DH's mom thought we were going to head back to CT until we bought a house. Actually, I still thinks she has vague hopes.

Just keep sayng , " I'm here, it is where I want to be" and leave it at that. Don't argue or give reasons.

I recommend a firm but vague "I have responsibilities here". Don't get too specific or she will start marshalling arguments why any particular thing you want to do in MI could be done in TX or doesn't need to happen or something.

Yup. My parents still occasionally point out how much lower the cost of living is in Birmingham, and MIL will tell us about job opportunities in Tulsa. Parents just do that. And while I won't say we'd never live in Tulsa or B'ham, because if I said that, DH would follow through on his dreams of getting a PhD someday, and he'd be offered exactly two faculty positions--at the University of Tulsa and Birmingham-Southern--they're awfully low on our list. It's just the way it is. They can't help wishing we'd move home. First it was because we were still so young; now it's because they don't see as much of Annabel as they'd like. And I do envy people who actually like the town they're from. Babysitting is much easier to arrange when you're not 3000 miles from Grandma. But you just have to make your choices, stand by them, and live with them.

{{Beej}} - that's just an eveil thing to have to do. so don't - make the evil people do it themselves.

and I never wrote the ma~~~ to Steph's bigboss , but I started sending the instatn I read what he had. ( okay - there was a pause when I said ewww)

I think my mom still secretly beleives we'll all come back and live near her, although we're all in our 40s now and it will NEVER HAPPEN.

I think my grandmother nourishes a belief that they'll all (meaning my grandparents & mom & stepdad) move down to Eugene, OR (where one of my uncles & his family is), and then Z & I and my other uncle & his family will move to the Pac NW, and then we'll be one big happy clan. I think my mother is also starting to believe that.

Not enough no in the world. P-C, you keep following your own goofy little star. Your mom may never give up her hopes, but the best antidote is living well.

I know a number of people, actually, whose parents have picked up and moved to near where they are rather than the reverse. When my siblings and I were a little more scattered, I know my father was tossing around options for eventually moving closer to one of us as well.

It makes so much sense when the parents are retired - frequently they've got a big house they'll be wanting to sell at some point anyway, and so much more freedom to pick up and move whereever they choose than younger folks, especially with kids, tend to have.

My mom would all but wet herself with delight if we moved closer to them. (We're only an hour away now, but don't see them that often because I'm a bad daughter, and anyhow we all appear to share the common Baltimore-D.C. area delusion that the Potomac River is a Berlin Wall.) And every time we visit St. Louis, Patrick's mom and sister spend half our visit talking it up to us.

As other people said, parents are like that.

Probably serial:

It makes so much sense when the parents are retired - frequently they've got a big house they'll be wanting to sell at some point anyway, and so much more freedom to pick up and move whereever they choose than younger folks, especially with kids, tend to have.

I'm hoping that when my parents retire (still five or ten years off), they'll do exactly this. For one, they have three acres and it's a lot for them to keep up even now; for another, my mom has never liked living in the country, and I think it's time she gets to pick where they live.

That said, I cannot imagine my dad opting to move to a smaller house in a more urban area without a lot of persuasion from everyone else.

I would go bugfuck crazy if I moved back to my parents' town. Where you have to drive almost an hour to get to the nearest town with more than 8,000 people.

My parents will probably be selling their house in the next year or so (and moving to a smaller one), which means I'll have to go up there and get all my crap. Too bad I don't have a place to keep it all.

Are you planning to have kids sometime in that span, LJ? Sic them on grandpa and see what happens.

My mom and stepdad have said that if I move to SF, they're following me.

They aren't kidding. They love the politics, because they're just as liberal as I am; the love the general laid-back-ness compared to uptight Cincy; and they're hugely wine-obsessed.

I told them that if I move and they follow me, I might have to kill them.