Day 20: Remembering

Only four days to go… I hope your preparations are in a good shape if you are celebrating.

I was watching Sandra’s (of the Cherry Heart Podcast) vlogmas post and she showed her Yarn Advent Calendars and said something along the lines, that as she has grown old and become a mother, the best part of the celebration, are the days before and those little presents she gets to open every day, because the Day is so filled with doing things and making sure everybody has enough to eat and drink. 

I wish I had had that knowledge when my kids were small, to take joy in the prep and have little extra presents to enjoy and to keep up the spirit. Before I had children, Eve was always the best day, of course, and it took some time to realize, that Eve would be hard work after having children.

When the children were small, the Eve was quite a difficult day to be honest. They all got up early and started to wait for the Santa. They would watch all the Christmas specials but still the day would drag by. At some point I let them eat candy and that and the excitement spoiled the appetite… plus the traditional meals were not to their liking. I was busy preparing something that they would not want to eat. (I was preparing myself a disappointment.) I did that every year and today either they are polite, have given up resisting and calmly eat the traditional dishes or they have really started to like them… This “weaning” took only about 20 years…

Santa Claus came around 5pm or later, knocked on the door and that was such a scary moment. This huge, strange man came over the threshold and made inquiries if the children had been good. I remember dreading the moment myself. I just asked my daughter if she was scared and if she thought that she had been good. She said that she knew she had not been that good, but thought that Santa Claus was like a Postman, he was there to deliver presents... I will need to ask my other girls too, how they felt.

Then the presents… Usually we managed to get the girls some of the things they had written to Santa earlier, but the opening process was hard work. Many toys had batteries and they had to be put together, so, us adults were building and teaching how to use the things… the Eve was not about reading a favorite book and having a hot tasty drink then… on the contrary… it was quite intense, to say the least.

Sugar, exhaustion of anticipation, opening the presents, waiting for one’s turn to be helped with the new toys and then trying to gather all the things together, made putting kids to bed a challenge, but that had to be done, because someone was going to have a meltdown at some point.

They were labor intensive Christmases those… memorable, but there is no denying, it was hard work.

Wool with you,

Lene