I shall now become a hermit

This may have been among the most exhausting six weeks of my entire life.  And I’ve had newborn twins.

There was the Hawaii trip, which was lovely and all, but the travel and re-entry was brutal.  A few days after we got back, and well before we had gotten over the jet-lag, it was Thanksgiving (at my house, though blessedly small).  Barely a week after that, my in-laws came to town for 10 days.  And while they didn’t stay with us, and are very nice people, it’s still an additional stressor to have visitors.

After they left, I had precisely one week to get my act together (barely) to fly to Chicago for our annual Christmas trip, where we stayed at both of my parents’ houses over the course of a single week.

Christmas is exhausting.  It was always tiring, just with the back-and-forth balancing act that is life with divorced parents.  Add in the whole “I converted to Judaism and am trying to raise Jewish kids” thing, and a husband who is generally not psyched about it all, and it’s nothing short of an emotional minefield.  The cherry on top, of course, is that I am now firmly in my 3rd trimester, exhausted, but cannot sleep well on the best of nights, much less on an unfamiliar bed.

The kids did spectacularly well throughout this travel marathon.  They enjoyed their first snow of the season (it started snowing in Boston a few hours after we left, and we did get back to town in time for snOMG, Snowmageddon, or whatever the hell we’re calling this).  They made one snow angel after another with my mom, and thoroughly enjoyed the pile my dad made in the backyard for sledding.

We had incredibly late bedtimes, hit-or-miss naps, party after party, and crowds of relatives they only see once or twice a year.  And yet, miraculously, tantrums and meltdowns were near zero.  Daniel came out of the defiant funk he’d been in while my in-laws were in town (delightful!) to become nothing short of Mr. Congeniality.  Rebecca swung a bit more in the other direction with a little whininess and extra demanding behavior, but nothing too severe.

Me? By 7:30pm on Christmas, as we made our SIXTH stop of the day with no naps for anyone, I was so tired I almost burst into tears.  The balancing, the logistics, the constant interaction, the heaviness of the belly, the full week of disrupted sleep.  I was D-U-N done.

Our flight home the next day was at 7:00 in the morning.  We woke up to an extra 4-6 inches of snow, which made our drive to the airport a rather slow adventure.  I crossed my fingers and toes that we would make it back to Boston before the Snowpocalypse shut the airport, and despite a mechanical delay, we were blessedly successful.

I sent M to the grocery store while I threw on a movie for the kids and a load of laundry in the wash.  I have not left the house, save for 10 minutes in the snow this afternoon, since we gt home from the airport.  For the next two months, I have no intention of going more than about a 3-mile radius from my house.  Preschool pickup and dropoff. Doctor’s appointments.  Maybe Target if I’m feeling saucy.  I’m only going to the gym for the kids’ activities, as I have cut my own exercise down to Prenatal Yoga and nothing more.  I don’t want visitors. I just want to sit quietly in my house, have a daily routine, get some sewing done, maybe take a nap.

When we were in Chicago, my grandmother innocently asked me what my next trip was, and if I was coming to Florida.  I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry.  Not an ice cube’s chance in hell.

I’m 29 weeks pregnant. Stick a fork in me.