Skip to main content

Who's ready for the holidays? Not me...

I must admit that I am nowhere near ready for this holiday season.  I am a perpetual procrastinator when it comes to getting ready for the holidays.  It's not that I don't enjoy them.  It's that it takes so much work to get the house decorated, make the cookies, buy the presents, wrap the presents...and then clean up from all of it come January.

I'm going to be frank.  I love the holidays, but the holidays don't always love me.  They are a stress-filled time of the year with a lot of expectations.

I would love to be the Pinterest wife and mom who has time to make and decorate those adorable sugar cookies.  Yet, I'm happy to be the person who will order my already-decorated sugar cookies from the tasty bakery in town after I burned the first two batches I tried to make myself.

I would love to have a well-coordinated and decorated Christmas tree.  Yet, I'm happy to have three homemade preschool ornaments hanging on the same branch with all of the breakable (a.k.a., pretty) ornaments hanging at the top of the tree so that my children don't pull them off and toss them on the ground - literally shattering memories of Christmas past.

My decorations are grouped around my house in ways that the children don't destroy them. The presents that I have managed to buy are tossed in the back of my closet in the hopes that the children won't be able to find them past the layers of winter shoes that are stockpiled in front of them.  My floors are perpetually covered in pine needles instead of nicely vacuumed at all times of the day - leaving my almost one-year old also perpetually covered in pine needles.

I still have Halloween and Thanksgiving decorations up.  My laundry is covering every couch and chair because winter brings 10 times more laundry than the rest of the year and less time to fold it since I'm supposed to be getting ready for the holidays.

So, if you come to my house this holiday season, don't judge the pumpkin candle sitting next to the ice skating snowmen.  Try to avoid wearing socks that aren't easy to get pine needles out of.  And, feel free to sit on top of the laundry (it is *hopefully* clean, after all).

Most of all, let's give each other a little bit of grace this season.

Merry Christmas.  Happy Hanukkah. Happy New Year. And Happy Every Other Holiday this season. 

Don't judge my ice skating snowmen sitting next to my pumpkin candle...
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I'm no longer telling my kids to have fun

Today, I've made an important realization that is changing the way that I talk to my children.  I am no longer going to tell them to have fun. Don't get me wrong, I desperately desire that my children find joy, happiness and laughter through numerous experiences and adventures.  But, my children's definition of fun and mine have two VERY different meanings. I'll give you an example. My almost four-year-old son loves to destroy things.  He's like his dad - a man who just wants to learn how things work, as well as cause and effect.  So, he takes apart toys, sister's dolls, kitchen appliances, and more.  He tears books because "the story was in the wrong order."  He pushes buttons - both literally and figuratively.  He colors on walls, floors, computer monitors, furniture, carpet and more because he wants to create maps and "building plans" for his Duplos.  This is his idea of fun . Do you see my dilemma?  His idea of fun is so completel
Post a Comment
Read more

Leadership Mom: SWOT Analysis

In business, leaders often analyze our Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats through a SWOT analysis.  So, if we are going to look at our role as moms as being the greatest leadership opportunity to us, let's start with analyzing ourselves and our kids.  Here's the SWOT I developed for my family: Family SWOT Analysis As a doting mother, there are hundreds of strengths that I could put up here for my kids.  Their hugs, kisses, bedtime stories and prayers, the fact that they come to me when they're seeking healing from an injury (physical or emotional), the notes and drawings they make for me, their precious hearts when they try to help me or that they've learned how to use the Keurig to bring me coffee in the morning...I could go on and on. Now, here's the part where we get honest with ourselves.  Yes, we love our kids and we love our family (or, hopefully, most of the time), but we are not perfect.  Nor should we be perfect.  As we analyze oursel
3 comments
Read more

AIOs, Pocket, and Prefolds...Oh, my!

As mentioned in my previous blog, cloth diapers are not your momma's cloth diapers any more.  Now, the lingo can be daunting.  There are AIOs, AI2s, diaper covers, doublers, fitted diapers, flat diapers, hybrid diapers, inserts, liners, one-size diapers, pocket diapers, and prefolds. When I first began my cloth diaper research, all of the different options overwhelmed me, and I didn't know where to begin.  So, I did the only thing I knew to do...I asked other moms! While every mom will have a different story to share with cloth diapers, you still get some very good information.  I learned why moms liked the diapers they chose, some of the downsides, and the costs to the different diaper systems.  I also began to develop my own decisions on how I wanted to start the cloth diapers.  When I first thought about using cloth diapers, I was dead set against anything that wasn't an all-in-one (AIO).  These are the Porsches of the diaper world.  There's no messing with diaper pi
Post a Comment
Read more