Real Holidays

This year I had two entire weeks off from work over Christmas. We chose not to travel, and I thought this would be an opportunity for good solid TIME with my kids. In anticipation of this time, I had all sorts of plans. We would go to the zoo one day, we would go see “The Tale of Des.pereaux,” we would bake lots of cookies, we would arrange play dates, and there would be crafts.

Quick reality check: I was sick from the week after Thanksgiving until oh, about yesterday when I hit day 3 of the antibiotics to which I finally succumbed. Endless coughing and congestion lingered, then add pinkeye to the mix the day after Christmas, and top it off with 2 weeks of a sore throat. Needless to say, I didn’t have a lot of energy over the “break.” (As any stay-at-home mom will attest, being at home with a 2- and 4-year-old, particularly when they have access to and have been consuming obscene amounts of sugar, is not exactly a “break.”) Let’s review my plans:

1. The weather, which is almost always decent or even GOOD in my location within any two-week period in the year, was crappy. It was damp, it was cold, and on the rare portion of the day when it was nice, we weren’t all healthy. Skip the trip to the zoo.
2. “The Tale of Des.pereaux”…I hemmed and hawed about whether my kids could hang with the plot, after I read a little more about it. I thought it was way beyond the two-year-old, and I have yet to figure out an ideal time to take them to the movies, since Matt still naps in the afternoon. Instead, we watched Kung Fu P.anda, Sleeping Beauty, and Barb.ie and the Dia.mond Castle (Christmas gifts) about a hundred times.
3. Cookies: our oven has been on the fritz (a la “F2 Error” beeping at me when I haven’t gone anywhere near the damn thing). When we get the error, which is all the time, it shuts itself off. We have a toaster oven that has been saving us, but it’s not the greatest cookie oven. Also, did I mention that I was feeling sick? So the great cookie baking of 2008 consisted of “break and bake” sugar cookies, dipped in sprinkles, hastily cooked on Christmas Eve so that we could leave cookies and milk for Santa (who felt so sick that he and she had to bury the cookies in the trash because they didn’t even want to eat them).
4. Play dates: There was one play date, it involved two friends, and you already read the resulting quote from Kate. So, she never again wants to invite to our house more than one friend at a time. Well, at least we learned something. It was a tough thing to learn at 9 AM, though, knowing that the moms wouldn’t be picking up the girls until 1 PM.
5. Craft Day was intended to be part of The Play Date. Oh, the visions I had of artistic masterpieces and how I could do the crafts, too. What fun! My kitchen went from zero to chaos in 7.2 seconds. There will be a separate post about Craft Day.

So my husband and I have already discussed how maybe next year we won’t try for a “quiet Christmas at home.” Maybe there’s something to be said for a little travelling chaos. If we’re healthy in 2009, we’re outta here.

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