Christmas

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December Wrap Up

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One more December post.

We really had so much fun this month. Both Tom and I were off for the entire week of Christmas and we were able to do so many fun things. Even the rest of the month was filled with activies ever weekend. Some I’ve already written about, but there were enough other things I just wanted to get down in a post.

First up, for the first time ever we attended our town’s tree lighting! I’m always a little confused as to what you’re supposed to do leading up to the event. I think the real answer is have more friends and spend your time chatting with them, but we just stood around and waited. It was worth it though, because when the trees lit up, it was one of the coolest things we’ve ever seen. All the towns around here light up every tree on the common, not just one tree, so it’s super pretty and dramatic.

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Christmas Morning

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Whew this year really exhausted me! I swear I need to start prepping and wrapping gifts now to get ready for next year. By the time Christmas morning was here, I could barely keep my eyes open. But we did it - and I think it went well. We numbered the presents again this year, which is working for us. Not only slows down the rush, but keeps them opening presents in the order we want, and if they all got the same thing, they open it at the same time.

We did our usual cinnamon buns for breakfast, chinese food for lunch, candy canes on the trees and so much candy all day long. We watched a few movies, stayed in our PJs, and stayed home. The kids were sad there was no snow, but I think that’s going to be a normal thing here on Christmas.

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A tale of Two Christmases

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What do you focus on when it comes to Christmas? Do you walk away with rosy glasses on, remembering all the best moments and declaring it the best Christmas ever? Or do you focus on what went wrong, the disappointments and tears? Honestly, I kind of want to remember both. So here you have it, a tale of two Christmases:

The Good:

On Christmas Eve we exchanged sibling gifts, which gave them something to play with, but also caused them to get more excited about the random things they picked for each other (although they both ended up getting each other a paw patrol playset). We’d also had them pick out Christmas cards to give each other and Tom and I, which was a nice easy introduction into gifting presents to other people. It was pretty cute to see what cards they’d picked out thinking we’d like. We also spent a lot of time watching Christmas movies and cuddling on the couch.

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Merry Christmas

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Merry Christmas!

We did it.

We’ve finished all of the lists. The magic has been created, we’ve attended events, seen Santa, decorated the whole house and yard, made the treats, ate the treats, bought and wrapped presents, and we’re here. The main event. It certainly feels like a marathon, but it’s all worth it.

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Let's Kick off Christmas

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As we do, we started the Christmas season off early this year. I used to have a strict, wait until after Thanksgiving rule, but it’s definitely been relaxed lately. We still don’t have any Christmas trees up, but there are wrapped presents in my house, decorations are ready to go up soon, and we’ve done a few holiday events already. Speaking of those, we’ve had some hits and misses.

One of the hits for me at least, was visiting Santa! The older two are always a bit confused about why we’re doing it, and claim they don’t want to go, but I swear they have a lot of fun once we’re there. E jumped right in on signing his name to the “nice list” book they had, and then did G’s name too while G was warming up to everything. But soon they were both chatting with Santa, posing for pictures, and of course telling their life stories.

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A Wrap on Christmas

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December and 2021 are officially over, and I think I’m still processing how I feel about that. I started the year convinced the pandemic would finally be behind us, especially since we’d all be able to get vaccines. I also started the year pregnant, which seems so far away considering the energetic baby we have now. But before I try to process the year some more, or look forward to the next one, here’s one final Christmas post summary, mostly for my memory.

Big or small, here are the things we did to celebrate Christmas this year:

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Christmas 2021

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Christmas morning started with a bang - well a few of them actually. I was so busy I hadn’t looked out the window to notice all the ice that had accumulated overnight. We live on a pretty steep hill, so when my attention was finally pulled outside, there were two cars off in front of our house and a few more at the bottom of the hill.

Our neighbors were already out trying to help, but they couldn’t even stay on their feet on the road. I sent Tom out with some salt to see if it would help. For the next hour, the kids and I got to watch everything from people skating down the hill to the backhoe pulling cars out of the ditch - really if you’re going to get in an accident, this isn’t the worst place to do it! On that vein, it also helps that our neighbor’s son works for the next town over and was out salting the roads. Since our town wasn’t doing much, my neighbor got her son to do a quick detour and get our street salted.

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Four Months

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More than once this month I’ve said that I think we’ve found our loudest child. You have found your voice and you love to sing and make everyone know that you have opinions. You are making sure that you will not be a forgotten third child. I’m not sure how you could be, you’re everyone’s favorite. Even the cats like to come check on you multiple times a day. Your siblings are still your favorite - after a particularly fussy day, the first time you seemed truly happy was at the end of the day when I set you up watching G.

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Merry Christmas

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Wishing you all a fairly peaceful day full of coffee, yummy food and lots of colorful packages. We’ll be doing our best to control the discarded wrappings and will try to play with every new toy at once and somehow still make sure the littlest Spearson gets a nap or two. We usually eat cinnamon buns for breakfast and order Chinese food for lunch. And otherwise try to stay home in our PJs all day. Maybe we’ll listen to some Christmas music, or watch Trash Truck’s Christmas special for the 8th time this week.

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What Have We Missed?

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On a totally out of order post, I realized I never talked about Thanksgiving! It’s not completely surprising because on my constant to do list of things I would like to be doing, somehow typing ends up at the bottom. Having two hands is a privilege I don’t often have. I’m getting more sleep lately, which is great, but it means I have less time for other things. Trade off.

But I did want to quickly mention some things to cement the memories which will certainly disappear.

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A Dark Car Ride Home

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There are times, and today is one of them, where I look around and I’m so thankful and over the moon happy for this family that I have. Pinch my arm because I’m not sure how I got this lucky, happy. Not all days are like this, of course, and if I’m being honest the whole day didn’t even feel like this. But it ended well, and so as I’m sitting in the dark with a baby that’s almost asleep, I’m holding on to that feeling.

Most days I’m just spinning in circles trying to do damage control and make sure at least the majority of the children are fed and not crying. My mental to do list is constant and never ending, and when I collapse in bed at the end of the day (or the start of the next day? Trust me it’s late) I don’t have a lot of time to think about where we are in life.

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Expectations

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As a parent, it’s easy to get an idea in your head about how things might go, or how you’d like them to go. I see it a lot this time of year when everyone is booking family photos and thinking of upcoming holiday cards. For example I might think that if I buy matching pjs and book photos with a Santa early in November, we could have a cute photo for our card. I might even think I’m being flexible when I consider the possibility that the baby would be crying, because that might make a funny card.

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Not so White Christmas

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We woke up on Christmas morning to pouring rain, high winds, and warm temperatures which dissolved our more than a foot of snow we’d had when we went to bed. At least we’d had a white Christmas Eve? It made me glad that we’d spent the entire day before playing outside and enjoying the snow, since we stayed inside all day Christmas.

Which was fine, that’s pretty much how I like my Christmas days. At home, in my PJs, not straying far from the couch or the Christmas tree. We listened to Christmas music, watched some movies, ate yummy food and of course opened many presents.

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Merry Christmas!

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Well we did it. 2020 is coming to a close, Christmas is here, and I feel like I’m at the end of a marathon. I’m excited to be taking some time off of work, for staying in my PJs and watching the kids go nuts over their presents. They definitely get what’s happening this year, have been diligently counting down on their advent calendars every day, and becoming crazier and crazier as each day passes.

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More Christmas Lights Please

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This year has been… different.

I know I like to talk about how it’s a lost year, an awful year, the worst year ever.. but it’s not that simple. This year has given us a lot of great things too. (Did everyone see our local fame on The Great Christmas Light Fight??) And while yes, a lot of things aren’t how I had planned, some things actually are.

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A Christmas Tradition

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There are a lot of things we’ve lost this year. A lot of traditions broken. Our annual family trip to Maine was cancelled. Birthday parties, get togethers, even the Boston Marathon is going to miss two years. So when I started thinking about what Christmas was going to look like this year, there was one thing I didn’t want to give up. Sure it’s not the most important tradition, and I’m sure the kids wouldn’t have noticed, but I realized it would make me feel a little bit better if this one wasn’t broken.

And honestly anything I can do to feel a little bit normal these days, I’ll take it. My coping strategy with this pandemic seems to be part good enough and part humor. So that’s what led me to order Tom a Santa suit back in September.

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Post Christmas Days

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Here's the funny thing about sleep regressions. You forget about the little ones. Everyone talks about the 4 month sleep regression, but there are small ones that happen all the time. You forget about that panic that you have, the thoughts that this will never end or get better. It feels like no one will ever sleep again, and you will die from exhaustion.

And then it magically goes back to normal, and you forget about those days.

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Our Christmas Day

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We don’t really have a “normal” Christmas yet. We have ideas of how we’d like things to go, but so far we’ve had a first Christmas with a 6 month old who had no idea what was going on, a Christmas where half our family woke up in the hospital, and this one. So we played it a bit by ear. We still had one kid who was utterly confused about what was special about this day, but E was starting to get it.