I watched ‘What To Expect When You’re Expecting’ with a few girlfriends this weekend and it dredged up some emotions that are eleven years old, but are still as fresh as if they occurred yesterday.

Once upon a time, my husband and I decided that it was time to try to get pregnant and start building our family. We did the deed (multiple times), we (I) became pregnant, and at about the five-week mark, I was hit with the physical symptoms of pregnancy. I was exhausted, my regular diet of chicken and salad became replaced with ALL OF THE CARBS, and I laughed/cried at ridiculous things.

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We’re in the midst of Thanksgiving weekend and Christmas is mere weeks (weeks!) away. There is also Hannukah and other holidays that my family does not participate in, but which we respect your family’s right to. With all of these holidays crammed into such a short amount of time (weeks!), it means that you’re going to be spending at least one dinner with extended family. You might even be trekking for many miles with cranky children, only to have horrible sleeps on spring-loaded hide-a-bed mattresses, and then trying to smile nicely when your husband’s mother asks you if you’re taking a break from working out, because your face seems a bit ‘puffy.’

Never fear! I have five tips to help you survive the holidays with your in-laws, be they the woman who birthed your husband, or creepy/drunk Uncle Ted.

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Yesterday morning, my daughter and I arrived at her school and parked the van. My oldest son immediately started walking towards us (He and his brother prefer to take the bus so that they can hang out with their friends) and I knew that something was up. Something was up — my middle child was injured.

A bunch of kids had been playing tag, when one of the girls slipped and fell. My son then tripped over her and landed right on his shoulder. When I got to the office, he was sitting in the big comfy chair with an ice pack on his shoulder. He cried whenever he moved his arm — at all — and the principal said that he had the same reaction when he broke his own collarbone.

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I am a photographer, so I take many (many, many) photos of my kids all year long. It was much easier to take them when they were younger, yes, but they are at an age where they know that if they give me JUST ONE good photo, they will be free to go. Their Dad has yet to learn this lesson, as evidenced by this photo that I took on a lunch date we had two weeks ago.

Sigh.

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The holiday season is fast approaching (I’m sorry for the reminder) and with it comes the big family dinners for Thanksgiving and Christmas. My side of the family is spread across the country, but my husband’s parents and siblings (and their kids) all either live here, or are a few hours away. We aim to get us all together for Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and usually hit two out of the three each year.

We used to converge on my in-laws house for the dinners, but then they moved away for a few years and I discovered that I love to host dinner parties. Love, love, love it. I spend a good three days preparing, between planning the meal, getting the food, and prepping as much as I can in advance of the dinner. I’ve got it down to a (crazy, hectic) science in that once everything is done and we all sit down to eat, I am done. I enjoy my meal with everyone else and then my husband and the rest of the family cleans up the mess and I relax with a glass of wine.

Who hosts the family dinners in your family?

While I have never been divorced, I am a child with divorced parents. They have each been divorced a couple of times over, and I wouldn’t call their splits ‘friendly’. Well, except for my Dad’s divorce from his third wife, who I call Mom (It’s complicated). It was a rocky split at the beginning, but they have worked out a pretty good system for parenting their four kids. They are in no way BFF’s, nor do they hang out, but they don’t harbor anger and vent it in front of the kids.

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I grew up with a Dad who loves to garden. Before he switched to condo life, he had a greenhouse and would grow anything and everything. Even now, the large deck of his condo is covered with a lot of greenery.

Back when I was a young girl living in the big city, my Dad would bring me potted plants or mini rose bushes and I would inevitably kill every single one. I even killed ivy, which is pretty much impossible to kill. It’s something to do with the plants needing to be watered regularly? Or something?

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The Internet has been aflame this week with incendiary posts. Time magazine’s cover photo got Twitter/Facebook/blogs all aflutter with their takes on if women were “Mom enough.” Yesterday’s post over at Babble about ‘Top 10 Things Mothers Do Better Than Fathers’ got all of the Dads’ panties (Do Dads wear panties?) in a knot.

It’s 2012, people. Two thousand and twelve, twenty-twelve, however you pronounce it.

There are people who are stuck in stereotypes from fifty years ago, and God bless them. I hope they are happy.

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My regular/day job sees me working in an office 30 minutes away from home. That job is finished April 30th, and I will be working from home again (YAY!), come May 1st. It’s been a rough couple of years for us, as my husband works in our small town and, (because he is awesome, and) he’s dealt with all of the extra-curricular activities. I talked about this in my last post, but some interesting developments have happened since then.

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I come from a broken family, and by “broken”, I mean that my Mom has been married three times. My Dad, five times. We’ve weathered all of that, the best that we can. I am in close contact with my Dad and his current wife, and also his third wife, because she was my Mom throughout my teenage years and ever since then. She is the best Grandma that my kids have, and she counsels me when I ask for it.

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