Bah...hurry up

Where are you Christmas?  Why can't I find you?
The Christmas spirit is eluding me this year.  I know I should be enjoying Harry's second holiday season...baking cookies, singing carols, watching the snow fall, and shopping with a perpetual smile and a feeling of goodwill in my heart.  But for some reason it just isn't happening for me.  Bah. 
Don't get me wrong - I have been doing plenty of shopping, complete with impulse buys of things we absolutely do not need.  I have made my lists and checked them 24,000 times.  In fact, I am almost done with my shopping.  So that can't be it.
As for the cookie baking, Brendan and I are having a weight loss challenge and I'm not going to blow it by making yummy treats so that I can sit here all day and feel them staring me down, calling to me in their saccharine little voices.  He has it easy, as far as I am concerned, as he sits at a desk in the middle of nowhere all day, while I am at home or shopping with a world of food at my fingertips.  Self control, thou art not mine.
I have been listening to carols.  Jingle bells, old Saint Nick, deck the halls and all of that.  Still not feeling the cheer.  On a side note, however, Harrison thinks it is super fun when Mom breaks into song along with the carols, and he gives me standing ovations, complete with enthusiastic clapping.  And for the first time in a year and a half I am wondering if he should have his hearing checked.
Do you want to know the real reasons for the noncheer?  Brendan has been stuck working long shifts (10 hour days that become 12 hour days when you add in his commute), seven days a week.  He will have this weekend off, but after that it's back to the hell schedule until Christmas.  I know we're lucky that he has a good job, and I am ever-so-thankful for the overtime pay as it will greatly help with our adoption costs.  BUT.  I am also having a panic attack every day at around 4:00p.pm., wondering how the heck I'll make it through the next two hours as Harrison repeats until he cries "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy...:  It breaks my heart, it breaks Brendan's heart, and if I am being completely honest it hurts just a little bit that he never chants for me.  But why would he?  I am glued to him 24/7.  (breathe in, breathe out...mental note to self - make plans to take a class or something!)
The other, more encompassing reason is that I just want the holidays to be over with so that it can be 2007 and our daughter can travel.  I know I shouldn't wish time away, but if you have never had to wait for a baby, who you know is laughing and cooing and growing up in someone else's arms, then you have never experienced this particular brand of hell.  It is not fun.  It makes me nervous, anxious, and impatient like nothing else in life.  It is like looking through a lens that is out of focus.  When we waited for Harry it was the same; the world was a very blurry place until he was handed to us, and then it was as though someone turned the lens and it all became clear.  We're back in the blur right now, and I want to be seeing clearly in the worst way.  Bear with me, as I try to bear with myself.
Oh, and worry not that Harrison isn't going to have a good Christmas because of my mood.  He's going to be spoiled silly, and there will be magic and cheer as needed when the time comes.  We're getting our tree this weekend.  Nothing says Peace on Earth like executing an evergreen.  I'm rotten.  Sorry.