Let me whine about having a job.

So. There's a large argument about whether it's harder to be a working mom or a stay at home mom. I know that each comes with it's own challenges, and that if I stayed home all day every day I would eventually go crazy and revert to speaking only baby talk and saying things like "poopy diapey" and listening to the KidSongs channel on digital cable.

However, this holiday season has been the hardest two weeks of my life. Before December happened, I felt pretty comfortable in my "working mom" role. I think we had a decent routine down. Jacob was sleeping pretty well at night and going down between 8-9PM, which gave me time to get his bottles ready for the next day, clean the kitchen, do a load of laundry, and still spend an hour or so relaxing with my husband. On weekends we enjoyed family time and caught up on housework.

On Black Friday, I spent the slow workday getting about 60% of my Christmas shopping done online. I was feeling pretty good about things. Then all of a sudden, everything happened at once. I realized that we had plans every weekend day of the next 6 weeks, my supply of breastmilk took a nosedive, and the outlet our chest freezer was plugged into tripped and we lost about $600 worth of meat, heat and eat meals, and my precious extra breastmilk. All of a sudden I was spending extra time "power pumping" and baking lactation cookies to try to get my milk back up, and Jacob started going to bed later and getting up earlier, causing my 6AM-11PM days to feel like they were nonstop.

I freaked out. Completely. I spent two weeks so stressed out about how I was ever going to decorate, clean the house, and get all these presents wrapped that I had no time left over to actually do those things. I was a mess...snapping at my husband, crying at the drop of a hat, sleepwalking through work. I felt like I had some kind of late-onset Post Partum Depression.

I don't know how, but one way or another I made it through and just as quickly as it started, I relaxed. I did some more online retail therapy, preventing me from having to make shopping trips for Christmas. I got really excited about my ebates account and the fat check I'm going to receive in February as a result of all this time spent online. My boobs miraculously started producing more milk. And I went to Target, bought a bunch of gift bags, and said "screw wrapping"!

Now, my tree is up, my kitchen is (somewhat) clean, my living room carpet is vacuumed, I actually got cards in the mail for the first time ever, gifts are DONE (except my brother in law's 6 pack of beer. Yes, that's really what he asked for), and I'm going shopping with a friend tonight. Just for fun.

I'm finally able to do what I wanted all along: enjoy my son's first Christmas.