My husband often refers to me as hurricane as I whirl around trying to get things accomplished causing a path of mess in my route which then adds to the stress I am already creating. My children are my two tornados, which is kind of self explanatory. I, have hit hurricane status because of water involvement in my past messes. So, as you can imagine a house of two tornados and a hurricane can sometimes lead to disaster.
Each year my stress over the holidays begins to rise in November and peak just before Christmas. I spend way too much time making lists and trying to do too many things in too short of time. Honestly, it is a bit of a speciality for me though out the year but, is really apparent during the holiday season. I always think I can accomplish 4 hours of realistic work into a 45 minute span, then am really disappointed when I don't get everything completed that I had hoped to.
Between my two maternity leaves; the amount of holidays I had upon my first return from maternity leave, and a job share that only ended about six months ago I have not had to work full time during the Christmas season since 2008. I understand that for most people working full time during the holidays is the norm but it is not mine any longer and I did not adjust well. In my head I believe I can do all the things that I did when I worked only half the amount of hours outside the home. However, in reality I have to sleep each night so this is not really possible.
The following is a list of what I had wanted to complete in December 2013 with my family on top of the regularly scheduled activities we are involved in:
Completely finish and furnish dollhouse that was set to arrive on Dec 15th (by furnish I mean me making all the furniture)
Make sugar cookies and decorate them with kids
Do holiday baking for neighbours
Make gingerbread house of our house
Decorate inside and outside of house for Christmas
Go get Christmas tree from tree farm and decorate it
Take kids shopping for husbands gift and gifts for each other
Make an advent calendar
Make special Hors d'oeuvres for Christmas Eve
Go Skating weekly
Go to Santa Claus Parade
Go to See Santa Claus
Buy and wrap gifts for everyone on my list
Volunteer for Dance Recital
Host boxing day dinner
Assist husband grandmother with setting up for Christmas Dinner
Go away for a night with husband
Attend special Christmas Craft days at the Library
Attend husbands work party
Attend and bring food to family Christmas
Host a Family Christmas
Even when I look a the list I have crated it seems doable. I know that most people probably have a similar one; but, I am here to say it is not doable. At least not for me and my family. This is how our list actually looked after December
Completed
Decorate inside and outside of house for Christmas
Go get Christmas tree from tree farm and decorate it
Buy and wrap gifts for everyone on my list
Volunteer for Dance Recital
Host boxing day dinner
Go away for a night with husband
Attend husbands work party
Attend and bring food to family Christmas
Host a family Christmas
Not Completed
Completely finish and furnish dollhouse that was set to arrive on Dec 15th (by furnish I mean me making all the furniture)- this got partially finished and I am still working on it
Make sugar cookies and decorate them with kids- nope, but they did decorate cookies at a party
Do holiday baking for neighbours- yes, but not as much as I had planned
Make gingerbread house of our house - this is when things started to get bad!
Take kids shopping for husbands gift and gifts for each other - nope, did this alone
Make an advent calendar - nope
Make special Hors d'oeuvres for Christmas Eve - nope, bought boxed ones
Go Skating weekly - nope
Go to 2 Santa Claus Parades - nope, we made it to one
Go to See Santa Claus - nope, they did see him at a party
Assist husband grandmother with setting up for Christmas Dinner - not as much as I had planned
Attend special Christmas Craft days at the Library - yes, but late both times
Everything came to ahead over gingerbread. I had made the gingerbread dough around the 12th of December and stuck it in the fridge to cut out and bake later. This was already much later then I had intended but due to time restraints I was just trying to fit it in. The dough sat in the fridge for over a week. Finally one day I asked my husband who was going to be home with the kids for the day to bake the gingerbread houses. I know what people are thinking here and yes not only did I expect him to bake gingerbread houses but I expected him to create a fabulous gingerbread replica of our house that I could assemble and decorate with our kids when I got home. And yes, I do know in hindsight that this is crazy, but at the time this was my expectation. When I got home that night to find he did bake the gingerbread houses, but not as I would have hoped ( he baked 5 rectangles each for each child to have a house with a flat roof) I was less than happy. I stayed up late trying to carve more house looking shapes with a serrated knife out of the rectangles, then my husband and I moved out to the garage to work on painting, adding window, and shingling the dollhouse.
At about 11 that night he said to me "You have got to lower your standards" and as much as I hated to admit it he was absolutely right. After that night lots of things got scratched from our list. I bought boxed Hors d'oeuvres for Christmas Eve, although this may seem like a normal thing for me that was equivalent to me waving a huge white flag, screaming I give.
We then moved onto New Years which may be my favourite time of the year. Christmas is over and I feel like it is a fresh start each year. I know most people think resolutions are stupid and people never follow though. Not surprisingly, I love them. Last year I reined in my caffein addiction going from upwards of two pots of coffee a day to two in the morning and leeway for one more in the afternoon if really needed. I went over my new limit a handful of times throughout the year; but, clearly a vast improvement from the couple of pots I was downing daily in 2012.
So, Cheers to moving forward into 2014, this years goal is to ditch artificial sweeteners. So far it sucks and I miss Mio -squirt, squirt, squirt.
