whitewriter | Nan's Christmas 2022 (Reply)

People make a big stink out of the actual date the 25th.
It's rather symbolic I suppose.
But with a broken family you need to make leeway to spread things out.

Not everyone can be everywhere at the same time, on Christmas day.

You have the entire month of December. Or you could take turns I suppose, would be another way. Probably cut down on travel back and forth if certain houses are not nearby.

Nan's Christmas on Dec 18 2022 was initially rumoured to be Peter's brother's wedding.

Then it turned into a gathering which then ended up being Christmas.

Blimey I couldn't keep up. I didn't know what to wear. I didn't know what to bring (I should have brought presents to save on bringing heaps at actual Christmas.

I threw on some random dress which I love, and is great for breastfeeding - but needed fixing. I tried to sew it in the car but totally failed so you can see what is actually my breastfeeding singlet top in all the photos. Fortunately the colour matches so well it doesn't look like what it is.

The day was fine. I was mildly worried Nan's place wouldn't be set up for a 10 mo old so I had to keep a pretty strong eye on Wendy who puts everything in their mouth.

Being woken up 6 times a night by a 10 mo old is just, annoying.

I keep trying to wean the night feeds.

So I was pretty tired. And Pete wanted to leave at 530am (lol) we managed the more reasonable 630am -
cause remember Pete, we gotta sort 2 adults and a baby who refuses to sleep in it's cot meaning we can't leave her alone.

I forgot my pillow so I struggled to sleep in the car on the way over.

Then it was a veryyyy loooonggg day

which culminated with the whole family playing a game outside called Cub while I waited inside and wondered when it would finish so I could take Wendy to where we were staying and settle her for the night.

We didn't end up getting there until 20:00 so that ended up being the 2nd night in a row she didn't get a bath. -- there was even a 3rd present in her nappy - which made me feel guilty (so many poops and no bath?) so we did a bum sink scrub and I boobed her to sleep. They had a handy mattress on the floor so that was great, the only negative was that it was a single mattress. I'm a large girl and Wendy takes as much space as a large girl. So it was squishy.

She rolled off it at about 2am - so I migrated to an equally small single bed shoved up against the wall (which was great) but it squeaked heaps as I turned. I blamed my large size for that. But also the kiddo doesn't give me any room to move, and seemingly woke with each squeak. Eventually I left her there on the squeaky bed with the matress below the edge, If she fell, she'd fall onto a pillow soft heaven so I wasn't concerned.

To keep her quiet there was a fair bit of boobing that night.

On the way home I slept in the car and that gave me resolve to do more patting and less boobing at night.

She was rather difficult to put down that night but I refused to boob her (after 2 nights of doing just that).

If I knew we'd be so long at Nan's I would have asked to go to Pete's Dad's place earlier.

But I admit it was super nice to see their family as one unit again. It hadn't happened likely since the divorce. Which was about 20 years ago now.

Even rarer because James - Pete's 2/5 brother was in town. He usually lives in Canada.

So it's a special occasion.

Even Aunt Lisa came.

The only person that refused was Emily. She abjectly and has always since refused to do anything related to her father's side. They send gifts through us at Christmas.

Pete mentioned once, she had worked on some sort of sweet present for her Nan - only to have it rejected at Christmas time. That was one example. And Pete said his Nan would say awful things about his mother to him after the divorce. Which makes him think they're "not very nice people".

They're all smiles and niceties when potential in-laws come around however.

I find age can mellow people out.

Awkward moment of the day that I missed out on -

while they were playing cards, Pete's mum turned to Alison and asked her "so when are you having children?"

lolz.