Cheryling. No…Nancying. No…Ralphing.

I’m really grateful Amelia is finally starting to sleep for longer stretches again, because the waking up every two hours throughout the night was getting really old. Oh, didn’t I tell you? She’s been doing that off and on for the last two months. It was killing me. And I need all the stamina I can get right now, because I am feeling ridiculously overwhelmed.

I realized this morning that I’m not so much stressed out about flying with a baby (your comments helped me feel much more confident about that, though, thank you!) as I am stressed out about the fairly last minute hotel and rental car arrangements we had to make. And a little sad about not having as much time as I’d like to see all the things I want to see in Chicago. And anxiously anticipating the approximately-36-hour window between coming home from Chicago and leaving for Winslow in which I will need to unpack, do laundry, repack, finish last minute Christmas shopping and gift wrapping, and feed the missionaries. And irritated that Mila’s six month well baby visit–which is scheduled for the day after we get back from the ‘slow–has been moved from our pediatrician’s Mesa office to the one in Gilbert, which is three times as far away. And disappointed that I didn’t have time to make Christmas gifts for my niece and nephew like I’d planned. And grumpy over David having to go on a last minute business trip to Maryland instead of helping me get us ready to leave on Sunday. And nervous for tomorrow because I foolishly committed to singing in sacrament meeting for the first time in forever. And unreasonably bothered by the fact that I still don’t know what I’m going to wear to my cousin’s wedding. Which may just be that proverbial straw on the proverbial camel’s back, you know?

I keep listening to Christmas songs, hoping they will have a soothing influence on my increasing levels of anxiety. But instead of the “all is calm, all is bright” feeling, I keep looking at what’s going on over the course of the next two weeks and feeling more like the dream sequence on that old Chipmunk Christmas record* where Clyde Crashcup tries to invent Christmas and “there was Abe Lincoln, sitting on a pumpkin being pulled by four elephants” and it’s all weirdness and pandemonium.

I guess I just need to remember to breathe and enjoy the ride. And maybe watch “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” I’m being the Charlie Browniest of Charlie Browns, taking a wonderful season like Christmas and turning it into a problem, and perhaps I need Linus to remind me what it’s really all about.

*Please don’t tell me you have no idea what I’m talking about because surely I’m not the only one who played that 45 incessantly as a child. “Romeo had his Juliet. Peanut butter had his jelly. And I had my harmonica.” Great stuff, that.