When your husband doesn’t get along with your mom friend. What do you do?

I have a mom friend I’ve known for 3 years. She’s nice. Her and her husband watched our toddler when I gave birth and she invites us to swim at her house periodically. But we appreciate and also make big efforts to reciprocate her kindness. We’d always order food for her whole family (which aren’t cheap), give them gifts like shoes, books etc. but if feels like too much pressure because she’s either buying gifts for us randomly so I’m also forced to buy them gifts. My husband doesn’t like it because he says we can afford those things (like she gets my son shoes or gives us hand me downs) and we don’t need them. Then I end up feeling indebted to them.

The other thing is she’s very sensitive and gets upset when I take a while to see her. But it’s because her son doesn’t play well with my son. He’s either throwing objects, things like rocks in his hair, sand, Ajax at my son, yanking him, wrestling him to the ground. My son is usually crying. So my son gets scared to play with him. He literally runs to hide behind me. Now the mom intervenes but I can’t really say something like “be gentle” to her son because the mom gets upset and says I don’t want her son to play with mine. So I’m forced to always let her handle it.

Then when I spend like 3 weeks in a given month not seeing them, they say I don’t really make them a priority like they want to be treated special since they treat me special. But also my friend being around my husband stresses me out because there are times my husband cracks jokes and she gets offended. Now that’s my husband and I get his sense of humor and he never means ill. For example, one time they came over and her son was jumping, dancing, doing somersaults. He’s a very strong toddler so my husband says “oh wow Jan is so physical. He’ll carry Brian (our son) on his back to prom.” Now their son is stronger than our son who doesn’t really like physical things like my husband. But instead of getting the joke, my friend thought my husband meant her son had brawns and no brains because he used the word physical. And she called me and said, “I want to know what your husband meant so I can determine the course of this friendship.” I’m like WTH. My husband likes her son. He literally gave me $400 to gift their son for his baptism, bought him an outfit, took time from work to attend the ceremony when she asked me to be godmother. And she can’t even see those other things.

I generally see them every week but then this month I had family stuff going on like my in laws visiting (but my friend wanted me take my in laws to their house to swim so the kids can play but my in laws just wanted to be with the kids because they hadn’t seen them for two years). My friend didn’t seem thrilled about that. I had 3 family deaths, medical visits and didn’t see them and then her husband told me lately I’ve been disappointing them. I canceled one day but my husband wasn’t feeling well. Then another time they invited me last minute but I couldn’t make it. Then she told me to first fix the affairs in my home before I make plans with them. I found that to be rude.

One time, my family was doing a gift drop off on Xmas eve and it was coming to 7pm. My family has agreed we won’t chit chat cause we will be late and had like 10 houses in opposite directions. She got upset we didn’t stop to say hello and felt her house wasn’t special cause I texted her saying “we have a couple of houses to pass by.” Mind you I had seen her 5 days ago and was going to see her in the next 2 days. Keep in mind I had a 3 year old and 4 month baby with a tired husband helping me. But she never keeps those things in mind. They always get upset if we don’t come allow time for our kid to play with theirs. Yet we periodically have play dates that take an entire day!

So I just feel pressured to see them every week or two and if I don’t, it’s an issue. If I see them, I have to be sensitive and not hurt her feelings. Am I being insensitive or are my friends expectations high?