Breaking tradition

2001 - Six years ago tonight, I went to the Nemo family Christmas Eve party, came home, and cried myself to sleep. (cried about infertility insensitivity's of others)

2003 - Four years ago tonight, I went to the Nemo family Christmas Eve party, came home, and cried myself to sleep. (cried about the babies that I did not have)

2004 - Three years ago tonight, Lucian and I went to the Nemo family Christmas Eve party, came home, and both cried ourselves to sleep. (I cried about my husband being MIA, although he was at the party, and the fact that I couldn't get him to commit to attending my family Christmas. Lucian cried because he was less than 4 weeks old and colicky.)

Do you see a pattern here?

I was not invited to the Christmas party in 2005, and in 2006 I invited myself, but was sick with bronchitis. I also invited myself this year.

Before Lucian and I left tonight, I was having a small anxiety attack. That's what going into hostile territory tends to do to me. :-)

Everything went fine. Even though the whole time I was counting the minutes until we could leave, it was bearable. Thankfully there was no drama this year, and my inner peace (and one nice anti-anxiety pill) kept me in control.

So in breaking tradition, I'm happy to report that Christmas Eve 2007, I went to the Nemo family Christmas party, came home, put my son to bed, and fell asleep with no tears.

note: just in case you were wondering what happened to Christmas Eve 2002, we were at Nemo's family house in Europe. We flew in that day, and my internal clock was so messed up that I was up until 4 am. I didn't cry that year, but since I had had my first IVF fail 2 weeks before, I was pretty dried up.