Thanksgiving should have been very hard this year. My husband was in Germany for a business trip and I was left alone with our 4 month old son. I had just gone through two weeks of sleep regression and while my son was now back to (mostly) sleeping through the night, I had meanwhile been sleep trained to wake up every two hours and wake up at 4 am for the day. My mother-in-law had offered to let me come stay with her, but I wanted to see if I could do it on my own and there were things that really needed to get done around the house.
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| My lucky ass husband at a Germany Christmas festival |
But as terribly hard as I thought it was going to be, it actually wasn’t that bad. I got a lot done around the house, though a lot has certainly been redefined since having a baby. But I finally got around to unpacking a few boxes leftover from our move six months ago. Honestly the big thing was I made progress everyday. I was sure by Wednesday I would have given up on tasks and chores in favour of the guilt-free pleasure of staying in bed all day cuddling my baby, but I woke each morning in time to get McDonalds breakfast (though I did refrain) and was slowly starting small tasks that would be completed by the end of the day. Laundry was done and put away, stray nonsense I’ve accumulated were moved from old piles to new ones (and some even put away!) Even before I had a kid, this was a highly productive week for me.
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| I collect mugs and this is what DH brought home for me, he did good. |
By the time Thursday rolled around I had a routine set out. Coffee, tv, cuddling, feeding the baby, maybe feed myself, household chores, all things I would cycle throughout the day until slowly things were done, and then big fussy tantrums from the baby each evening around dinner time, in which I would be stressed out because I still hadn’t managed to make my own dinner yet. 7-9 pm was the worst part of each day. Then Thursday came and I was sure I was going to be sad all day, but as it turned out, my dad wasn’t able to make it out to the big family dinner, in which the family that did make it out to my grandfathers had all left by six in the evening, my mom who has never been into making anything big, didn’t do anything big for Thanksgiving either, I didn’t feel like I missed anything in the US for the first time and I didn’t have much of an appetite for the meal I made myself (an expat treat of Mac and Cheese (with tuna but I think that’s just a me thing), baked beans and fruit cocktail). It was by this time that I started to realize it wasn’t 7-9 pm that was the issue, but rather having to put the baby down in order to cook that was the problem. Even once I was done cooking and sat down to eat, LO was so fussy at not being held I think we were both in tears staring at my food by the end of it. For the next two days my dinners consisted of fast food and pizza delivery, and voila, it worked like a charm!
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| Happy Thanksgiving to me. |
I picked up DH on Sunday from the airport and we continued our new tradition of spending our Thanksgiving dinner at TGIFridays where I had a nice big, strong glass of adult lemonade and some sizzling chicken and shrimp (oh, for the love of cheese).
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| I think these two missed being able to team up on me ;) |
Also as a side note, we just got HGTV in Malaysia and immediately I had DH add it to our cable package. I swear I will never get anything done in a timely matter ever again, I'm too addicted to House Hunters to get off the couch!
