Holidays
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Holiday Drama
I'm mostly posting as a vent, but the drama involved in Christmas is making me want to go Scrooge and not celebrate!
First, I'm married with a newborn baby. My family is small, as is dh's. He's an only child, so it's basically his parents and maternal grandparents for holidays. My family is myself, mom, sister, and my mom's sister and her husband.
Every Thanksgiving, we host everyone. Our families get along, and it great. In previous years, Christmas Day is typically brunch in the morning at dh's parents and dinner at night at my mom's.
In the past, Christmas Eve we've split. We both have longstanding family traditions that we both love, and neither of us, me especially, wants to forgo spending time with our family. So generally, dh would go to church with his family and then do dinner with them, while I do church and dinner with my family. After he's done, he and his parents come to my mom's for gifts, dessert and company. We've been married a year but this was the compromise even while we were just dating.
This year, dh and I mutually decided that because we have a baby, we will not spend Christmas Eve separately at all, not even for dinner. We already decided to go to church with my family, (that's our parish anyway). After that, we hoped to host Christmas Eve at our house, that way everyone could be together. My mom's house is too small to host his grandparents in addition to everyone else. His parents can't host everyone for the same reason.
Well, I asked my mom about hosting and she got really funny about it, like she doesn't want to do that. It's so frustrating because she'd be even more upset if we skipped out on spending it with her altogether. This is the only solution I can come up with. What's more frustrating is that previously she'd say things like, once you have baby our Christmas traditions might change. Now she's being a complete baby about it - my sister's words. I came straight out and told her that we want to celebrate with everyone together, and she said "Whatever, I don't care", but she clearly cares a lot!
The thing is, I don't think she'd be happy regardless. Like if we did all of Christmas Eve with one family and Christmas Day with the other, I feel like she'd still be upset. Ugh! How frustrating!!
Re: Holiday Drama
Then express to her that of course you want to see her, you don't LIKE that things have to change, but... that's the reality right now. Then tell her you want her input. Lay out the options for her. "Here are the choices I see". Then give her time. Say "Take a day and think about it. Andif you can come up with something I'm not thinking about, great! But think these things over and let's talk about it again tomorrow.".
By seeing everything laid out and then having time to process it all- she'll hopefully realize "o.k. - it's simply not going to be the same. And if I want to see her (you) every year, I have to be flexible.". And being given some space to think about it, hopefully your next conversation will be "O.k. - it seems like X will be the best.".