Dear readers and friends, yet another year has come and gone without my best friend here by my side. I'm a little older, perhaps a bit more cynical than before and seemingly no closer to the end of our personal immigration nightmare. While everyone around me prepares to celebrate the coming of a new year with friends and lovers, I just want to sit in my room and watch Ice Age 4 with my darling daughter. Instead I find myself forced to socialize with my brother, sister-in-law, and their 3 children. The holidays just don't bring out the best in me these days...
We've just worked past tantrum 2 and tantrum 3 is well underway. Mikey, who will be 2 in mid-January, keeps trying to take toys away from his little brother Trevor and it always ends in an ocean of tears. My brother is mostly useless through all this; he came home from work and cooked dinner after bitching about what we'd chosen, then assisted briefly during TT 2 (temper tantrum 2) after Mikey made it clear he didn't want to deal with his interfering auntie. After Mikey was mostly settled, John disappeared into the basement yet again to play with the computer that gets more time and attention than his children. Carol needs help, but John isn't about to sacrifice his wants or desires for the sake of his children. As Alberto said, I'm not the nanny so I will only help so much.
Mikey is sleeping finally after I went down and traded him a nuk for the pile of books he had in his crib with him. You see, after TT 3 began, we put Mikey in his crib with the books so he could calm himself safely. An hour passed before I went to make the trade, I told Mikey to lay down with his blanket and nuk. I left the door open but shut off the lights, hoping he'd just decide to go to sleep on his own. Now Carol is giving Trevor his final bottle to settle him in for the night, please let him just go to sleep without my help because I AM DONE tonight. Carol complains that John has never really helped with the kids, but I want to shout back that she decided to have another kid with him - the privilege to whine is long gone so suck it up buttercup.
I've called Alberto twice already tonight and I'll call him once more before I go to bed. "Remember to be firm Deza", he says, reminding me to back off. "Carol and John have been parents longer than we have, they should know what they're doing by now. You're not the nanny." Yes, but my darling husband is not here listening as the two boys cry their eyes out. I'm not made of stone, so thank God for my new mp3 player and ear buds - they have saved my sanity many nights already.
I have hope that 2013 will be the year that a resolution is found. We will be a family again. I will be able to get off the antidepressants so I can safely get pregnant without fear (Wellbutrin XL is a category C drug) and Ashley will have a little brother to love and ultimately be annoyed by. I hope that 2013 will finally be that new beginning we so desperately need.
“What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.”
T.S. Eliot
Ciao
*written for you on the Toshiba Excite 16GB 7.7" tablet - a Christmas present for myself that I saved for several months to buy*
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