There is so much magic in sharing Christmas with your little ones. Watching their eyes light up the first time they see a glowing Christmas tree. Feeling their anticipation as they wait for Christmas Eve to finally arrive. Baked cookies and handwritten letters and stockings hung and meals with families. It’s enough to fill any mama’s heart with joy.
Mostly.
Christmas time always comes with a little extra stress on the parenting front. Shopping for gifts for everyone from the kids and the family to the school lunch lady, ordering Christmas cards (and addressing them and mailing them), traveling with exhausted kiddos who are hopped up on sugar and excitement. It’s a lot.
This year, we seem to have hit a “sweet spot” in ages where it is even harder than usual. Mostly, I’m blaming it on the fact that, with a two year old AND a three year old, we have both of the “most challenging” toddler years covered. Although, it doesn’t help that the eight year old seems more on the cusp of pre-teen-hood every day. When I first took on this “parenting at Christmastime” gig, I never dreamed how quickly the years of buying BOTH stuffed animals and training bras (for the same kid) would arrive.
Shopping for three kids is at these ages is certainly an adventure. But the real fun comes in the celebrating with family. That’s where you find the real joy in the season, right?
Except this year family celebrations basically involve my husband and I taking turns chasing our two year old around other peoples’ homes. She will sprint from one room to the next, attempting to scale the highest piece of furniture she can find, putting foreign objects in her mouth, and running face-first into the sharpest corner in the room. I love this child dearly, but I don’t know where the personality trait that causes her to gogogo at a hundred miles an hour until she melts down from exhaustion came from.
Often, an entire family celebration will pass and I will feel as if I hardly looked at another adult or carried on a single conversation. Mostly it is me snarfing down food and making sure the older two have eaten and then relieving my husband of two year old chasing duty so he can eat something. Then we try to convince her to open a package, meanwhile missing what the other two have opened, and then try to mediate all three while they all fight over each others’ toys. By the end, we pile heaps of desserts on their plates just so we can get them to sit quietly for a moment, even though we will pay for it on the ride home.
My point is, I love Christmas. I love Christmas with my kids, and my family. The season is magical and wonderful and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
And, it’s also exhausting and frustrating and a little bit heartbreaking. It’s exhausting to try to keep everyone sane and functional amidst all the chaos and excitement. It’s frustrating to put them to bed at night, finally put your feet up, and feel overwhelmed with guilt that you spent way too much time lecturing and chasing and “managing” and not enough time savoring and enjoying.
It’s heartbreaking because you want these fleeting moments to be perfect and most of the time real life isn’t.
And it’s okay that it isn’t perfect all the time. Just because it feels hard doesn’t mean you’re not grateful. You can love these days AND still feel relieved when bedtime rolls around so you can finally rest. You can savor this magic of little-ness and still look forward to the days when they are old enough to play with a little less supervision so you can sit around and chat at family gatherings. If there was ever a perfect season to remember that there is holiness in the struggle of raising tiny humans, this is it. Don’t be afraid to give yourself the gift of grace.