You may have already noticed that the frequency of our posts are slowing up a little heading into this crazy time of year. Or more likely, you haven't noticed at all because your own life is so crazy during this season that you don't have time to be bothered with our lives.
In any case, the holiday season is both a blessed and tricky time of year for moms of Baby Bunches of all ages. Is it just us or does it seem like the daily life of a Buncher is complicated enough without the addition of major machinations required to pull off the holiday season of yours (or your Bunch's) dreams?
Of course, we love all the festivities deep (really deep) down in our hearts. We're not so Scroogey that we would recommend ditching the season all together, but we DO recommend considering scaling back a little. And we happily give you permission to do so.
Your children will not be this young forever and life will not be this crazy forever. If you try to do it all, you may find yourself frustrated that the cookies are burned, the ornaments have been ripped off the tree and broken, and the toddler has spilled a (supposedly non-spill) sippy cup all over your almost-done Christmas cards (as happened to me just two days ago). Our advice is just to go with it and embrace the madness.
So your tree looks like crap and your cookies taste even worse. So what?! If the kids have fun undoing doing the tree and they accidentally rip the wrapping off their presents days (or even weeks) early, does it really matter in the grand scheme of things? Just re-hang the ornaments and re-wrap the gifts (putting them up high this time) and count your blessings that your kids are healthy enough to be so ornery.
We've done posts in the past on how to help your tree survive the holiday season, but we've got a few tips for helping you survive as well.
1. Simplify. Don't bake up a storm AND send cards to every person you know AND decorate your home like a show house AND wrap gifts worthy of Martha Stewart's blessing. Just pick your favorite thing and knock it out of the park - and enjoy yourself doing it. Let the rest slide.
2. Speaking of simplification, the easiest thing to simplify is your Bunches' gift list. Really. They are 1 and 2 (or 2 and 3). Even if they're 5 and 6, they're likely getting so much stuff from grandparents and other relatives that they're not even gonna notice if there's just a few well-chosen items under the tree from you. Honestly, the younger they are, the less we recommend you buy. Babies adore an empty box and cast-off wrapping paper (toddlers prefer noisy bubble wrap) from other people's gifts to any gift you can buy them. Plus they get overwhelmed easily and lose interest in opening after just a few gifts! Save your money for when they're older - they'll be asking for the moon soon enough.
3. With the money saved from gifts, get yourself an sitter elf. Even just a few hours to address cards uninterrupted, bake a batch of cookies without little people underfoot, or run to the post office without your "assistants" can help holiday stress levels plummet. And we hope that you have your sitter booked for the company party already. Cuz you totally deserve a fun night out with the hubs.
4. Ditch the mental picture of perfection. Because it's very likely that even IF you manage to get it together and get it all done, someone is going to get sick and throw a wrench into the works. In six years of parenting, I have yet to escape a Thanksgiving/Christmas season without a holiday trip to urgent care. I've spent 3 of those 6 years taking shifts sitting up with a stuff-nosed baby or toddler and feeling so grateful that there were relatives in town to take sleepless shifts as well.
No, the holidays aren't always perfect, but they're ALWAYS memorable. Embrace it! And happy memory-making this holiday season!
Amen! Amen! Amen! I love this post. I agree whole heartedly with everything you wrote. I hope everyone who reads it cuts their selves some slack and doesn't expect too much perfection.
I just posted a very similar post about perspective this season. Check it out:
http://rayfamilycharm.blogspot.com/2010/12/perspective.html
Posted by: Bekah | Dec 03, 2010 at 10:42 AM
Thank you for this reminder! I already knew that I needed to simplify this year with a 2.5 yr old and a 10 month old in the house, but this really made me reconsider anything over-the-top that might have been lurking in my brain!
The best thing I'm doing this year is waiting to put up the tree. Our tree was difficult to deal with last year when I was very pregnant and had a 19month old, so I decided that we are not going to get our tree until the week before Christmas. Old traditions included people putting up their tree on Christmas Eve, but I didn't want to wait that long :-) One week of "tree stress" is way better than 3 or 4 weeks!
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