Holly, Jolly Christmas 2006

Christmas this year was divine. It was full of love, laughter, and good food (as well as a fabulous lavender robe from my mother). It was so good, in fact, that I spent most of today in my new favorite pajamas – and robe - recovering from the crazy Christmas Euphoria that we all experienced yesterday.

(A new medical condition, Christmas Euphoria, is characterized by abdominal bloating caused by overeating combined with sore cheeks from smiling and a sugar buzz. Zane had a really bad case).

However, SRH and I did have a few lessons to learn this holiday season. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: three and a half years is not nearly long enough to develop competence at this whole parenting thing. Hence, mistakes were made, and lessons were learned.

Lesson 1: Santa should just be Santa. Don’t tie him to anything else. Santa brings gifts to little children and makes them happy. That’s it. No conditions. No limitations. He shouldn’t make demands. That ain’t Santa. His gifts shouldn’t be incumbent upon good behavior, or, say, giving up a pacifier.

Before learning this lesson, I listened to Zane’s pediatrician who suggested that giving pacifiers to Santa was a great way to get rid of them. After all, the child wants to get Santa’s approval – that means gifts. And he can’t be mad at Santa – that means that there might not be gifts, so voila! Pacifiers are gone, child gets what he wants in return, and the parents aren’t seen as the meanies who threw all the binkies out of the house. And since Zane only used his pacifiers in his bed at night, I didn’t think it was going to be a huge struggle. (Indeed, I am a dunderhead.)

So, Santa wrote Zane a letter that he would get some of his “train presents” that he’d asked for, if he gave Santa his pacifiers. We set all of Zane’s pacis on the plate with Santa’s cookies.

Zane was deceptively agreeable to our stupid, stupid idea – until he went to bed.

So while SRH and I were downstairs assembling all the cool Christmas gifts that we had been eagerly anticipating giving to Zane, he was upstairs with my mother crying/screaming for his pacifiers. For two hours.

It was dreadful, and my fool self learned never again to set parameters on Santa gifts. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

(On the other hand, he didn’t even ask for a pacifier tonight and went to sleep easily. But it still wasn’t worth the angst of hearing my baby cry himself to sleep on Christmas Eve.)

Lesson 2: Thinking that you are going to get a good “Christmas picture” with the entire family is not realistic.

One should just give up on the idea that the happiness and anticipation you are feeling on Christmas Eve will somehow show up in any photos. I had the brilliant – and original! - idea to get a picture of the three of us while we were all dressed up in our Christmas Eve finery. After all, I am rarely seen out of yoga pants when I’m not working, and Zane hadn’t had a chance to get any ketchup on his clothes – this was the perfect opportunity to show the world that my family is, on rare occasions, both clean and presentable.

Attempt 1:

Where is the joy?! Zane looks like he smells a barnyard. SRH has red eye, and none of us look particularly moved by the Christmas spirit.

Attempt 2:

Okay, we scrapped the idea that Zane would join us in a happy picture – he just wasn’t feeling it. SRH and I look relatively happy, but I’m not sure why my head is tilted back - must be to show off my flowing locks.

Since Zane decided to join us at the last minute, I guess Attempt 2 is okay - it somehow seems indicative of our family life, even though it’s not quite what I envisioned.

(Lesson 2A: Don’t forget to check to make sure that you have enough tape in your video camera to tape more than 5 seconds of Christmas morning. Geez, I’m such a novice.)

Lesson 3: If your kid has an obsession – say, trains – it’s best to just go with the flow. OR My child is a black hole of train need.

Far and away, the favorite gift this Christmas was a spiral train set.

Ooh, I love the spiral train!

And he did also enjoy the engines and freight cars we got him – mostly because they were able to be used on the spiral train set.

Isn’t the spiral train spiffy?

He loved that train so much, that he had his eyes fixed on it most of the day.

I’ll just keep my eye on this train in case mama decides she might want to touch it.

And while he was thrilled with the spiral train track, new engines, freight cars, and caboose that he got, he still managed to make sure that we knew that he still wants a Norfolk Southern Engine. (If he had the vocabulary, we might have heard something along the lines of, What? You are kidding me? I gave up pacifiers, and I didn’t even get a Norfolk Southern diesel engine? This sucks. I’m totally going to negotiate differently next year.)

So that was our Christmas. It was completely fabulous – lessons and all. Hope yours was great, too!

Last Minute Christmas Shopping

I have now discovered that my beloved partner, SRH, has an evil-genius plan to get the best Christmas gifts of anyone in our family. And here’s how he does it:

Two to three months before the big day, I ask him what he wants, and he promises to tell me.

Me: Hey, SRH, what do you want for Christmas this year?

SRH: Huh? Oh. I’m not sure. I don’t really need anything.

Me: Well, get to thinking about it buddy, because I’m not killing myself this year trying to come up with thoughtful, creative gift for you that you’ll never use because you didn’t want it anyway. I want ideas!

SRH: Huh? Oh. Okay. I’ll come up with something.

About a month before Christmas, we have an eerily similar conversation.

Me: SRH, what do you want for Christmas? It’s coming right up, you know.

SRH: Huh? Oh. Yeah, I’ve been thinking about it (which is such a lie because SRH doesn’t think about anything I ask him to unless I write it on his hand), and I can’t really come up with anything.

Me: Well, I need to put something under the tree for you. I’m going shopping this weekend, so you need to come up with a list.

SRH: Huh? Oh. I’ll get you a list by this weekend. (This, of course, is said without any intention of giving me an actual list, because that would spoil his nefarious schemes.)

So about a week before Christmas (right around now for instance), I start to freak out because I don’t have the perfect – or any significant - gift for my beloved. I have little things, but no gift that expresses my sincere appreciation for all the wonderful loving and giving things he does throughout the year. A gift that is both romantic and appeals to his joie de vivre. THE gift. And I don’t have it.

And I never do at this time of the year.

So last year, I panicked and got him an iPod. I braved the Apple Store three days before Christmas and bought a much nicer version than I was intending because, well, that’s what they had left. That at least stopped my hyperventilating, but then I figured that the gift needed an accompaniment, something besides one stupid gift – even if it was a big one, and I bought him a gym membership.

Of course, SRH likes to say that the only thing I didn’t get him last year was a pair of size 32 jeans that had a note pinned onto them that said Fit into these tubby, but I know that this is just deflection from the real issue that he gets nicer gifts when he doesn’t give me any ideas.

I panic. I spend. And SRH just sits back and gets all the benefits.

Unsurprisingly, this is a tactic he has used again this year. So lay it on me, what should I get a guy who doesn’t want anything?

Now Bring Me My Figgy Pudding!

Well, it’s officially Christmas season in my brain. I’ve been gearing up for about a week now – decided to change our house’s Christmas color scheme to robin’s egg blue and silver, have been buying a few gifts here and there, harassed SRH into agreeing to put up lights outside. You know, the regular stuff.

But the official crossing of the Christmastime line occurred when I pulled out the Christmas cd’s in my car today. Of course, I was only in the car alone for about 15 minutes, so I had to maximize the Christmas carol magic.

So naturally I chose to play “Oh Holy Night” over and over and over.

It’s my favorite Christmas hymn - and I know Kristi feels me on this one. It always has been, and I can’t imagine that this will ever change. It makes me feel all the things I think we’re supposed to feel at this time – wonder, joy, and lovingkindness.

What’s your favorite Christmas carol?

Or - if you don’t celebrate Christmas and/or don’t like the accompanying music - what song makes your spirit soar with gladness and gratitude?