Moms who say Meh

Christmas is coming and it is a crazy time of year.

I have been trying to establish some Holiday traditions and give my kids something to look forward to every year. I am also trying to keep them busy and active while all the chaos is unfolding around us.

This is the time I usually look to Pinterest to see what types of things I should be doing. Once that four hours of browsing is wasted, I try to take the easiest, most doable things I find and at least make an attempt to include them in the Holiday season.

Some things turn out better than others. It is just like the "eyes are bigger than your stomach" adage, there are so many amazing things out there to do for the holidays but where do you find the time and energy? Plus, it is kind-of hard to scroll your fb feed and see all the cute, crafty projects that are going on at other peoples' houses without feeling like perhaps you are failing at supermom. 

But let's be honest, there are some people who thrive at those types of things, who really commit to it. Then there are the rest of us, you know the Moms who say Meh. We want to do something, we are willing to try, but we aren't going to totally kill ourselves over it.

It is for you mothers out there, my people, my Moms who say Meh that I bring you three projects that you can accomplish with very little effort and in very little time. 

The Christmas Lights Scavenger Hunt

This is an amazingly easy activity for the kids. If you live on the East Coast like I do, you know that darkness descends on us around 4:30 in the afternoon. It is brutal. Not only is it dark, it is cold and you still have to schlep everyone around in giant puffer hoodies while they would rather risk breaking a leg ice skating on the driveway than actually putting on gloves and getting in the car. If any of this sounds familiar, print out a couple of these Christmas Lights Scavenger Hunt lists that I created and you might save yourself a few minutes of your kids screaming in the car or having to listen to Paw Patrol on a loop on the entertainment system. It is also just nice to drive around a little through the neighborhoods and see all the lights.

Christmas Printables

This idea I took directly from Pinterest. We love the movie Elf here, so I just found a free printable online, printed it out and framed it. I set it on the table in the hallway and voila, easy holiday decorations. If you are more crafty than I am you can just create your own using any movie quotes or songs you like. The original pin is here. Easy. Enjoy.

Homemade Snow

The Lady has been asking me for weeks if we have Borax. Shockingly, we do not. Does anyone? Apparently, she has been watching a ton of YouTube videos on how to make your own homemade snow and Borax seems to be the go to ingredient in a lot of these homemade projects. Eventually, she found a recipe that didn't include Borax and had only two ingredients: Shaving Cream (original, not gel) and Baking Soda. 

This is so easy, literally a two step process.

Step 1: Gather the shaving cream and baking soda

Step 2: Throw directly into your garbage can

See! So simple! So easy! So not worth it unless you want your house to smell like all your uncles did in 1985, and have a white, flaky mess to clean up. 

We will see what projects we come up with over the break, or maybe not because, well meh. 

Merry! Merry!

On Slipping and Sleeping and Such

I totally bit it on the driveway this morning.

It is snowing in Connecticut and while it looks beautiful on the trees and the kids get super excited, it just adds a bit of the unknown to my day and I am having a hard enough time keeping it together as it is.

Our driveway is totally iced over. The half inch of fluffy white snow did nothing to break my fall. I was wearing snow boots, but perhaps my balance was a little off because I was carrying my bag, a computer bag, a small lunch bag, the Lady's backpack and a pair of black boots.

Thank goodness I had the foresight to hand the Lady my travel coffee mug or things could have gotten really ugly.

As it was, I just ended up with some wet pants that I tried to dry quickly by turning the seat heater up to extra high.

I have been driving the Lady to the bus stop in the morning because it has been in the 20's here and I don't want our nanny to have to take all the kids out in freezing cold weather. It has been nice to have some time alone with her in the morning and it actually makes my mornings a little bit more manageable because I have a few extra minutes to spare before we have to get out the door.

My hubby is finally getting home from California tomorrow, although it will be late at night and I will have one more solo evening of trying to deal with getting everyone to bed in a manner that has been nothing close to routine.

In the course of the last two weeks, I think I have slept by myself a grand total of two nights. The  Little Lady--who is suffering from what I think are night terrors will wake up, run down the stairs (if she isn't already sleeping on the couch), come into my room repeating the phrase "I want to go home" over and over again and then when I ask her what she is afraid of points out into the darkness and says "that."

Talk about creepy. This means that it takes me about another 30-40 minutes to fall back asleep because I don't like scary things and I kept on popping up to look around the room. After I saw Scream in college all my roommates were sleeping out and I put all the lights on in our place because I was afraid to sleep there alone. I wish that this was a one time deal with the Little Lady, but it isn't and it is clearly the same reoccurring dream. I am thinking about putting a little Holy Water on her while she sleeps. Couldn't hurt right?

The other issue is QT. A few nights ago I thought I heard someone out in the living room, when I called out I got no answer. About 20 minutes later the Little Lady came down the stairs and I heard her say "QT what are you doing?" before coming into my room and asking to sleep with me (I said no, fast forward a few hours and see above paragraph for how that night ended).

When I went out to see what was going on, I found him wearing only a diaper, his feety pajamas cast over his hockey sticks in a toy bin, lying on top of both his blankets, with a poop in his pants, totally passed out.

Repeat the same scenario last night (sans poo) and I think you can get the sense that things haven't been going that great at bedtime here. I did put QT back in his crib, only to have him back in my bed around 3 a.m. where he proceeded to sleep on me for the remainder of the night and where I heard him say in the middle of the night "I hate you mommy."

WTF QT?

The best sleeper is the Lady. Although she has insisted on sleeping in a night cap, which is a Santa hat she got for her first Christmas and that is barely fitting over her 6-year-old head. She is also insisting on wearing it to school. I have given up on fighting that battle. Can't wait to see what pajama combination she picks out for her Holiday Pajama Brunch on Friday. Will try to get a photo! 

On a positive note, I did get a little wrapping done last night. I am now unsure if I have gotten enough for everyone or too much for everyone. Looking forward to my husband getting home so I can leave him with all the kids and make an unnecessary stop at Target to just load up on stocking junk and toothbrushes! Merry! Merry!

Some Sticky Seasonal Situations

The Little Lady glued three, colored 8.5x11 pieces of paper to the wood floor in her room.

Oh Elmer, you are lucky it was your glue and not super glue or glitter glue. I guess I was lucky she wasn't playing on the rug.

These types of things seem to be happening with greater frequency in my house if that gives you any indication of how things have been going this fine holiday season.

QT wrote with permanent markers on my refrigerator (thank goodness for the magic eraser), he also upended a huge container of Rainbow Loom rubber bands that we have almost gotten back into the bin (on a side note, I do kind of find the sorting and organizing of the bands quite soothing, especially after trying to subdue the copious amounts of rage-a-hol pulsing through my bloodstream after finding paper glued to the floor).

The Lady insists that none of the messes have been made by her (although she is the one who was using the permanent markers for an art project and then left them out).

The one positive outcome of all this mess is that it has given me the impetuous to just get rid of stuff.

You can't play with it and put it away? Gone.

And I am talking garbage gone.

As much as I am trying to remember the meaning of this season, be grateful for the imagination and creativity of my glue and permanent marker-bearing children, I am wondering why I am even working myself up about bringing more stuff into our house, especially if it isn't going to be taken care of by the kids.

We need nothing else and clearly I am having trouble trying to get them to take care of the things that they have. I am trying to find a way to teach them about the spirit and magic of Christmas and about caring for people other than themselves in this world. It sometimes gets lost between Christmas lists, 50% off sales, and that freaking Elf.

The Elf, who the Ladies left a strawberry out for because they were concerned he didn't have enough time to eat during his nightly excursion to the North Pole, "found" a dry erase board and a marker and compiled a Naughty List with the names of the Three Beans listed. Not my proudest moment as a mother.

The Ladies came down to find the Elf holding the pen, sitting next to a half-eaten strawberry and on top of a dry erase board that listed them as naughty.

The Lady couldn't tolerate that for a second and found a way to remove the pen, without touching the Elf, and change naughty to nice. Not sure if that lesson sunk in.

I love that my kids are at the age that they can all play together relatively unsupervised and that they enjoy each others company. Granted, we have a few minor incidents but overall they have fun together. I just wonder why it is at always at bedtime when I am at my lowest and just ready to crash that things seem to go so astray. Maybe I throw away a few more plastic things I find on the floor, maybe I just let them turn their room into one big art installation, but in the spirit of the season, why can't they just be good for goodness sake?