Santa

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Let's Kick off Christmas

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As we do, we started the Christmas season off early this year. I used to have a strict, wait until after Thanksgiving rule, but it’s definitely been relaxed lately. We still don’t have any Christmas trees up, but there are wrapped presents in my house, decorations are ready to go up soon, and we’ve done a few holiday events already. Speaking of those, we’ve had some hits and misses.

One of the hits for me at least, was visiting Santa! The older two are always a bit confused about why we’re doing it, and claim they don’t want to go, but I swear they have a lot of fun once we’re there. E jumped right in on signing his name to the “nice list” book they had, and then did G’s name too while G was warming up to everything. But soon they were both chatting with Santa, posing for pictures, and of course telling their life stories.

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Expectations

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As a parent, it’s easy to get an idea in your head about how things might go, or how you’d like them to go. I see it a lot this time of year when everyone is booking family photos and thinking of upcoming holiday cards. For example I might think that if I buy matching pjs and book photos with a Santa early in November, we could have a cute photo for our card. I might even think I’m being flexible when I consider the possibility that the baby would be crying, because that might make a funny card.

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A Christmas Tradition

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There are a lot of things we’ve lost this year. A lot of traditions broken. Our annual family trip to Maine was cancelled. Birthday parties, get togethers, even the Boston Marathon is going to miss two years. So when I started thinking about what Christmas was going to look like this year, there was one thing I didn’t want to give up. Sure it’s not the most important tradition, and I’m sure the kids wouldn’t have noticed, but I realized it would make me feel a little bit better if this one wasn’t broken.

And honestly anything I can do to feel a little bit normal these days, I’ll take it. My coping strategy with this pandemic seems to be part good enough and part humor. So that’s what led me to order Tom a Santa suit back in September.

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A Visit with Santa

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Okay, we held off as long as we could (okay that’s a lie, we started back in October), but I think it’s Christmas season here! We’ve pulled out the Christmas PJs, and we’ve even squeezed in a visit with Santa! The boys did great, mostly. E always goes into his happy place and just sits there quietly when put in a new situation, so I knew he’d do fine. Baby G was the question mark. When we handed him over, Santa looked at him and said “Oh hello, I love you!” It might have helped that he was dressed as a tiny elf.

We got a few pictures taken before G looked around and realized he wasn’t sure about his situation and started to cry. A quick reassurance, and he calmed down, and then we were done! Afterwards E let me know that he doesn’t actually like “Big Santa” and would rather be Santa himself haha. So even though they were both unsure, we got our picture, and they got a new experience.

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The Halloween Post

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I’ve realized there are a lot of people with a lot of strong opinions about Halloween. And most of them (or at least the loud ones) believe that Trick or Treating should always be on October 31st, after dark, regardless of the weather. It could be a hurricane, tornado, ten feet of snow, and they expect children to put on their costumes and ring their bells. The thought of moving it to a Saturday when parents don’t have to work and cars don’t need to be on the road is the dumbest idea anyone has ever had.

Maybe because my Saturdays usually aren’t that busy, or maybe because I have an hour commute home and actually had to take time off of work to make sure I could be all the places I wanted to be on Halloween, but I would LOVE Saturday Trick or Treating. In fact, I’d love it from 3- 5:00 in the evenings if you’re asking.