Tis the Season...

...The cold and flu season that is! Yup, 8 1/2 months pregnant and my husband someone decided to share a lovely cold.  Not exactly sure who the culprit is as I've been trying to stay away from any and all hacking, coughing, sniffling, etc no matter who is doing it. Alas, it was not meant to be. 

Despite the temptation to run to our now well stocked medicine basket, I must occasionally remind myself to refrain.  Usually this weakness occurs after a particularly bad coughing fest or when my throat feels like it's on fire in the morning. But, baby doesn't have any need for Theraflu or NyQuil so by default neither do I. 

On another note, we made it through "The Season."  11 Christmases later and we are officially done buying presents, wrapping, grumbling to ourselves, visiting family, stuffing our faces, watching hubby enjoy a drink, and chatting with people we might see only once a year. 11 Christmases you say...seems a bit excessive right?  Well let me break it down for you.  Hubs and I both come from divorced families so...

• That's 2 separate parent Christmases for me, plus 1 set of grandparents still living. Also my brother spent Christmas with his wife's family this year so they hosted a small get together for immediate family the weekend before. That makes 4 Christmas celebrations on my side.
• Hubs has 2 seperate parent Christmases as well, plus 3 sets of grandparents (divorce again) still living. That makes 5 Christmas celebrations on his side. 
• We are fortunate enough to live in a fun neighborhood that hosts a Progressive Christmas Dinner night complete with a Toys for Tots drive. Since we are fairly new to the neighborhood we couldn't say no to this one. 
• We have one group of friends (husbands' man-friends from high school & all the wives) that all decided to have a get together this year. We definitely didn't want to miss that as it was probably the most fun and there were NO presents involved, just lots of food and alcohol

So, there you have it. Now these 11 Christmases were not the only things happening in the month of December. We do have a life to get on with in-between all this holiday cheer.  We had birthday parties (mine, a friends daughter, my sister in law, my soon to be step-mother, a cousin, etc.), doctors appointments to see our little Bean grow, baby classes, classes for work, etc. So you can see where I might have fallen short of holiday cheer this year.

But where is the cutoff point? It's not like we can refuse to attend the parties our grandparents are hosting. This time of year is really the only time we are able to visit these family members. What if it's their last? And you can't say no to parents; the guilt trip that never ends isn't worth it no matter how tempted I get. So that puts us down to a bare minimum of about 8 a year. What are we going to do when Bean is here?  Granted she'll be almost a year by next Christmas but HOLY COW! what a nightmare.

Thankfully December is now behind us...and we survived.  Now to get through January and these colds. Bring on February and Bean!