Hellobee Boards

@crazydoglady: IKR?! They’re “tacky” to my southern MIL. They have labels on them. Can you feel me rolling my eyes?

Christmas Eve is my favorite day of the year. But this year I'm working, and that makes me sad. I initially had a half day, but ended up having to use the PTO allocated for today last week for an urgent ultrasound to make sure my current pregnancy is/was not ectopic. My work has a use it or lose it policy that resets each calendar year (don't even get me started), so it was the last 4 hours that I had available. Worth it long term, but just bums me out.

Also I just realized that because DD slept in a bit this morning for her Daddy, I haven't seen her at all today.

I was reading this thread yesterday and feeling like I have nothing to complain about. But how quickly that changes! Haha. The kids and I have been sick the last 4 days. Just a head cold/wet cough but no one has been sleeping well and I had a super bad day last Friday where I barely slept at all and was miserable, but still went to work as usual, ran errands on the way home for last minute Christmas gifts/food shopping, etc. barely made it through the day, only to have an argument with DH over whose turn it is to sleep in Saturday. Long story short, he slept in Saturday till 9am while I had another night of barely any sleep and 2 sick kids. Just 4 hours after he woke up, it was the kids nap time, and he laid down with our youngest and fell asleep again—-meanwhile, I was exhausted I was supposed to nap, but our 5 year old doesn’t nap any more usually, so I was stuck entertaining her. Finally after 1 hour, I woke up DH so I could take a nap (it was my turn!! We take turns), and he was extremely snippy about it.

Sunday was supposed to be my sleep in day, but I missed it because I have OOT friends visiting, so we were meeting them in a Manhattan for brunch at 9. So instead of sleeping till 9, I “slept in” till 7am, while DH got up with the kids at 6:30.

Last night, (Sunday night), DH says he’s getting the cold the kids and I have had—he went to bed st 8pm. For the 6th night in a row, the kids had multiple wake ups because of coughing/stuffed noses. We played musical beds. Apparently DH woke at 1am and couldn’t go back to sleep till 4am. If you are keeping track, he slept 8pm-1am. Then 4-6am. So that’s 7 hours of broken sleep. Which is WAY MORE than I got on sny night from last Wednesday-Sunday.

So all day today, he has been crabby and has blamed me. He texted me from work (he could have worked from home today but claimed he couldn’t concentrate with us there), he sent me a barrage of texts saying he is sick and never gets sleep and wanted to know if I could take the kids out after he got home from work—FOR FIVE HOURS. Yes, he requested I take a 3 year old and 5 year old out FOR FIVE HOURS ON CHRISTMAS EVE so he can take a five hour “nap”.

When I told him he it’s christmas Eve, and no I’m not taking the kids out for 5 hours, and we have cookie baking and fondue plans as a family and he can come home and take a normal 1-2 hour nap, but then he needs to suck it up and be an adult that has kids in Christmas Eve, he basically had s full temper tantrum and said he was going to sleep at work.

This all really just happened. On Christmas Eve. Like, normally I think my husband is s decent guy and he does a lot, but it is SO TRUE that if he gets a man cold, it’s meltdowns galore. But when the tables are turned, like it was for Wednesday-Sunday and I am the sick one, he does not do even a smidge of extra childcare or housework without being a pissy little bitch about it.

So that’s my rage of the day. All I can say, is he better get his act together before tonight, or me and the girls are going to have a Christmas Eve adventure at the nicest hotel my credit card will get us.

@Anagram: get the hotel girl

@Anagram: that is bananas. I would be irate. I hope he pulls it together tonight. Keep us posted

@lady baltimore:
@Anagram: are we married to the same man like those airline pilots that have two families? This is such. Shit. My husband pulls that nap theft too occasionally and is also an insane dickface mr hyde if he’s sleep deprived which like you I almost always am. And probably like your husband he’s like, shrug, your insomnia/the fact that the woman has to physically nurse the babies is Your Problem not My Problem. Nothing makes me more livid than all of this fucking garbage. Carte blanche on the hotel room.

@wrkbrk: Yes, I can. And I also think you should decorate like this next year. Yankee candles everywhere.

@crazydoglady @wrkbrk: pleeeeease hide yankee candles all over your house next year. Like in the cupboards, everywhere she looks.

@Anagram: so glad he came around!

Arrived at my mom's yesterday. I slept 9-11pm. 3yo woke me up at 11 bc he was "scared to sleep at Gigi's house. " he was up 11-1:30. Then I was up with the 7mo at 2 and up for the day at 5. And I have barely slept for weeks because the baby is a terrible sleeper. And today we have tons of family stuff to do of course.

I love my family and I'm very blessed but I truly feel like I'm on the edge of a breakdown from sleep deprivation.

This is very small but DH didn't put anything in my stocking. I dropped in some face wipes and a chapstick this morning so the kids wouldn't wonder why Santa got me nothing. I wish I wasn't pissed/sad but I am. I told him this morning and he blamed me. I called him while he was out shopping a week ago and that distracted him. My bad. I did all of Christmas (planning, shopping, wrapping, cooking, hostessing, general magic making) and this morning we're flying to his parents' for a week but he couldn't make one run to a store, any store, for me.

I should give DH some credit. He was in charge of setting up the kids tablets for the flight. And he did one of the two (no spliiter). So this is going to be a fun flight.

Vent over. Focusing on the positive now. Like the week at my ILs! Ok, now the good attitude.

@Corduroy: my husband also got me nothing. But unlike you I didn’t cover for him. He also then decided he was “sick” and had to go back to bed until 10:30

@Corduroy: @gotkimchi: my DH put chocolates in mine but really they are for him. My stocking was noticeably unstuffed so my son thought I was on the naughty list. I’m so exhausted I didn’t try to explain it.

@youboots: I hope you don’t get it too.

This has been a memorable Christmas. So far my boys have not gotten my flu and strep and at least I could interact with them today.

Can we go twice? My son (3) is now apparently a tyrant. The end.
ETA: No nap whatsoever today, tantruming, wanting more presents than the 162829 he got, and currently overly tired and crying his eyes out upstairs because he wants to have a “sleepover with mom.” FML.

@wrkbrk: @skinnycow: my kids were total brats for a lot of today. They were appreciative of the gifts for a while, but just out of routine, traveling, lots of people, eating crap, getting to bed late and not sleeping in... not their best selves. Definitely told them Santa can still take their presents back. I’m hoping a good night sleep helps.

But I cannot complain too much, since they are sleeping at my parents and DH and I are at a nearby hotel (he’s allergic to their dog)!

Ugh. My holiday venting has more to do with work/HR/benefits nonsense I'm dealing with over the holidays because my rewards manager has told me the wrong thing or given me info that is not specific enough while I am doing my FMLA/short term disability and adding my newborn to insurance. I thought I had everything sorted out and everything has been not quite right at every turn. Annoying.

Holiday venting is minimal - we're home just the 4 of us with our newborn so there's minimal family stress and just normal newborn days stress

My main gripe is that yesterday DH took our older daughter to our neighborhood friends holiday open house in the afternoon and I was able to get a nap while the baby napped... but then they stayed for like 3 hours because LO was having so much fun. The nap was amazing, I was happy both of them got out and saw friends and LO got some energy burned off... but after like 2 hours of being alone with the baby and unable to *do* anything since she was needing to be held I was feeling very lonely and more than a little annoyed. Like - MAKE her leave. You are the Dad. Just make her leave and come home and help me or at lease hold the baby while I make the entire xmas dinner.

@smuckers: I almost had the opposite thinking. We did almost all the gifts Christmas Eve. I was almost embarrassed how overboard it looked. Then Christmas morning we did stockings and two Santa presents each. Those were the pictures I wanted to post. I wish I had stuck to that kind of minimalism. Goals for next year.

We're at the ILs now and they went way overboard. Not much more than me but we flew here. A ton of toys and a glass baking dish on a plane or packing and shipping everything home.

@smuckers: oh gosh! Don’t feel bad about that!! Our kids got exactly 3 gifts. Total!! 2 from Santa, 1 from us (this is because at some point, I told our kids Santa only brings 2 gifts, and they have amazing memories and never forget that stuff, so now they constantly tell ME that Santa only brings 2 gifts.

This was our tree, with my gifts to DH and his gifts to me—you can see we have about 9 gifts total. And it still felt like a lot! Like once the kids had opened the small Target-1-spot stuff in their stockings, visions of landfills and plastic waste were dancing in my head. And then I realized the cheap Aldi wrapping paper is bought was also not paper but some type of odd plasticky paper that will probably never degrade and will be releasing toxins offgassing into our water supply 1000 years from now. Anyway, somehow it still felt like too much when there are kids in this world without shoes, you know? My husband is always a good reality check on these things—he was collecting the larger pieces of wrapping paper and trying to roll it back into the rolls to use again in the future—you can take the kid out of the developing country, but you can’t take the developing country out of the kid.

Anyway, my goal last year was to consume less and produce less waste and I pretty much failed miserably, but I’m excited to try again this year. That was my little pep talk for you.