Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Early Mornings and What I'm Not Doing For Christmas

Million woke up earlier than normal.
He must have found some sort of a toy in a storage bin in his room, because I'm hearing a mechanical voice say "This is M, This is R, This is H" repeatedly.  Not sure what toy he's playing with or from whence it came, since we have a semi-strict "no noise-making toys except for musical instruments and that one police car from his Auntie" policy, but at least he's entertained.

He's arguing with the toy now.  Apparently he has a different definition of what "H" is.

It's amazing how a few days and a hot shower can put things into proper perspective.

We're not quite to the thriving phase of family-hood yet, but we are doing more than surviving.
Of course, it helps that we've had food dropped off every night for the last week.
I'm getting so many good ideas for meal deliveries for other people.

The balance I'm struggling to find is how to re-program our routine to fit in some intentional Million and Mama time.  We need this.

We NEED this.

And with all of the holiday bustle and commercialization saying that Christmas is about family and togetherness and intentional time spent in meaningful traditions...it's easy to get a tiny guilt twinge.  But I'm not buried in heaping mama guilt right now, for which I'm grateful.

I haven't started an Advent calendar or Jesse tree.  In fact, I'm rarely getting in Million's devotions these days.  Michael and I talked about having a birthday party for Jesus with a cake and one helium balloon for Million to play with, but I'm not sure how far those plans will actually go.  I haven't scheduled any service projects for our family, and we're actually purchasing our little family's traditional "Christmas gifts" of lambs and ducks, etc. from charities in January.  You can do that.  Did you know this?

I also don't foresee much Christmas baking on the horizon.  Thank you Pinterest and my Facebook feed for making me feel extremely inadequate and like somewhat of a Grinch.  We've got a few years before our next child comes home, so that is my justification for taking this year kind of slowly.  We'll "do" Christmas next year.    

We're skipping our MOPS Christmas celebration tomorrow, as it's still a little too soon for me to feel confident and physically energetic enough to handle both boys and an adult Christmas celebration.

All of these things are good.  They're great.  They're just not possible or probable right now.  Our priorities are a little different right now.

Like returning crockpots and tupperware to appropriate people and writing thank-you cards.  And running a business.

Million's stopped playing with the alphabet recognition toy, whatever it is.  I'm not sure who won the fight about the letter H.

We're going to go downstairs, have some non-gourmet oatmeal, and start our day off with the hopes of carving out some intentional time together, learning about God and the true meaning of Christmas through our everyday activities.  

3 comments:

  1. Don't worry- we probably won't do a whole lot of baking this year either- but for different reasons than yours... at least, not "traditional" holiday baking. :) who knows. maybe we'll bring some no-sugar treats to family get-together?
    -mark

    ReplyDelete
  2. You are not inadequate! Just snuggle those two boys.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Those first days are so hard!! You are doing a great job. One Christmas I served a leftover casserole after the birth of my youngest. : )

    ReplyDelete