Thanksgiving

Next week, C, Wild Man, and I are traveling to visit our families for the Thanksgiving holiday. The past few days have been incredibly stressful (including quite a few tears for me) for both of us as we try to negotiate with our families (well, primarily C's mom and sister) a visiting schedule. Every time we visit our families, we go through this process. We try to split the time as evenly as possible, but as I've discussed before, my family is laid-back to the point of passivity while C's family likes to plan things months in advance. C & I generally sit down and decide what nights were staying with whom, and since Wild Man's birth, we no longer move back and forth every night. We stay with one family half the time, and with the other the remainder. In my mind, this means that the days that correspond with those nights are reserved for which ever family we're staying with. Unfortunately, C's family (again, primarily his mom and sister) don't agree. Once he shares this schedule with them, they inevitably say "I want to do x on x day," regardless of whether it is a day earmarked for my family or not.

The planning for this visit has been particularly tense as my mom actually wanted to host Thanksgiving dinner this year. In the past, when we've been in our Home State for holidays, we've tried to get our two families together for the holiday dinner as it is easier than having 2 dinners and it makes it less stressful for everyone. Despite the tension around planning, our families actually get along together fairly well (at least when they're in the same room!). My mom, however, is not a big "party person," so she prefers to let C's mom host. This year, however, my mom wanted to host for a variety of reasons, the most of important to her and me is that I haven't eaten a holiday meal in my natal home in over 8 years. She was more than willing to have C's entire family over, and even 2 family friends who are always included in their holiday dinners. This, for whatever reason, was unacceptable to C's mom. She couldn't wrap her mind around this, so she went ahead and made plans to have Thanksgiving dinner at her house. Although both my mom and I were disappointed, we agreed to have dinner there. Then my sister unexpectedly announced that she and her 2 kids were flying in for the holiday. I was ecstatic, and my mom still has no idea as my sister wants to surprise her (for the record, I think these sorts of surprises are a bad idea!). The catch: my sister wants to have Thanksgiving dinner at my parents' house. Totally cool with me, even though it means that C, Wild Man, & I will have to attend two dinners. The problem: C's mom is totally obsessing about what time my family is eating and making it very clear that she cannot move the time of her dinner either up or back to accommodate anyone--not even her grandson's schedule. So we adjusted. My family is eating very early, and we will only be spending about 2 hours with C's family as we have to account for Wild Man's nap and bedtime. Frustrating yes, but not the end of the world (admittedly, I'm saying this after I ranted and raved for about 30 minutes to my sister). In the end, my m-i-l is only hurting herself by refusing to compromise.

Now that I've gotten all of that out--I found it oddly cathartic to put all of that down in a logical, rational way, avoiding all the torrent of emotions I've been feeling about the visit. I am looking forward to a lot of things with this visit.

Wild Man gets to meet his maternal cousins for the first time.

C & I get to see our niece and nephew for the first time in almost 2 1/2 years.

My entire family will be under the same roof for the first time in almost 2 1/2 years--minus my brother-in-law who couldn't get time off for the trip.

I get to see my niece's latest hair-do in person (she's 13, and her hair has been 5 colors in as many months!).


We're taking Wild Man to a Famous Park that I loved as a child.

I get to eat at my favorite restaurant in the whole world.

I'm going out to dinner and who knows what else with my best friend (the woman I've known since we were 8!).