings from Grandma into this??

At what point between being a Mother and becoming a Grandmother do they become so challenging??