A few days ago on my Facebook page i was telling (well posting for whoever was really reading) that cooking for the holidays is not stressful for me. I don't mind the hours spent in the kitchen or the dishes that don't come out perfect even after i have slaved over them all day. A matter of fact i love cooking for the holidays more then any other meal. It makes me feel full of joy and happiness at feeding my family. Knowing they are full, warm, and happy. It is GREAT (and probably a little weird to the rest of you)!
This Thanksgiving i cooked a massive meal to feed not just my family but about 15 people. I was excited! I normally only cook for the 4 (now 5) of us. It was great. I made turkey, ham, kale, mashed potatoes, gravy, baked mac n cheese, sweet potato casserole, rolls, and 2 pumpkin pies. Why 2 pies you ask? Well because i dropped the first one in the floor of course lol. Way to start out a morning i tell ya (consider this a Thanksgiving update lol).
Anyways back to the point of this post.
As i said, I don't find the cooking stressful in the least. I know things are bound to go wrong. My timing will be off, something might burn, something might get dropped (smile), and it is a guarantee that something will get forgotten until after we are finished eating (like the rolls). But i have come to accept this fact and just flow with it.
What i can not flow with is the never ending stream of "I want this", "Will Santa bring me this", " OH MY GOSH I have to have that". My kids change their minds like they change underwear. What they want today will be long forgotten tomorrow when they see a new commercial, for a new toy, that is even bigger and better. What was wanted yesterday is completely in the dust of today.
This leaves me in a tough spot when we did all of our Christmas shopping a month ago (we actually went earlier this year lol) and have all the presents we intended to buy in layaway as we speak. I have already told family and friends what to get the kids (we bought them both a tag reading system so books to go with that, trains to go with Phabian's Thomas the Train set, and Cars to go with MJ's race track, and clothes of course because Santa, Mommy and Daddy only buy toys). We are out of money and less then 25 days to Christmas.
We still have to buy for the 5 names we drew at my MIL's house plus my niece and nephew. This will probably take up the last little bit of free money we have. So all these late add ons the kids have requested from Santa are completely out of the question. I have tried to explain to the kids that Santa is also feeling the bad economy but somehow my 4 and 5 year olds just don't get what the economy has to do with Christmas.
It leaves me feeling
Don't get me wrong we bought a lot for the kids. They will by no means go without a ton of presents under the tree. Plus they get presents from my brother, my dad, my MIL, aunts and uncles, and my aunts and grandma are coming in from Florida this year. They also go celebrate with a very close friend of ours who's parents consider them their grandkids and there for the rest of her family has adopted them as well. They will ultimately get more then they really need and everything there eyes can fathom.
So why in the world do i let this stress me so badly?
Why do i give in to the temptation to feel like a failure just because i cant buy them every single thing they want?
WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY??????
Is it just me? Please tell me someone else out there feels like this as well? I need to let myself off easier but for some reason i just cant seem to do it. I wish i had some great psychological insight that i could share but i don't. LA SIGH!
So for now i am going to try to go relax and let it go. The kids will get what they get and what they need. They will not go without and ultimately i know when they wake up Christmas morning they will have those same looks of awe and excitement as they do every year.
I need to enjoy these fleeting years. Soon they will stop believing and start asking for extremely over priced electronics.
1 comment:
Oh Courtney! (((Hugs)))
Of course we've been there, almost every parent has. Hopefully the boys will be so excited for what they do get, they'll forget about what they don't. One thing we do now is that my kids write their letters to Santa end of October/beginning of November and once it's mailed, well, that's it.
good luck with it all. I'm sorry holidays are so stressful, and they are, no matter how much we try to make them wonderful.
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