Your Plans Are As Unique As You

      Halloween was last night which means that today is the beginning of Christmas for me. I know it sounds overblown to some and like we are perhaps jumping the gun but this is the way that I can maintain sanity as a mama. If I give myself more time, I can enjoy my pumpkin spice lattes and the leaves turning color while I plan my gift lists and read to the kids from the holiday book basket. Its the best time ever to get my ducks in a row and even to get a little private celebrating in before we are traveling. One of the hardest things about traveling for the holidays is the feeling of no personal celebration, no ability to be the mama myself for the holidays.  We are all living our own individual lives and I know that part the secret to my own happiness is an earlier and earlier start on the holiday season. I use a Christmas planner and a couple of books in a haphazard fashion, I scroll Pinterest and I scribble lists on odd papers....and also, I fly by the seat of my pants. This is me after all.

None of those formulas for how many gifts to buy or when exactly you should begin making cookies and storing them in the freezer are exactly right for any exact year in my exact life. I do like the concept though....so I try to come up with my own personal targets and magpie into my plans those that do seem to align. The point is to enjoy and relish the bustle and prep, the weight of responsibility that comes with being a merriment creator and the freedom and mental space that can come from a little more time coupled with some plans and systems.

This week I am revamping our breakfast menus and schedules for some of the same goals: more space, simplicity, bustle, and responsible feeling motherhood. There are things to put in line and ways to trim our old meal ideas so that they fit our new schedule and the changing interests of the palates in our home. I wish we fit some vanilla template but none of these things work that way. We nature journal, but not like anybody tells you to. I just bought, leafed through and then sold a book on How To Teach Your Child Shakespeare because we were doing bits of it already, some things were useful additions and lots of it needed to be passed on because we have a plan, its just the one that we are creating ourselves at our kitchen table. Its an interesting evolution to see myself both becoming a planner and also recognizing that for our individual house, nobody can hand me the plan. Plans are dynamic and shifting, we outgrow them and get bored by them, and all of our households quirky oddments will never be in anybody else's list.

Here's the marching to the beat of our own drums...ah yes, but marching to a beat! Lets all plan our own plans and come up with systems by being the wise observers and sensitive curators of our own people and lives. There's no easy out, nobody can do the work of life for you. But, after all....Halloween was just last night, you have time and so do I.  

Am I My Brother's Shopper?

I took the boys shopping today. This is our Dollar Store Christmas outing, to do their one, big, annual shopping extravaganza of giving. They have pocket money that they are allowed to buy things for themselves with throughout the year...but that money is all virtual and deducted and credited to them via little tallies on their Daddy's ever-spooling spreadsheet. Its pretty much all spent on junk food impulse purchases, Super balls and Pokemon cards. This money, is handed to them in cash...they each get five dollars....that's a dollar for each brother and then three other dollars to divide use for other gifts as they see fit (one for Mommy, one for Daddy and one for the family, two gifts for the kids to share and one for the parents, three other gifts the whole family can enjoy together....etc.) I put very few limits on what they buy and we can take as much time as they like in the shopping process. I did tell them no Playdough this year (light gray rental carpets in 80% of the house) and I also put the nix on the idea of giant knife with blood painted on the blade. I did however, allow the purchase of more Nerf action than I have the nerves to really enjoy.

The boys hem and haw, sometimes confer with each other in harried whispers, sometimes ask my advice and sometimes refuse any counsel. After they have selected what they want, I go over their plan with them privately while the siblings look the other way and talk amongst themselves. I ask them to tell me specifically who each gift is for, so that they can be sure they have it all figured out and that there are no double buys or accidental misses. I add no feedback or comments but simply make sure that they are sure they have everything they want to buy. There is no buying for yourself, although you are allowed to tell Mommy in furtive whispers if something catches your eye and is your burning wish for Christmas....it may get passed on to other shoppers who are stuck for ideas.

Once all decisions are made, we take the purchases up front and cash is handed out to each kid (I cover all tax and unexpectedly higher prices) and they wait in line with their things. They are coached through putting their goods on the conveyer, adding the divider between them and the next customer and waiting at the register for the cashier to ask for their money. I have them take the change and ask the cashier to count it back to them for good measure. Then they put their receipt into their own bag, thank the cashier and move over to the door to wait while their siblings complete their purchases.

Its mega fun for the boys to make such big adult purchases and to feel that they have such sacred power to surprise others and bring a gift home of their own choosing. Some years there have been unexpected squeals of joy over the selections once they are unwrapped....I am sometimes astonished at the way a sibling knows just the right thing to delight their brother. Its also such jolly fun to see a kid restrain himself with sighs and wishes from getting a toy he really wants and instead buy one for his brother because he knows his brother would also love it....and then on Christmas morning watch them realize that they bought each other the same longed for item. What a wonderful lesson in giving and the joy that there is in restraint and the deliciousness that there is in allowing space in our lives for other people to be good to us, not only to meet our own needs privately.

So, now we have to put the tree skirt down! Its all wrinkly and I meant to iron it up over the weekend and get it down but I forgot. Now its time to get serious....there are things that have been earnestly wrapped but little boys and labeled with little phonetically spelled tags in determined, wobbly writing. These are worthy presents, every year I'm glad I do this....even when the customers in line behind us are sighing dramatically and looking at their watches, and Pom has crawled under a store display for chocolate santas and pouted that he was going to live there forever. Even then. This, is a great tradition.

Christmas Do-Nothing

Merry Christmas to you, world of internets! I am partway through my card addressing stack and am working on considering making something ambitious like gingerbread or some cut-out cookies....I have most of my shopping squared away and I actually got the oil changed. I feel productive. I feel sane. Its Christmas-time and I feel sane. Because I feel good, I'm going to do less.

Tomorrow I am going to take the day off from Christmas and I will paint.

Its my own personal, self-care holiday gift-day to myself. I will shower. I will go to yoga. I will drink lots of water. I will meditate. I will paint. There will be many paintings. And if the boys want to paint, they can paint too. Anyone can paint! There can be paint all over us....that's allowed. At sundown, there will be baths....and before that there may just be a lot of underwear. We are all washable and we all need to create and breathe and fill our buckets, just as much as we need to do our math homework and catch up with the washing and finish all the Christmas cards.

There may be take-out for dinner. Merry Christmas. I plan to be merry, very. This is part of my prep.

That Holiday Feel

I am working on thinking about the Christmas cards. I did buy the voucher thingie from Costco that you use to print your photo cards...I did take a photo that I think might work (after some editing) and I even bought stamps....the truth is though....I haven't even looked at my address list since last year when I didn't get my cards out. Ha!

Its a new year. We are flying for Christmas....first time ever. Time to try to get all the way back to Michigan where all the grandparents are waiting in expectant, glee. In order to pull this off I need to not only stock up on sleep (Hello, 3AM wake-up on Christmas Eve for our flight!) but I also need to mail all our gifts ahead of us since four little boys, one daddy and all our suitcases is all that one mama can possible wrangle in an airport. Of course, Santa will take care of his part which is a relief....isn't it nice to not have to manage someone!?! But most of the giving is on the head of the mama. I love giving gifts and I now have four weeks to plot it all out....okay, three. I need a week just to pack and prep for the travel. Three rows of days to make it happen. Whew....

Time for the making to start. Time for coupons and buying sprees and clever ideas about how to maximize our best ideas for all involved. Have ideas about how you are going to make Christmas a little more do-able and sane at your house this year? I am making bow-ties for the boys instead of new outfits, I bought my dress already and I try to give just three or four gifts per kid....although, A who is the fun-time man around the house always tries to edge me upward. I am determined to find a few "experience" gifts this year too. Stuff that isn't "stuff" and will satisfy a fun-time Daddy and a minimalist mama who wants peace for Christmas herself.

Oh Christmas Card, Oh Christmas Card

Oh Christmas cards. You are so complicated!!!

Argh!!! I love, love, love the idea of Christmas cards. Some years I send them. Mine always come ridiculous late. If you are watching the mail, just give up...go get your shopping done. I am so sorry and I truly vow to do better and get more proactive next year with planning. I aspire to be "those people." I have all these constraints though, see?

First, I have a compulsion about making sure that the photo we include looks wintery....that means I want to wait until its cold outside. And then of course as soon as its cold outside I get ridiculously busy and so then the first chance I get its Thanksgiving. I almost always end up taking a shot right after Thanksgiving when we are out cutting our tree. This always seems like such a perfect idea but really its more like when The Grinch gets a "wonderful, awful idea..."
There are caveats:

1. I always want people to look nice and people just want to tromp around outdoors and look scruffy.
2. I sometimes make people take off their coats for the photo and its invariably friggin' cold this does not make for good facial expressions. 
3. I am living on borrowed time trying to rev up enthusiasm for portraiture when the boys would all much rather be hacking away with the handsaw on our family tree. 
4. One picture can never, never do it. "One more time for Mommy now!!! Cheese boys!!!" 
5. It is at this point a very close shave to get the cards made, ordered and addressed in time...not to mention mailing them out! EEP! I'm The Duchess of Late...every Christmas.

What to do? Last year I told myself I would start fresh and live outside the box. I planned to skip Christmas cards and instead make and mail out Valentine cards. Seemed perfect. Turns out there was no world outside of that box. Heh. I procrastinated my ass right out of any yearly greeting at all. There was nada ever printed. I live in shame.

This year I couldn't get the boys to cooperate and although I got a nice shot of A and I, I had a zero luck with the boys. The shots are all like this: 

I am now planning to mail out paper cards....genuine, old fashioned paper cards that I bought in the grocery store in the buy-one-get-one-free rack. They will come in real envelopes and they will have holiday themed artwork on the covers. I will sign our names inside one just for you and if all the stars align....the pictures I took in the yard today after I finished raking with be tucked inside, a little momento of how insane cards and photos and holidays really are. The next time you are having your portraits taken...think of me, I can promise it will elicit jolly expressions.

Christmas 2012

We spent much of Christmas 2012 wiping noses, dosing out painkiller and getting up in the night with stuffy toddlers; real reality for sure. We also had some moments of pretty idyllic beauty, and it is all about perspective, isn't it? Big warm mugs of mint tea, boisterous carol singing in the car, our record-best gingerbread cookies ever, homemade pomanders, snowflake cutting that drifted the table full one night before bed, and a 3 AM wake-up of enormous excitement on Christmas morning.

I am busy processing everything I've learned and missed learning in 2012 and gearing up for exciting new clean slate living in January! Hooray for The New Year!!!!

A very merry Christmas to all of you (yesterday was only the first day of 12!) out there in the world. I hope your pain this year was your teacher, your joy was deep and your hope springs eternal! Much love from all of us here at Chez Armstrong!

A Touchable Creche

Am spending today being festive. The online invitation service I used ate the Thanksgiving invitations instead of giving them out so we had an unexpectedly quiet and personal celebration here together. It was very peaceful and it was a very grown-up feeling to be serving a golden turkey to a table crowded with happy faces that I am mother to.

Today though, the house is warming up to the smell of the live fir we brought home. We've got a new spot for it this year, a little fresh thinking and furniture rearranging turned up a cozy new center of the room spot for it...directly across from the fireplace, nuzzled up the couch so we can read storybooks in the glow.

Yesterday the great decoration endeavor began. All the pumpkins went to the kitchen to be roasted, all the bittersweet went out the compost pile and the bronze ribbon was folded carefully and tucked into the "Autumn" shelf in our basement storeroom. There is a small congregation of red and green Rubbermaid tubs in the living room now and we've hauled all manner of glittering things out and tucked them here and there.

This year I set up our ceramic look-but-don't-touch creche on the top of our dining room bookcase to keep it farther from tempted fingers but in full view of everyone who wanted to look. Then we got the glue gun out, rooted through the toys and the fabric scraps and made a new, kid-friendly wooden creche for the old spot on the top of the cupboard in our entry hall. The boys had so much fun helping me make tiny little shepherd's staffs and special magi costumes and we used up a whole bunch of the sticks they love to stash making our little version of a stable.

 The whole kit and caboodle is basically a bunch of wooden peg dolls that we decorated and a cardboard box. We draped a gauzy curtain across the painting hanging behind it, dangled white twinkle lights inside and topped the whole thing with an extra tree-topper star we had sitting in the depths of one of the tubs. The boys were already up there playing several times, imagining angel songs and names for all the unknown characters. We added the wooden two farm animals Big Grandpa cut out of plywood one time when we were visiting up north and there's a little brown basket for a manger, waiting for the Christ Child. We're talking about what we'll make him out of on Christmas Eve. I may have a new tradition on my hands!

 

A Crisp New January

We are back home. We survived the stomach flu, a manic whirl of trip prep and holiday madness, and the long drive to Michigan and visits with both sides of the family. And here we are, stepping crisply into the new year. Ah! Feels so very, very good.

There's something very cathartic to me about traveling far away for Christmas and then driving back across the country together, bundled up in winter gear, munching leftover cookies, jotting down resolutions and humming on towards a whole new, fresh year together as a family. I love that drive. We talk and think over what our families are like and how we admire them and how we want to out-do them and we talk about our previous year and what went well and what we're primed to tackle next. And I always love it when we get to the part where we plan our travel schedule and make mouth-watering schedules for where and when we'll be adventuring in the coming year. This year we're hoping to see Hawaii, D.C. and New Hampshire as well as maple sugaring in the far north and a family reunion in the ancestral vineyard where we were married. Very apropos for the celebration of our 10th year of marriage together. We have genuine history!

Am feeling full of inspiration, and energy and hope today. My list is long and my spirits are high. I feel like there are good days ahead...I think 2012 is a good one.

Here are the things I'm dreaming of accomplishing in the coming year:

Resolutions 2012

1. Call my parents weekly
2. Help my boys write letters monthly
3. Dream journal
4. Work on the boy's baby books monthly
5. Go on a private "couple's retreat" together
6. Take an interior designs class
7. Take a trip to visit a friend
8. Read three books on genetics
9. Join an art society and hang a piece in an art show
10. Call grandma monthly
11. Plant shrubs on our property
12. Hang pictures in our house (extended family, kids and wedding especially)
13. Find three interior design books that I love and learn from
14. Switch to a local pediatrician and find a family doctor for A and I
15. Put together and follow a car maintenance schedule
16. Organize our basement storage
17. Paint more rooms!
18. Register to vote
19. Join our Neighborhood Association
20. Start an easy food night (pizza, take out, frozen dinner, leftovers etc.)
21. Hire a cleaning service for the first month after Baby Four arrives.
22. Read two great books on blogging
23. Teach the boys to: brush their teeth in the morning, comb their hair consistently and wash their hands before meals
24. Teach Ru to read and Dee to write his own name
25. Potty train Nib
26. Read three new plays
27. Carve out two consistent work times in the day for me-time (one for work and one for personal)
28. Sell three or more paintings
29. Make a new friend
30. Start taking the boys out for special Mommy and Me outings
31. Start an interior design notebook with a section for each room of our house

I might have time later to read through the resolutions from last year and compare and contrast a bit but for now, I'm forging ahead...sometimes blissfully unaware is okay. I'm

Less is More, It Just Is.

Tonight A and I are going out for the night, just the two of us, our last date night alone before the zaniness of family travel and other celebratory activities hit us full in the chest. I'm not sure if that's what's doing it or if is intention to focus on what matters in the middle of this holiday season, or even just new thinking about the coming excitement of New Year's Resolutions and the clean slate that is a crispy new January.

Suddenly I'm thinking about all the new toys and sweets and "stuff" we'll be bringing home for our little ones and I'm feeling the unstoppable urge to purge. Time to go wildly through our goods and take boat loads of things to Goodwill! Time to create empty, clean spaces! Time to set things in order in our house so that we return from Michigan to a calming space instead of insanity!

I am remembering that the things children like best are the simple ones....the ones that don't cost much or anything at all. Cookie cutters, shiny pebbles, string, the wrapping paper...you know. Am off to sort the playroom, to vacuum all the corners and to take bags of stuff, stuff, stuff to the trunk of our van for a thrift shop drop-off.

Less is more. It just is.