TGHrO!!!!!!!



Thank Goodness the Holidays are Over!!  With the risk of sounding too Scrooge like, is it bad to be very happy to have the holiday season past and  finished?  The fall holidays never seem to have an ending.  They blend from one obligation into the other with little reprieve in between.  For us, the  holidays start with Halloween and then with birthdays and parties, appear at least every week or so not winding down untill the second week of January.  So many holidays create a tidal wave of commitments that crescendo around the big kahuna of Christmas that questions arise such as: 
 *When to start decorating for one holiday and how soon to move on from one holiday to the next?

     *Does a photo card with preprinted addresses seem un-genuine?  
(Really I was thinking of you all personally...)

     *Is there a time limit as to how long a birthday card should remain on the shelf if 
it conflicts with another holiday?  
 
  *Is it wrong to put the unopened cookies out from one holiday at the next event? 
 
  *How do you properly honor a birthday that always has a Christmas tree looming in every photo?  
I am happy to be finished. The Christmas décor all went away last weekend… finally.  A week later than I would like but again – a birthday so the ideal plan was diverted.  My son, now 20 months old, would have been happy to have the tree up all year.  He enthusiastically would run around the house each morning asking to have every lit object turned on.  If nothing else the end of the season might alone cut our electric bill by a third.  

Of course this year the pressure of the holidays was intensified by the weekly visits to the doctors for the baby.  We have now been to four different hospitals for a variety of appointments, visits, and tests. I would recommend to others not to tour a NICU unit 3 days before Christmas.  Being pregnant is bad enough during the holidays, seeing your soon to be reality of tubes and monitors was tougher than expected.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m very content to know and be prepared for what we will be facing in the next few weeks, but I think I could have waited until after the holidays were officially over before I added a visual and its additional level of mental stress.  
As the birth soon approaches (less than a month now) I am as prepared as I think is possible given the circumstances. I have visited and talked to every doctor, nurse, specialist and parent with a shared history available. The next birthday/ holiday will be a scary, but amazing day.  And intrestingly, I don’t even mind extending the holiday season to include this extra one. 

For now we wait.

1/22/2012  

Your thoughts to share.