Isn't This Supposed To Be Fun?

There's a Christmas carol that says something to the effect of wanting your days to be merry and bright. Wonderful sentiment, that. It is so far from my reality that I don't even know where to begin.

Life has largely overwhelmed me over the last few days. Jamie finally broke the tooth he's been working on for four solid months and I thought I was due for a break. But, oh no, it was not to be. No sooner did we get that out of the way than I started to have a major heart attack over Christmas.

It seems like we go through this every year - so much to get done in just a few weeks and now that we have a second child I feel like I'm going to hyperventilate every time I let myself think about how much is involved in Christmas. There's the shopping and the wrapping and the baking and the decorating and the Christmas card sending and oh it just goes on and on.

So, we got to spend our weekend feverishly trying to tackle a to-do list that was completely unruly. We manged to get it finished and we now live in something resembling a lovely home that is decorated for the holidays. Now I just have to wrap all the gifts, bake all the cookies, host a visit with my sister, make Christmas dinner, and keep up with the housework so that all our labor over the weekend is not for naught.

In the midst of all that toil we were also dealing with Jamie who was being a total crank and refusing to sleep. We thought that once the tooth broke he'd be fine and out of pain so we stopped giving him pain meds. That was a GIANT mistake. He barely slept last night - which meant that I barely slept - and we fought him for every minute of nap we could get out of him today. I was a zombie this morning and still I don't think I sat down for most of the day. By 5:30 I was sitting on the floor with the baby practically crying from exhaustion and thinking I still had to bathe him, put him to bed, and then go do the grocery shopping.

I know it will all be worth it on Christmas morning when Liam starts opening presents. Jamie's too little to understand or care, but these are the magic years with Liam. The past two Christmases with him have been full of all the joy and wonder of a child at Christmas as anyone could ask for. I know he'll be as excited this year as well. If I can survive the next 10 days, that will be my reward.

In the meantime I'll keep reminding myself that this is supposed to be fun and maybe I'll trick myself into believing it.