sometimes, it’s good to be alone. I know Christmas is suppoed to be family time, but I just could not do it this year. All of our extended family lives far enough away that we don’t see them often, and when they visit they need someplace to stay because there is no room at our house. I love our family. This year, with an 8 week old baby, a 2 year old and a 5 year old, though, we decided not to put them through it. we closed the house to visitors for Christmas.

Here is my other thought: forego the holiday stress of a huge Christmas feast, especially if you have young (under 8 years old) children. After being up all night wrapping presents and making sure everything is perfect for Christmas morning, parents need a rest. The kids don’t care if you serve ham, potatoes and pie or pizza. What’s important is the time spent together, not the food served.

Henceforth, MM has renamed our children. For purposes of this blog, our oldest child will be called Crash, our middle child will be Boom, and the newest will be Bang.

Last week was Chatterer’s school program. He had been sick most of the week, and was back in school the night of the program. He had missed all the rehearsals. when the time came, he sang one song in the beginning and one in the end. in the middle, he told his teacher he wanted to go home.

Where is the irony? He has been singing songs from the program for the last two days at the top of his lungs.

The new little one slept more than seven hours last night. hooray! He is transitioning to sleeping through the night. darn! Couldn’t he have more evenly spaced his feedings so I’m not in pain?!?!

Chatterer declared that he’s going to sleep on the couch tonight so he can see Santa.  We explained to him that a) Santa isn’t coming to visit until next week and b) Santa won’t come at all if C isn’t asleep in his bed.  He took a minute to think about this and decided that he wanted to get a present for Santa.  I told him that we would make cookies for him just like we did last year.  “But I want to get Santa a present that he can unwrap!”  Mom, thinking quickly, “how about if we wrap the plate that the cookies are on and he can open that?”  “Yeah, that’s a GREAT idea!!!”

Does anyone have a good sugar cookie recipe?  The one that I have used the last 3 years tastes like sawdust with sugar in it.

In June, the four of us (at the time) attended Chatterer’s preschool graduation.  LBoaM could NOT sit still.  Once he was practically up on stage.  Another time he was crawling along on the floor playing with his toys that we brought to keep him entertained.  The entire experience was exhausting.

Fast forward six months: last night we attended Chatterer’s Christmas program.  (It actually WAS a Christmas program, so I’m not going to use some politically correct term to describe it.)  LBoaM, while still very fidgety, managed to stay put (after being threatened with a trip home early in the program) and only moved from the pew to my lap.  He danced while sitting on my lap (the only lap dance I’ve ever had thank goodness) and generally stayed quiet.  He even applauded at appropriate times.

They grow up so fast…

We went out to dinner tonight for Chatterer’s 5th birthday. Since there are now 5 of us, it’s somewhat more difficult, since Chatterer, LBoaM and the newest arrival all need different amounts of attention. It’s a small town, so naturally we saw a couple of people we knew at the restaurant, including MM’s boss. We made it through dinner with only two trips to the floor for each boy to retrieve dropped crayons (sigh). As we were packing up and asking ourselves why we did this, the boss came over and complimented us on how well behaved our children are.

It just goes to show the pain and hassle of doing the right thing by your children is occasionally immediately rewarded.