December 22

December 22 already!

Our wild, patchy, yet perfect tree is trimmed, the presents are (mostly) on their way from Amazon, snow has fallen in the last week to make everything look cozy and blanketed, and I'm barely wrapping my mind around Christmas being so soon!

Our last week was pretty rough with my poor Nora being really sick last week. A raging fever that didn't let up for three days, doctors visit, antibiotics, finally feeling better a few days after that - it was one of those sicknesses where she only wanted to be held by me for all her waking and sleeping hours. I lost a week a week before Christmas.

But she's on the mend, I was lucky enough to get out of the house on Saturday, and Christmas is still on it's way. Christmas can't be stopped, and that's almost a comforting thought to me as a mom to a bunch of little people who sometimes/all the time thinks that I must do everything before Baby Jesus can come. Seriously, I gotta check myself often because I can begin to operate like a kind of automatron who must get all the things done for everyone OR. ELSE. CHRISTMAS. WILL. BE. RUINED.

But I've had Christmases in the past few years where I was nine months pregnant, six months pregnant, and unable to get out of bed Christmas Day because of a terrible case of the flu, and yet Christmas went on and children were completely happy even if all the cookies weren't baked and each present wrapped perfectly. Christmas really does have it's own joy even when things are going pretty crumbily, and I think that's something I'm just learning even though the lessons were given a few years ago. I'm sure I'll need to relearn it again and again.

Now, even though I'm still pretty overrun with small children and their bubbling excitement that needs to be corralled on the busy days, I'm trying to soak it in because their precious little years really don't last long. I'm really so lucky to have a house full of kids who are completely over the moon about all aspects of Christmas, from Santa to the tree lights to candy canes to remembering every thing we've done before because it's all tradition to them.

It's a crazy kind of chaos where I feel like Christmas week is a wild sprint to the finish. Where I'm cooking and baking, finding fancy church clothes an hour before Mass, staying up late trying to find where I've hidden the stocking stuffers, still staying on top of the never ending laundry that doesn't stop for the holidays, packing for all of us, making sure we have milk -- it's tiring, I'm weary by the end of Boxing Day. It really is a lot.

But I'm going to remember the joy and actually enjoy myself too. I don't want to look back on my children's Christmases and only remember feeling frazzled and exhausted. I want to remember their sweet faces and expressions, that I was happy to see them happy. I want to remember the family dinners spent with our family and how lucky my children are to be part of it all. I want to remember the late nights of wrapping for so many people and then remember hugging and hanging out with them on Christmas Day. And while I watch them binge the littles binge on cookies and chocolate I'm going to enjoy a drink myself.

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