'Tis The Most.....

.......Stressful time of the year.

A few days ago on my Facebook page i was telling (well posting for whoever was really reading) that cooking for the holidays is not stressful for me. I don't mind the hours spent in the kitchen or the dishes that don't come out perfect even after i have slaved over them all day. A matter of fact i love cooking for the holidays more then any other meal. It makes me feel full of joy and happiness at feeding my family. Knowing they are full, warm, and happy. It is GREAT (and probably a little weird to the rest of you)!

This Thanksgiving i cooked a massive meal to feed not just my family but about 15 people. I was excited! I normally only cook for the 4 (now 5) of us. It was great. I made turkey, ham, kale, mashed potatoes, gravy, baked mac n cheese, sweet potato casserole, rolls, and 2 pumpkin pies. Why 2 pies you ask? Well because i dropped the first one in the floor of course lol. Way to start out a morning i tell ya (consider this a Thanksgiving update lol).

Anyways back to the point of this post.

As i said, I don't find the cooking stressful in the least. I know things are bound to go wrong. My timing will be off, something might burn, something might get dropped (smile), and it is a guarantee that something will get forgotten until after we are finished eating (like the rolls). But i have come to accept this fact and just flow with it.

What i can not flow with is the never ending stream of "I want this", "Will Santa bring me this", " OH MY GOSH I have to have that". My kids change their minds like they change underwear. What they want today will be long forgotten tomorrow when they see a new commercial, for a new toy, that is even bigger and better. What was wanted yesterday is completely in the dust of today.

This leaves me in a tough spot when we did all of our Christmas shopping a month ago (we actually went earlier this year lol) and have all the presents we intended to buy in layaway as we speak. I have already told family and friends what to get the kids (we bought them both a tag reading system so books to go with that, trains to go with Phabian's Thomas the Train set, and Cars to go with MJ's race track, and clothes of course because Santa, Mommy and Daddy only buy toys). We are out of money and less then 25 days to Christmas.

We still have to buy for the 5 names we drew at my MIL's house plus my niece and nephew. This will probably take up the last little bit of free money we have. So all these late add ons the kids have requested from Santa are completely out of the question. I have tried to explain to the kids that Santa is also feeling the bad economy but somehow my 4 and 5 year olds just don't get what the economy has to do with Christmas.

It leaves me feeling drained sad exhausted stressed and a little like a failure.

Don't get me wrong we bought a lot for the kids. They will by no means go without a ton of presents under the tree. Plus they get presents from my brother, my dad, my MIL, aunts and uncles, and my aunts and grandma are coming in from Florida this year. They also go celebrate with a very close friend of ours who's parents consider them their grandkids and there for the rest of her family has adopted them as well. They will ultimately get more then they really need and everything there eyes can fathom.

So why in the world do i let this stress me so badly?

Why do i give in to the temptation to feel like a failure just because i cant buy them every single thing they want?

WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY??????

Is it just me? Please tell me someone else out there feels like this as well? I need to let myself off easier but for some reason i just cant seem to do it. I wish i had some great psychological insight that i could share but i don't. LA SIGH!

So for now i am going to try to go relax and let it go. The kids will get what they get and what they need. They will not go without and ultimately i know when they wake up Christmas morning they will have those same looks of awe and excitement as they do every year.

I need to enjoy these fleeting years. Soon they will stop believing and start asking for extremely over priced electronics.

Tears

Have you ever had one of those days where you just want to sit and cry. With no real reason or no explanation except that you just feel the overwhelming desire building inside you like a volcano and if you don't just let it out you might explode. Today is one of those days for me.

I think it has been coming for awhile. There are a lot of things on my mind and dealing with stress has never been my strong suit. Today i woke up to my husbands work calling. They ask him to come in, i am assuming, because someone called off. Now i don't normally have a problem with this especially it being this close to Christmas. We need all the money we can get and overtime is more than welcome. Today was just not the day that i needed him to say yes and rush off to save the day. I needed him home with me and the kids to possibly save the day here. The bottom line is he didn't even ask me if i minded that he spent one of his 2 days off at work or if i had plans today, he just told them yes and left. Well not just left, we fought! Neither of us made out points. I was too hysterically crying to even make sense. I said somethings i didn't mean and now i am feeling even worse.

Being a stay at home mom is stressful. Awhile back i wrote a post about all the things i do titled My Yesterday. In it i ranted about my husband and talked about all the things i do day to day as a SAHM. I try not to bitch and i try not to complain and then i end up exploding over something that shouldn't have been that big of a deal. I just feel like he could have ask me if we needed to do stuff today or if maybe i had plans for us. In actuality i did have plans for us. We needed to go to the grocery store as i really don't have anything to feed the kids for lunch. I has also promised the kids that their daddy was off today and we would do something fun as a family. So now i am hungry and disappointed that i lied to my kids. Now maybe things would be different if he had just ask me if i minded or showed some concern for the fact that i seemed quiet upset but the fact of the matter is he did neither, and it hurts!

Adding to the stress and my emotions is my pregnancy/non pregnancy/weird body. I take a pregnancy test every month because i no longer have a period due to my IUD (i know TMI). This is what my doc told me to do so that i could be 100% that i am not preggers. SO for almost 3 years now, on the 1st of ever month, i take a pregnancy test. Every month it is negative. Now most women out there know that taking a pregnancy test can be fun or scary but for me it is agonizing. I hate it and i dread it every month. I want more kids and i think a part of me every month hopes that it will end up positive and the logical part of me tells me that it isn't good timing. So every month when it comes back negative it is a little stab to the heart of hope. I said all of that to say this.

I took a pregnancy test on the 5th i was behind a few days than normal on taking it. In the little box the line that shows up to tell you if you are or are not pregnant wasn't there all the way but there was part of a very very light pink line. Almost like it was saying you might be but I'm not telling. So now i have to wait a week and take another one just to see if it was a dud test or if i am pregnant. Now my mind reels at the thought that i might actually be pregnant. Hubby and i agreed to wait til our youngest son is potty trained before TTC again. Plus i have an IUD in and they say that the chance of miscarriage if they remove it is high but if you leave it in they don't know what damage it can do to the baby. It scares the holy poo out of me. I want a baby but not this way.

So there is my stress. On top of needing about a billion dollars to pay all the backed up bills and feed the family with, i might be pregnant and my hubby is working on his day off (which yes i know is the answer to the money problems). I just feel like i am going to go insane and there isn't a branch on the tree to cradle my fall.