the magic maker

I’ve been thinking about this all month. Not sure how it’s going to all come tumbling out, but I’m just going to start typing. (The picture above is me in 1st grade. And I still have that skateboarding girl, I'll have you know. I know right where she's at at this very moment...)

Now this thought I’m about to share isn’t totally new to me. I’ve felt it since Ivar was born, but this Christmas it became quite pronounced. This year I hardly decorated, cookies made me nauseous and we didn’t have any snow. It was an odd Christmas to be sure. But it made something very obvious: If I don’t decorate, the house doesn’t get decorated. If I don’t bake, we don’t nibble and munch all season. If I don’t make my house merry and bright, December can slip by like any other month. I am the magic maker.

I get really nostalgic for Christmas' in the past. But what I'm realizing is the ones I am dreaming about are the Christmas' where I merely took in the magic. The ones where somehow it all got done. Someone mysterious was doing all the gift purchasing and then wrapping those gifts into the wee hours behind a locked bedroom door. Someone else bustled in the kitchen for our ham and hot fruit and creamy potatoes. Someone else did all of the organizing of company, planning of special festive outings, decorating and party planning.

Turns out, my mom was busting her hiney every December. My mom was making the magic. And I’m just realizing this now, at age 30.

I mean, I knew it, I just didn’t really know how much work it entailed.

It’s a big responsibility! My sister-in-law Lisa told me that at some point the week before Christmas it dawned on her that she simply was not going to get it all done. She knew it days before execution. There just wasn’t enough time. And so after Christmas dinner, Lisa disappeared and wrapped the presents we were about to open just moments later. She was doing her magic, you see.

So to all the mom’s who met each other at Target late at night, to all the mom’s who ran to the corner store for another pound of butter and some more vanilla, to all the mom’s who got out all of the Christmas decorations and now are staring at them hoping they’ll put themselves away, I guess I just want to say, You’re magical.

And it is worth it. All the love and attention to detail my mom poured into my childhood Christmas' were not lost on me. And now it's what I'll strive for with my own kids. Starting next year. When smells are lovely again and feeding my son lunch doesn't take every ounce of energy I have. But look out Christmas 2012. I'll be back. And I'll be magical.

a christmas to remember...or try to forget.

Ivar got the flu on Christmas Morning around 1:30 at my folk’s house. We had celebrated Christmas Eve with the Groves and went to my parents to sleep overnight for Christmas Day with the Harringtons.


Unfortunately, it was violent and messy and long lasting. Basically, it was awful. It’s hard to watch your baby dry heave. But I do recommend if you’re a first time mom, try to be with your mom when your baby gets the flu for the first time. Because as a first time mom, you really need a mom of your own to mother you while you act as the mother to your baby. At one point in the night Rory said to my mom, “Margaret, you can go back to bed if you’d like.” And I told him mom was up for me, not for Ivar.

Another handy thing about being at mom’s is that she has an abundance of wash clothes and bath towels which is what we used to wrap our baby in and catch his mess. He blew through his clothes quite quickly and this served as a pretty great system considering how unpredictable the whole thing is.

We came back home on Christmas Day, and my folks headed to my sister’s to celebrate with her and her family. Ivar threw up throughout the day, but babies are funny and sort of bounce back between episodes. So we opened Christmas presents by the tree, watching the Yule Log and laying very low. I felt really ill after such a terrible night of sleep.

Monday came and I felt better than I have in months. I sorted my art supplies, switched a book shelf, and my folks came over in the evening to help with more projects. I was so motivated to sieze this new found energy! We swept, mopped, took the tree down (I know, pretty early, but what is the point of sweeping if you are going to take the tree down a few days later?!!) and the Christmas decorations (all three of them I had put up.)

Then my mom got sick. Really sick. 36 hours after Ivar, and she was down for the count. They left our house with bucket in hand and three hours later my dad caught the bug too. An hour after that Rory and I were hit. It was like war. This flu bug was picking us off one by one.

Monday night will not soon be forgotten. All three of us in this little home were violently ill and it was terrible. Terrible.

Tuesday came as a slow recovery day. But Ivar still threw up Tuesday night and then again last night. We took him to the doctor today and the doctor thinks the last three nights have been formula related with his system having trouble digesting the lactose in his bottles. So we’re onto soy formula and hoping this might be the key.

Did I mention that Annika’s little baby Svea got it too? And now Sonna has it. That family is like domino’s about to topple over and I am so, so sorry for them.

My dad is out grocery shopping for us right now, restocking the essentials: bananas, apple sauce, gingerale, saltines and bread. We’re a sorry sight here on Girard. Wouldn’t recommend coming too close.

Just thought I’d check in before the new year. Sorry if this is all too much information. I sort of just wanted to write it out so that years from now we can read it and thank our lucky stars it isn’t the Christmas of 2011.

cookie swap 2011

Monday was the Great Lisa Groves Cookie Swap 2011. It's my favorite event leading to Christmas, and even though the thought of making twelve dozen cookies made me gag, I decided to partake.

I got my game on. Thursday I mixed three batches of batter for the Sugar and Spice cookies. They're my favorite, and ginger cookies seemed like a good and smart idea for this pregnant lady. On Friday my mom came to help me bake them all. The first batch came out flat and greasy. They looked like this:

Mom started asking questions. Questions like, how much butter did you put in each batch of dough? To which I replied, "well, it calls for 3/4 cup butter, and I used three out of the four sticks in the box." I knew my error as I said it. I looked wide eyed at my mom and she sighed, "Oh honey, you are so pregnant."

And then she proceeded to spend the rest of her day in my kitchen whipping up three new batches of dough, attempting to resurrect the double butter batters with oatmeal, which sort of made them taste like greasy gingersnaps with oatmeal, baked all 12 dozen cookies from the new batter, cleaned my kitchen and went home after it was all over.

Can we get three cheers for my mom?!!

The cookie swap was, as always, fantastic. I love this gathering. I am very much included only because I am a sister-in-law. The rest of these ladies have been friends for over 20 years... they started out having babies together and now are sending them off to college. They have done plenty of life together and it is a privilege to get to listen in, watch the friendships in action, get to be a part of the stories told, the heartache shared and the deep laughter.

And it's always nice to come home with twelve dozen different cookies. Rory might love this event even more than I do, if that's possible.

rub a dub dub

Confession: Ivar hasn't been the most hygienic baby for the past six months. At some point around six months old, he decided he didn't like baths. (I'm realizing that this probably was because I was still bathing him in the kitchen sink in the baby tub because our bathtub is really high on the sides, a claw foot that sounds fancier than it is. The sides are really high which makes it hard to kneel and reach the baby...) As a result, bath time has been a wrestling match, usually ending with me as the soggy loser and both of us tuckered out. It's not terrible, but it's not fun either and leaves a mom a bit unmotivated to get the baby in the bathtub.

But something changed recently and we've got a little fish on our hands. He loves bath time. And I am realizing that the mom's who make bath time a part of their bedtime routine are really just trying to save their sanity. Because bath time comes at fall-apart time. The time when everyone needs to go to bed, but it's still just too early.

Bath time turns 6:00-7:00 into splashes and happiness, and mom's get to sit on the closed toilet seat and rest their weary selves for a moment. It's such a win win. Ivar looks nicer without crusted oatmeal in his hair and I get to sit in a steamy, humid room with a happy baby.

advent and preparation

We have a tree up with beautiful white lights on it. And I have a fisher price nativity set my mom gave us a few years ago that Ivar likes to play with (and by play, I mean throw the shepherds and wisemen around). But other than that, I haven't put up one single decoration. Oh, except the barn to a nativity set that I brought upstairs a few weeks ago...but I haven't unpacked any boxes to find the people, so it's just a barn. No peeps in the stable.

I just don't have it in me this year. I'm tired. I'm queasy and I sort of don't think I can handle adding more clutter to our stuff. As it stands our house is strewn with brightly colored toys and tupperware and it already feels full. More decorations just seems like it would be too much.

In an effort to comfort myself, to give permission to this years lack of tradition-making, I have been on a quest for fun advent ideas. And I found this post and wanted to link to it so that next year, when I'm feeling spry and energized, I can be the supermom I know I can be. Just not this year.

So check out this link of fun ideas for the 25 days leading up to Christmas. She has great ideas for family outings, special nights at home, service projects for others and then writes about that super fun idea of wrapping up all of the Christmas books at the beginning of the month and then letting your kids unwrap one book a night all throughout December and reading it before bed. I love this idea.