Just keep swimming, just keep swimming

While all of my Christmas presents have been bought, wrapped, and shipped (sha-ZAM!), I am still working on getting the last bit of laundry finished, adding more things to the packing list, and, well, actually packing.

I managed to get my hands on some more dipping chocolate the other day and dipped another batch of butterfinger bites, as well as a bag of pretzels, so I am doing pretty well with my mission of Eating All Things Chocolate this holiday season.

That is actually only about HALF of the finished product.

This year for Christmas, things will be a little bit different. For me, at least. It will be my first Christmas away from my family. Don't go feeling too bad for me, my in-laws take really great care of us. Someone always wants to watch/hold/play with Sam, thus allowing Steve and me to sneak away and do something fun out on the town. There always seems to be a bottle of my hair crack in our room since my mother-in-law somehow senses that I'm going to forget mine at home (I usually do!) and she knows what my hair looks like without it (yikes!) and she probably wants to avoid ever seeing that again. There are always super-fresh sheets and an abundance of towels and it feels just like things that MY mom does at home, so it hardly feels like I'm NOT home. But yes, I will miss my family. And the Christmas morning cheese grits. I will go ahead and call it now that Steve's family does not incorporate cheese grits into their Christmas morning celebration. I can understand that fully though, seeing as they live well above the Mason-Dixon line and grits probably sound about as appetizing to them as cream of wheat sounds to me. But nevertheless! I'll miss them. (The cheese grits, that is. Oh, and my family too. Hi Mom!)

Another thing that I'm sort of struggling with this holiday season is my brain. And not just pregnancy brain, because Lord knows I chalk a lot of things up to that. I'm struggling more with the fact that Steve won't be around NEXT year for Christmas. I wonder what we will do, how things will change, how I will ACTUALLY handle the situation. I can usually talk myself out of a funk by saying that I'm going to be so busy with two kids, two dogs, doing regular Christmas season stuff, keeping up with the house and car maintenance, spending some God-awful amount of time standing in line at the post office to send him care packages, and drinking all the wine that I can get my hands on that I won't even have TIME to miss him! But the rational side of my brain (tiny as it is) knows that it WILL be tough and it IS going to suck and I'll probably cry a LOT. I'm trying so hard right now to live FULLY in the present and experience the hell outta this Christmas with him so that at least I can look back next year and remember what an awesome time we had and have no regrets about anything. But, like I said before, my brain is really getting in the way of that.

Last Christmas was such a blur because there was no sleep happening with Newborn Sammy, and as a result of that, Steve and I can't recall much. There certainly weren't any traditions established.

This Christmas we are trying to get a few traditions going, but Sam is still so young and doesn't quite "get" Christmas yet, so it's hard.

Next Christmas will just be weird because Steve won't be here to help carry out anything that we've started this year and I'm wondering when (if?) we are ever going to get into our family holiday groove. To quote a friend of mine (also military), it feels like we're "holding our breath." We're in this hurry-up-and-wait holding pattern for God-only-knows-how-long and it's kind of driving the OCD-planner side of me crazy. I know that so many other people have already experienced this and dealt with it just fine and I'm sure I'll be fine too! But it still hurts to think about and I'm already emotional thanks to these wacky extra hormones and the thought of air travel with a wee-child who is on the cusp of walking (he only holds onto one hand now! GAH!) and the thought of not spending next Christmas with my better half is all PUSHING ME OVER THE EDGE.

(My parents are probably reading this and thinking, Oh such a good year for them to spend Christmas away! And my MIL is probably reading this and thinking, Good God is there any way to just un-invite HER?
Don't worry MIL! I'm gonna do my best to keep it all together! I promise! And I'm bringing CHOCOLATE!)