The Post Christmas Post

Christmas this year was so great. I mean, last year was fun, too, but honestly, Xander was still “too young” in some ways. And, look, 18 months is not necessarily my favorite stage – walking but not talking, still very much a baby but wanting to be independent. It was rather exhausting. BUT, still. We had fun with Christmas last year.

This year, though. This year was in a whole different ball park. At two and a half, he really GOT IT. He knew Santa was coming. He came into our room Christmas morning breathless with excitement, “Mewwy Ki-mass!” He got that the presents were for him. He opened some up. He wanted to play. It was just…fun. It was so fun. He had a bit of a cold, which made me worry, and he didn’t nap at all for a few days, but he’s already on the mend and, well, it’s just a cold, you know? It didn’t ruin our festivities at all (though I was rather cranky when he wouldn’t nap after I’d been up almost all night with insomnia).

My well-intentioned plan of Not Buying Too Much Stuff totally and completely failed, and he has more toys than we know what to do with, but I also spent some time a few weeks ago cleaning out old baby things and/or things that are broken/missing essential pieces. So hopefully the new haul won’t completely overtake the house.

His favorite gift, as I had hoped, is the train set (and a talking Percy!), followed closely by a tie between pretend food (that he’s been pretend feeding to the tree….?), and a Melissa and Doug water-pen and notebook for practicing his letters that cost me all of $4. I mean, cost SANTA. My parents sent him a set of those Tegu blocks, which he likes when I build it for him, but I have high hopes he’ll get more into them as he figures them out. I think they’re great, personally.

Anyway, that’s the lowdown on the gifts. It was just the three of us, and we had a simple meal for both breakfast and dinner, and it was quite lovely and yummy. I really appreciated staying simple this year instead of planning some elaborate feast, because it meant I could really enjoy the day and watch Xander have fun.

Then, of course, we had the Big Snow Storm last night and today, which was actually quite fun. No power loss, no need to travel. Just watching the snow pile up (and up and up), and some outdoor play (Xander mostly enjoyed eating the snow). I’m looking forward to pulling him around in this little sled a friend loaned us.

Pictures and a poorly edited and dimly lit video below, but his excitement was really too cute not to share.

I hope your holidays were merry and rejuvenating. Strange to think 2012 is almost over, isn’t it?

 

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Traditions

I keep saying the same thing, but Xander is at SUCH a fun age for Christmas! He’s just starting to get parts of it, like Santa bringing presents, snow, snowmen, lights, candy canes, etc…but he isn’t quite old enough to be scared of a strange man entering the house (I’m hoping we can skip that phase). What I am really enjoying is figuring out the traditions JS and I want to keep from our own childhoods, and which ones we want to create on our own. Last year we didn’t do a ton of “stuff,” because Xander was so young. I mean, we decorated and did presents and everything, but the pomp and circumstance was pretty minimal.

As a kid, I never grew up with elves or Santa’s helpers hanging around and reporting on me, so I have a hard time getting into the Elf on a Shelf thing. BUT, I did get an adorable stuffed snowman that I put out and told Xander he was Santa’s special friend, and if Xander had a message for Santa, he could whisper it to the snowman. This takes the pressure off of me from having to move it daily, and I also don’t want a snitch around, so…Also, though, this will allow me to give early gifts without ruining the Santa magic. For example, I have a few Christmas books I want to give Xander, but not all on Christmas morning (when all the fun is over!), so I figure I can put them in Snowman’s lap and say Santa sent something special for whatever made up reason I want.

JS and his family opened family gifts on Christmas Eve, and Santa presents Christmas morning. The family gifts were all under the tree, and could be put out at any time. Santa presents were always left by the stockings/fireplace and only put out the night before Christmas. I think this is fun and helps keep Christmas morning from being a complete overload. In my family, we were allowed to open one gift on Christmas Eve, and the rest the next morning (stockings were normally opened first, and tree presents after our puffed apple pancake breakfast). Santa gifts were put out on Christmas, but family presents and “helper” presents could be put out whenever. (Helpers were whatever creative gifter my mom could think of: Frosty would give us scarves, the elves would give us sweets, etc… sometimes she gave us “hints,” like one year I got a bunch of crafting scissors from “Edward.” Not a Christmassy person, but it made it so fun to try and figure out what was inside.)

So I think I’d like to do a combination of those two concepts: the big present from Santa goes out on Christmas night to be opened in the morning, family gifts and “helper” gifts can go out whenever. I don’t know how many/which ones to open Christmas Eve, though. I guess it depends on how many presents there are.

Which brings me to: last year we (I) went NUTS with presents. I was so excited and got almost all of them heavily marked down, but it was still way too much for Xander. He STILL hasn’t played with all of them. And some of them we had to take away because he was very toddler-y and threw all those nice wooden toys at our head. SO. I’m trying to reign it in. I love LOVE the idea of the four gifts: something they want, something they need, something to wear, something to read. But I’ve already broken this, and I’m not sure where stockings fit in, or if Santa brings the “want” toy, does that mean that our gift to Xander is the boring stuff each year? Anyway, this year we are getting him one big gift (a train table that we got free from a neighbor, and a train set I got off of Zulily for cheap) and then a handful of smaller/necessary items for the stocking and whatnot. (Such as trains and accessories for the track, a book, new PJ’s, etc…)  Hopefully by saying “one big gift” I can tone it down several notches.  I also made an actual pen and paper list of all the stuff I wanted to buy/had already bought so I won’t be surprised by how much stuff I have for him.

This year I also want to get a gift for JS from Xander; we didn’t do anything like that last year, and I want to start that early and help teach him (soon to be them!) how to be thoughtful gifters.

As we have more and more Christmases as a family, I’m sure other traditions will just start to form on their own. Like traditional meals, or favorite holiday movies and stories, cookies left out for Santa, etc…What sorts of things do you do every year? Or want to do? Or wish you’d never started doing?

 

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Merry Little

We started Christmas month off RIGHT.

It was still somewhat snowy on Saturday, so we all bundled up and went to a neighboring town for Xander’s first ever visit to Santa. JS has been trying to explain Santa to him, in very vague terms. “Santa comes on Christmas and brings presents!” So, when we were prepping him for actually meeting Santa, I had to explain that he wouldn’t GET the presents yet, but he could tell Santa what kind of presents he wanted.

He went generic, and simply asked for “pwesents.” I’m not unconvinced that this nice man wasn’t ACTUALLY Santa Clause. He was so mellow and gentle, and there were no creepily cheerful elves demanding Xander smile for a picture. Xander sat on his lap for a few seconds, flipped his lid over the tree, collected his candy cane, and went on his merry way, not knowing that he’d just lived through the nightmare of toddlers everywhere.

After such success with Santa, we went on a horse pulled sleigh ride through a snowy park, with more candy canes. The rest of the festival we skipped, though, because it was COLD, man.

 
I think Xander’s FAVORITE part of the weekend, though, was getting to put the ornament on our felt Advent Calendar.   He’s still unconvinced about the whole “just one a day” part of Advent, though. “And now do four-teen? Fife? Dat one?”

 

It is so fun that he’s at an age where he starts to GET Christmas. He loves the lights we have up in the house. He can’t wait to go get a tree. He randomly informs us that Santa will bring him “pwesents.” I’m so looking forward to many of the other fun things to do around town with him this year.

 

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December

(This is a bit of a departure from the norm, I know, and I’ll be back to my regularly Xander-heavy and pregnancy neurotic postings ASAP. I promise. I mean, I have the material. We took him to see SANTA today.)

***

Oh, December! The excitement of snow. The hot chocolate so rich it tastes like a melted candy bar. Festive music. Colored lights. Birthday. Christmas. Tree decorating. Santa. So much fun, so much joy. So. Much.

I love the holiday season. I love it all. I love the food. I love the cheesy TV Specials. I love the red sprinkles on my Starbucks drinks. I love the gift wrapping, giving, and getting.

I’m also always so much more contemplative in December, as many of us are. The long hours of darkness, maybe, prompt deeper introspection than usual. Or maybe the symbolism of the approaching new beginning makes us reflect on things past.

One December, fourteen years ago, I tried to kill myself. Dramatic, yes, isn’t it? It feels very dramatic just to type it. And it’s not even like it’s a new story. I’ve told it and written it a few times before. But, every year at this time, I think about that….period…a bit. Not obsessively, and not with melancholy or, I don’t know, regret, even. I just think about it. I reflect on it. I remember. It doesn’t bother me, maybe because it was so very long ago, and I am such a different person now. It’s almost like telling the story of a scar you got falling out of a tree in second grade. It happened. The end. Sometimes it even feels like a memory of a movie or a book – something that happened to someone else completely.

I had just withdrawn from my first year at Wheaton College (I would later return and graduate from there, which is a decision I still wonder about sometimes) with a severe case of PTSD, stemming from undealt with childhood abuse (not anyone in my immediate family). I was a complete and utter mess. I had horrible nightmares, and had no idea where dreams ended and reality/actual memories began. I blacked out for long periods of time. I couldn’t focus and had no appetite. I was so scared, all the time. Scared that I’d be found out. That my piers would realize I wasn’t as Christian as they were, that I was broken. Scared that God had given up on me. Scared that there was no God to do any giving up on in the first place.

So I left that environment and came home, well, to Alabama, which had only been home for about 8 months or so, but it was where my family was, and where I needed to be.

In what little part of my brain that was still thinking before I took all those pills, I did not think of the suicide attempt as an attempt to die. I just wanted quiet. I wanted calm. Peace. I wanted to not be so damn scared. I had this tiny little idea, somewhere, that if I was successful, the bad part of me would die and the good part of me could come back and be the person I was supposed to be.  Years and years later, I had a therapist who listened to my account of this night and told me quite certainly that I’d had a psychotic break. You might think I’d find this scary; I mean, who wants to be told that they were psychotic at any point in their life? But I always found this to be a comforting thought. It wasn’t just that I’d made a really horrible decision – my brain was broken.

I look back at the girl that I used to be and I’m torn between wanting to slap her upside the head and wanting to give her a big hug. I want to tell her to just wait. Just wait and see what’s coming. You’re going to meet this amazing man who makes the world a magical place just by loving you. You’re going to have a job that makes you feel smart and important. You’re going to get a puppy who is the craziest ball of fur on the planet. You’re going to visit some beautiful places. You’re going to have the most mind blowingly awesome child who will change your world in ways you never thought possible.

The truth is, sometimes life really, really sucks, for whatever reasons (or for no reason).

It’s okay to want a break. It’s okay to hit pause, to ask for a time out and demand a rest. But don’t toss it all in now. Give it some time. Things get better.

More than that.

Things get really, really good.

 

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Joy of…

One of my most favoritest things about Christmas and the holiday season is baking a ridiculous amount of cookies and scones and brownies and bars and cakes and, oh! Let’s not forget our family toffee recipe! (No, really, it’s CRACK). Oh, and yes, that, too. Christmas Crack.

I started pinning yummy looking Christmas cookies around…June. May. April? Who knows. Back when Pinterest was still fresh and new and I actually did more than just repin without ever looking back at those things I wanted to make.

Anyway, here are the ones I really want to make this year. The starred ones are new; the others are ones I’ve made in previous years with much success.

(Here’s a pic of one of the plates I made for…someone. Neighbor? Babysitter? Someone got it, other than just me.)

1. * Candy Can Snow Balls
2. * Brown Butter Snickerdoodles
3. * Molasses Cookies with Ginger Cream Cheese Frosting (they look like molasses whoopie pies, oh my)
4. PW’s Shorbtread Cookies (last year with peppermint chocolate on top. YUM.)
5. PW’s Petite Vanilla Bean Scones (These are amazingly good. I used the food processor to cut the butter in.)
6. Chocolate Cherry Cookies (I don’t know if this is the same recipe I used last year; I thought they were just OK, but lots of others loved them.)

1. PW Cinnamon Rolls (Went WAY too heavy on the icing last year, will cut back immensely).
2. Toffee:
   
3. Afore mentioned Christmas Crack
4. Chocolate Dipped Biscotti

   

For Christmas Dessert for us, I want this French Silk Pie, though JS may request something not so….deathly sweet. So we’ll have two. YAY!

(If you haven’t already, buy some stock in Cabot Butter and you’ll be sittin’ pretty come January.)

All these pictures are from last year, so I’m sure some of you have already seen them. But hey, I haven’t started baking for this year, yet, so, whatever. Repeat content for the win!

And looking at my list as a whole, I just maaaay want to cut back a bit.

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Many Thanks

Thanksgiving happened! It did! I was there.

There being Alabama, visiting my parents and brothers since a Christmas visit just AIN’T GONNA HAPPEN. Not that I don’t want it to, because I actually do love the craziness of big family parties and gatherings and meals at the holidays, despite my solidly Introverted nature. But, oh man, traveling while pregnant? It blows. And I’m so glad I’m done with it. Lugging as many carryons as we can through multiple airports, desperately searching for airport food that won’t make us all ill, trying to entertain a squirmy and overtired toddler, all while being HUGE and UNCOMFORTABLE…anyway, that’s the bad side.

The good side was being there. Seeing Xander hang with his grandparents and uncles. Having lovely weather that simply necessitated several trips to the park or the lake (both of which meant throwing leaves and pinecones, one at a time, into the “puddle! big puddle!”). Letting him decorate cookies, and then letting him lick the frosting off and start over again. Being ordered to sit down and rest while my mom made all the meals. There were children’s museums and botanical gardens and even a sushi date night with JS that was surprising delicious for a random strip mall restaurant that had only been open for a few months.

I didn’t take many pictures, which is so lame. I was just enjoying being there, and relaxing and hanging out and whatever, that I didn’t document it. And with family that lives so far away, I’m sad that I didn’t. I want to show Xander pictures of the fun things he did with the family he so rarely gets to see.

Now we’re back, and diving back into our “routine,” which always seemed somewhat not real to me, somehow, since we don’t actually do the same things all the time, but man, it’s made a huge difference in my desire to sell my child on eBay and move to Mexico. I think the sugar detox is helping, too. We don’t forgo all sweets, but we try to limit them, and we certainly try to avoid food coloring. But when it’s a holiday and such a special time of visiting, I try to relax and not worry about it. I think that the healthier eating combined with the routine is turning Xander back into his normal self, and that’s a good thing. (Seriously, he has no behavioral issues that we’re aware of or concerned about, but give that kid artificially red foods and some corn syrup, and he’s a total nightmare. NIGHTMARE.)

I started this last night and am now finding the urge to write about five other unrelated topics, so I’m cutting myself off. Please to enjoy the few random Instragram pics from our trip that I did manage to snap.

 

My mom sent him that wee little suitcase, doesn’t it just kill you?

 

 

BIIIIG tree at the local outdoor mall (where it was almost hot in the sun!)

 

 

Carousel ride at the mall. He had to say goodbye to all the animals when we were done.

 

 

This baby piano was in my room as a little girl, and Xander just loved playing it.

 

 

Baking with Gram. We lost track of out how many he licked. Sorry, family, if you now have his cold.

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Yule

Oh, you guys. This Christmas was so great. Last year was good, too. Xander’s first Christmas, and all. But last year, he couldn’t even sit up. This year? He did a happy dance (in cowboy boots!) in front of the tree, and hugged his toys, and laughed so hard he choked a little.

It was just the three of us (plus Tonks), and we kept it fairly simple, activity wise. Cinnamon rolls that I had already cooked for breakfast, cold cuts for lunch, and some local grass fed steaks for dinner. I had originally planned to do something fancier for dinner, but didn’t really feel like taking the time. I did, though, make some gingerbread cupcakes that were delicious.

We got Xander entirely too many gifts, and next year we’ll try to work on that, but it was worth it this year. He was SO EXCITED about everything. He spent a good part of the day pushing around his toy stroller and wearing Paula’s cowboy boots and hugging Elmo and coloring on his easel and bouncing on Rody Horse. We’ve put a few of the gifts away already; there really were just too many, and some he isn’t old enough for just yet.

I hope you all had wonderful Christmases (or holidays or just December 25ths) with your friends and family. I don’t think I could have wished for a better one here, except to have my parents and brothers closer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Christmas Haikus, II

(Last year’s)

 

Sparkling white blanket

Icicles hang from branches

Cocoa waits for us

***

Baking all day long

Cookies for breakfast this month

No diet ‘til thaw

***

Twinkling Christmas lights

Nature in the living room

Ornaments glitter

***

Silent, holy night

Footed pajamas, zipped up

Time for sleep, my love

**
All is magical

In a wonderland of snow

Footprints mark your steps

***

Your turn!

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Merrily, Merrily

Xander is a big fan of the “TEEEE!”, as it turns out. Every morning he runs to it, pointing and giggling and, more often than not, lobbing his light up bouncy ball into its festooned pines. In his defense, the ball does look an awful lot like some of the Christmas lights we have up on it.

Sunday morning we took the gate down and let him actually TOUCH the tree, and took some fun Christmas pictures of him in front of it. JS used a real camera, while I used the old iPhone stand by. Can you tell which one is which?

 

 

 

 

 

Then Monday was my birthday, and it was a pretty damn good one. JS took the morning off and the three of us went to brunch. Then some friends invited me and Xander over for dinner and birthday cake.

Now we’re in the final Christmas Stretch and I’m getting the last of my gifts ordered and shipped and realizing that, OOPS, I totally did what I said I wasn’t going to do and got way too many toys for Xander. Which, yeah, I know. It’s lame. He’s too young to even WANT so much stuff. And while I’m not anti-present, I don’t want to completely spoil him each year. So I’m going to have to work on that one. At least this year he’s still too young to fully realize what’s going on.

I did a TON of baking this year, like I almost always do, for various holiday gifts and cookie swap parties and just because it’s Christmas and feels like there should be something in the oven.

 

 

 

It’s just going to be our little family for Christmas this year. which is how we wanted it. We want to spend the holiday in our new home and really dig in and make it ours. JS is not teaching this coming semester so, while he’ll still have work, he’ll have a lot more time to spend with us and around the house. We’re hoping to come up with some sort of system so that I can get out for a few hours a few times a week and sort of get back to having a sense of myself apart from Xander. I think I used to like to do things other than digging play-do out of tiny nostrils, but I’m not sure what, exactly, those things were.

Speaking of Xander. He’s as wonderful as ever, but he’s fast approaching the “No! Mine! Won’t!” hitting and clawing and biting phase and I need to get my game plan in action. I’m not a spanker, and I personally don’t think he’s really ready for time-outs (unless I sit with him and use it just to get him calmed down). I don’t want to punish him, per se, but I do want him to learn the consequences of actions and that, no, Mama doesn’t want you to chuck that organic, lead-free, wooden apple at her face, thank you. I explain things to him, of course, but he’s not talking yet and it seems to frustrate him to have so many one-sided conversations. Any suggestions for effective positive discipline techniques?

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Spirit

(This is with lights only. We have a whole decorating philosophy (hint: LOTS OF LIGHTS AND SPARKLY STUFF). Actual ornaments go on after the lighting situation has been handled.)

 

We got our tree!

I love Christmas. A lot. I love everything about it. Neighborhood lights. Baking. Nativity scenes. Carols. Trees. Kids crying on Santa’s lap. Shoddily wrapped presents under our tree. The whole nine.

I’m trying very hard to get into the Christmas Spirit, but I’m sort of struggling here. I think the winter and the homesickness and the whole it-gets-dark-at-3PM thing is all just wearing be down and I’m…I don’t know what I am. But I’m working on it.

So, anyway, this weekend we went to a real honest to God tree farm and JS cut us down a kickass Christmas tree. It may not be our biggest to date, but it was super fun, and also? It cost less than HALF THE PRICE of a precut, mostly dead tree would have cost us in California. So take THAT, homesickness.

Xander is still a bit under the weather, but we risked it and brought him out with us, bundled up in layers and layers. He mostly enjoyed being pulled in the sled, but also liked pointing out all of the Nature around us. “Eh? Eh? EH EH EH EH EH EH?????!!!!!”

Then we went out to brunch and I got a hot chocolate that tasted like a melted Hershey’s bar. Well played, Vermont.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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