Counting down the days to Christmas with a daily morning post containing a photograph of the White House Christmas decorations.  Have no clue why someone Jewish is doing this or how I got all these pictures — read the first post.

Tucked into corners, strewn across mantels, and placed atop tables are tiny details such as these pine cones and reindeer.

Counting down the days to Christmas with a daily morning post containing a photograph of the White House Christmas decorations.  Have no clue why someone Jewish is doing this or how I got all these pictures — read the first post.

Sparkles abound!

This morning, I ran through the rest stop, the ChickieNob jogging behind me at a sick pace, both hands clamped over her mouth until we stepped onto the tiled floor of the bathroom and she vomited next to the sink and burst into tears.

On another day, I might have cursed my luck; that I was the parent left to clean up the mess; to wash her hands and change her clothes and dry her tears and assure her that everyone understands illness. But today, I quietly returned her to a neutral place, neat, orderly, and I was thankful for the opportunity, to have her here in her vomiting glory.

I went back in the rest stop to wash my hands one last time and stood with the other parents for a moment by the rest stop televisions blasting CNN, our hands over our mouth as we watched the news. No way to contain it. No way to release it.

This is it, my friends.  The Creme de la Creme list closes to submissions TOMORROW.  As in, the 15th.  At 11 pm EST.  If you want your blog to appear on the 2012 Creme de la Creme list, read the post and fill out the form before tomorrow night.  Or forever hold your peace because there will be no submissions accepted after December 15th this year.

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I no longer seem to be getting Facebook message notifications.  Just a heads up.  A friend left a comment that she emailed me the recipe I requested.  I waited for a bit, checking email a few times, but the recipe never came.  I finally went back in Facebook to check there and saw that I had dozens of unread messages that I didn’t know had been sent.  I have notifications checked off for messages, but regardless, they’re not being forwarded to email.  So.

Apologies to everyone who has emailed me there, though to be fair, I have said countless times that if you want to reach me, email me directly rather than going through other social media platforms since I don’t always see those messages.

Is anyone else having trouble with Facebook notifications?  Is there a solution?

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And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “Moving Forward” (Stirrup Queens) — thank you, A!
• “My Invisible Child” (The Empty Cookie)
• “Long Term Prognosis” (Life and Love in the Petri Dish)
• “The Other Mother” (ANDMom)
• “Scared” (Baby Smiling in Back Seat)
• “More to Come” (Yo-Yo-Mama)
• “Holidays After Loss” (My Life After Loss)
• “The Beginning of the End” (My Cheap Version of Therapy)
• “PANK” (Single Infertile Female)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Nuts in May has a Christmas post, and she brings clarity to something that it seems a lot of people feel in the winter; namely, that everything feels worse near the holidays.  Things that were bad in September feel terrible now.  Things that were bothering you are now eating away at you.  She describes her ghost child, her first child, but if nothing else, you should read it for lines such as this one: “And you don’t know the meaning of love or family until you’ve given birth, allegedly. Why not flay me and roll me in rimming salt while you’re at it?”

What They Never Tell You has a post about that age-old question: “How Are You?”  It’s an incredibly powerful post, and I think these lines should be required reading for everyone… I was going to say everyone who works in a medical field, but it’s probably better to just make them required reading for the entire world: “I was signing in for my D&C, the words ‘how are you?’ in a chipper voice and a smile didn’t have the effect that they should. I’d reached my limit with those words. I am not okay. I am not fine. I will not be okay today and I will not be okay tomorrow. 5 years from now or even 30 years from now, there will be a place in me that will never be okay.”

An Unwanted Path has a post about feeling off, mostly physically, but also emotionally too.  She explains, “Other than that, I’ve been feeling kind of nostalgic and my thoughts are running in circles. I’d write a post, but my thoughts keep slipping away from me.”  Isn’t that a perfect way to put it?

Lastly, Baby, Borneo, or Bust is also feeling a sense of unease; perhaps as Nuts in May points out above, it’s tied to the time of year.  It’s about looking at a life where you can count all your blessing and still feeling a sense of discomfort over something that you can’t quite name.  It is perhaps a familiar feeling to many parenting after IF: “I know what it means to struggle, to work hard, to try to overcome.  I don’t know how to exist in space where there is room to breathe, to live.  It’s making me antsy.”

The roundup to the Roundup: The 2012 Creme de la Creme list will close for submissions TOMORROW.  Facebook no longer seems to be notifying.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between December 7th and December 14th) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.

Counting down the days to Christmas with a daily morning post containing a photograph of the White House Christmas decorations.  Have no clue why someone Jewish is doing this or how I got all these pictures — read the first post.

The China Room usually displays the White House china collection but during Christmas, the room is set up to pay homage to the family dinner with a fully decorated table.