Christmas, Part One

The in-laws have arrived, and Christmas is officially underway at our house. The tree is up, the railings and banisters are wrapped in Christmas lights, the TV is playing an endless stream of holiday specials, and grandma and grandpa came bearing a suitcase full of gifts, which they have been doling out a little at a time to keep these two girls excited and entertained. Together they’ve made potholders, played princess bingo, done kitten puzzles, and tomorrow they’re tackling a gingerbread house. As if that wasn’t enough, their suitcase is still full of pretty and sparkly clothes for the girls to be wrapped and put under the tree, and today the grandparents took them toy shopping. While String Bean led them around pointing out everything she wanted (in short, everything, although everything purple or decorated in glitter or sparkles ranked just a little higher on her wish list), and Peanut drifted from display to display, lingering a moment longer on some items than on others, their grandma strolled behind them and put things into the shopping cart, which their grandpa then took up front to pay for and stow in the car. It’s funny to think that the girls saw every item they’re getting for Christmas, hand-picked each thing, and yet have no idea what exactly came home with us, overwhelmed as they were by all of the possibilities in the store. We escaped from toy-store over-stimulation just as the girls were beginning to crash, got them home and fed and down for the naps they didn’t take, and then, while the in-laws wrapped gifts and monitored the restless non-nappers, I got out for a couple of hours of writing time while the rain poured down outside and a mocha warmed me up inside. So, that’s part one of my Christmas, as well. There’s nothing like leaving rambunctious kids behind, getting to work on the next chapter of your novel-in-progress, with a hot cup of coffee, surrounded by finals-stressed college students, and getting some uninterrupted stress-free time for yourself.

Christmas Crunch

I stopped by the Halloween store in the early afternoon on Halloween to get a last-minute costume for hubby, only to find the whole store gutted already, with the few remaining costumes in a messy heap in the center of the warehouse-sized room. So I ran next door to Target, which had a huge section dedicated to Halloween merchandise, only to find the Halloween items had been moved to a messy pile on one shelf, and the rest of the section had been stocked with Christmas items. Strangest of all, there were several people in the new Christmas section, loading their carts as if they were quickly running out of time to get their decorations purchased. Halloween wasn’t even over, and the Christmas frenzy was already starting? As much as I enjoy Christmas, I’d prefer to just celebrate one holiday at a time. And even though Thanksgiving is one of my least favorite holidays, not just because I’m a vegetarian and it centers around consuming a dead bird, but the whole glut of food aspect of the day just never made sense to me, I’d still like to have Thanksgiving behind me before getting into the Christmas spirit.

Love Conquers All, Even Tantrums

Not long ago, I found myself in line at Target, just in front of a mom with a child in mid-tantrum in her cart. I turned as I heard the familiar shriek, followed by some thrashing about in the seat (luckily, he was firmly strapped in), to find the boy’s mother smiling and saying, “Aw, I love you!” every time the kid wound up for another scream. The child, predictably, responded with a resounding “NO!” followed by more wailing, kicking, and attempts to engage his mother. She simply smiled adoringly at him and told him again how much she loved him.

I was quite impressed with her response. She was calm, able to laugh off the situation, instantly winning favor with other moms around her (we were easy to spot by our eagerness to show her our approval), and her older children followed her example by not responding to the toddler, and didn’t feel the need to compete for mom’s attention since the fit-throwing child wasn’t getting much attention.

I have yet to encounter such a full-fledged tantrum in public with my kids (one benefit of rarely taking them shopping with me), but if/when I do, I hope I have the presence of mind to follow her example and battle the tantrum with pure, overwhelming love and a good dose of humor.

Spoiled Rotten, Please

The in-laws are visiting this weekend, which means the girls are being spoiled rotten. I’m not one of those moms who objects to grandparents feeding my kids cookies for dinner or overdosing them on TV. I had two sets of fairly reserved grandparents. They weren’t the type to ruin meals with sweets or turn on the goofy behavior to elicit squeals of laughter. I sincerely felt my childhood lacked in the area of spoilage, and so I encourage all three sets of grandparents to do their best to win my kids’ favor.

Yesterday, my mother-in-law took the girls shopping for some new clothes. The toddler tolerates shopping as well as any outing, but she doesn’t get terribly excited about it. The 4-year-old is entirely another story. She’s more of a clothes-hound than any teenage girl I’ve ever met. Grandma had promised her a couple of new dresses, and you should have heard her browsing through the options available to her. “Ooh, this one! I love it. Oh, it’s beautiful. I have to have it. And this one! Grandma, can we get this, too? It’s just perfect. Like a princess. And this one! Look at this one! It’s purple. I love purple!”

At some point I had to step in to reign her in and get her down to two dresses. Then we were on to skirts and matching tops, with the exact same level of enthusiasm. The whole time, as I was smiling at grandmother and granddaughter bonding over the thrill of new outfits, I was secretly wondering how I’m going to control her clothing obsession when she’s a fashion-driven teenager. I mean, aside from sending her on extended stays with each set of grandparents, where she’ll be appropriately spoiled rotten.

Stress-free Shopping

There are several reasons that I began to hate grocery shopping: not being able to securely fasten two children down in a shopping cart, all of those whiny requests (and promises to eat) food in brightly colored containers (none of which my children—the two pickiest eaters I’ve ever met—actually ate), the innate ability children have for pulling out the tantrum card when they sense their mother is easily publicly humiliated or in a big hurry. I also got tired of my daughter announcing to the grocery clerk what color underwear I was wearing that day (a fascination stemming from her flirtation with potty training, so while I was glad to have her covet the notion of wearing panties, I didn’t need the old guy scanning our groceries to know that I had hearts on my underwear that day).

Now that I have regular breaks from the munchkins, I save my grocery shopping for those days. What used to take a good hour, with carseats to undo and redo, cranky children to negotiate with, my inability to effectively menu plan while entertaining kids with Wiggles songs, now takes all of fifteen minutes. I sort my shopping list so that items begin on the left side of the store and end on the right. I know which clerks are fastest for ringing up my purchases, and where the best parking spots are for a quick exit from the parking lot. In short, I’m able to function in the highly organized manner that I did before having children. It isn’t much, a formerly epic shopping trip transformed into a brief, painless outing, but it’s something. A precious reminder that while having children has forever changed my life, somewhere in there the old me still exists, too.