Celebrating the Twelve Days of Christmas

We've been celebrating the twelve days of Christmas in some sense ever since we became parents.  Early on, it just didn't make sense to try to open all the gifts in one sitting with a toddler.  Little Nell wanted to enjoy something for a while.  And then a nap needed to happen.  And all this in between a special Christmas breakfast and then church and then, of course, Christmas dinner.  So we sort of accidentally fell into the idea of spreading the gifts out across the days following Christmas, and then we liturgically embraced it with intentionality, and we've been doing it ever since.

It also happens to work really well for our family given that Nathan works many, many extra hours in the month of December.  We really aren't that family that goes and cuts a tree in the snowy woods of New Hampshire on a weekend together, or strings popcorn and cranberry garlands together by candlelight, or drinks cocoa while Daddy reads the Christmas story.  But after Christmas, he usually gets some time off of work, and it's the perfect time for all that Advent anticipation to turn into Christmas celebration -- as a family.

It's really the way it's supposed to be, if one observes Advent, that to observe Christmas properly one ought to celebrate the twelve days of Christmas leading up to Epiphany.  Somehow in our culture everything has gotten a bit backwards and people celebrate Christmas from Thanksgiving (or, more honestly it would seem, Halloween) through December 25, and then everything fizzles out and everyone sits around in a post-Christmas slump of torn wrapping paper and wonders what to do with themselves until school starts again.

I try to be very intentional about Advent with my kids, and then we sure enjoy spreading out the Christmas cheer over the following days.  This year I'm trying to be particularly intentional about it, with a list of ideas going in my traveler's notebook {the delightful version of a day planner / journal / catch-all that I use} for ways we can properly celebrate Christmastide.

And before you begin thinking that celebrating twelve days of Christmas is the last thing you could possibly want to do because you're already exhausted and strung out from just the one day, wait! -- this is actually a much less stressful version of Christmas.  I promise.  It doesn't all hinge on one day. It's truly much more enjoyable this way!

A few people have asked me how we do this, so I'll share some ideas here:

Christmas Day

Stockings:
We open stockings first thing on Christmas morning, which is the way I grew up doing it.  But the kids don't get to go downstairs in the mornings until Nathan and I are ready to go down, too.  So when they wake up they wait for us to be awake, too, and sometimes once I'm up I'll tell them they can go tickle Daddy to wake him up, too.  Then they can come downstairs, but I always go down ahead of them and take a picture of the kids on the stairs, if for no other reason than because my parents always did this with us, and I love continuing that tradition!

This year the big girls were already wearing one of their gifts! I had decided it would be fun to give them the little hooded cowls I knitted for them first thing in the morning, when they woke and came into our bedroom.  They were quite pleased with them.  {And one of the things I'll be doing during the twelve days of Christmas is actually finishing them, since I ran out of time to add the little bear ears!}

Then, after opening stockings, the kids can play with their stocking treasures while I start making whatever breakfast things I haven't already made the night before.

Breakfast:

An important part of our Christmas traditions are plenty of feasting.  We have special things that we only have at Christmas: cranberry coffee cake and a pecan ring, along with bacon and eggs and fruit and of course, coffee for me.

Church:

After breakfast, we go to church on Christmas day.  Always.  We have done this for the past six or seven years, I think.  And it's one of my favorite church services!  For our family, because my husband works at a church in Boston, Christmas Day is one of the rare days when we get to attend church as a family and sit together.  So, if the fact that it's Christmas Day weren't already enough, our kids really enjoy getting to have Daddy come with us, too.  This year we got quite a bit of snow on Christmas morning and only about four families braved the falling snow and un-cleared roads to come to church, but of course, you know those families really wanted to be there, and there was something extra lovely about that small crew of folks singing carols joyfully together.  The organist didn't make it in the snow storm, so Nathan of course stepped in and pulled out all the stops in his usual fashion.

By the time we've enjoyed all these things -- stockings, breakfast, and church -- it's a perfect time for kids to have a nap or at least a quiet time.  And then, depending on the year and what our plans are, we either begin making our Christmas dinner or begin to get ready to go visit with friends if we're doing that.  Either way, we make time to open about one gift per person.  I try to make sure whatever gift that is for the kids is the sort of thing that they will enjoy playing with for the rest of the day, and that it's relatively portable if we're going to someone's house for Christmas dinner.

This year we spent Christmas afternoon and evening with some lovely friends in their beautiful home, and passed the day with spiced nuts and chocolates and egg nog and other holiday treats until it was time for dinner.  And that was Christmas Day.

I know - you are probably not wondering how to celebrate Christmas Day because you already do that quite well, no doubt, and you have your own family traditions already well-established.  Good!  But the main thing I want to point out about Christmas Day is that it will be "magical," no matter what you do.  I did not grow up attending church on Christmas Day, and in my family we opened all the gifts on Christmas.  And it was magical.  I loved it.  Consequently, I sometimes have a niggling voice in my head telling me that if we don't do it the way I grew up doing it, which I experienced as being so magical, well, then my kids might miss out on that magic.

But I am learning that that is not true.

Sometimes when people learn that I didn't grow up "doing Santa" in my family, they immediately exclaim with surprise, "But Santa is so magical!  You missed out on all the magic!"  But of course, every one of my childhood Christmases was delightful and magical and we didn't need Santa to make it that way.

In the same way, Nathan and I get to choose and establish traditions for our family, and they don't have to be what we personally experienced as children to be wonderful, and delightful, and magical.  And who is to say that purple isn't every bit as wonderful as red in the early days of December?  And yes, it actually is magical to spread out the gift opening across many days of Christmas!  In fact, my children savor the continuing anticipation, and as a parent, I'm always quite happy that we pretty much manage to avoid the post-Christmas crash and resulting doldrums.

The Other Eleven Days

I'm pretty sure most of what I'm going to say here can be summed up as: take the things most people do before Christmas or on Christmas Day, and do them during the twelve days of Christmas, instead.  Need I say more?  {But you know I will, anyway!}  Here are some of the things I keep in mind to carry us through the twelve days of celebration.  Oh, and it probably goes without saying, but keep your decorations up!

Feasting: During Christmastide, I say "yes" to a lot of things I usually say "no" to.  We have leftover cranberry coffee cake for breakfast for several days following Christmas Day, or cardamom bread with plenty of butter, and clementines that seem extra special simply because they were in our stockings!  We also keep cheeses and salami and other savory treats around and just generally enjoy eating more festively.  (That said, the girls and I have had soup and salad the last two nights, because we also feel better when we don't go completely crazy, of course.)

Christmas cookies: The kids and I bake cookies after Christmas, too.  This year I plan to do cut-out sugar cookies with them and invite some friends over to decorate them.  This is a great example of an activity a lot of people would do in the days leading up to Christmas, but it is okay to do it during Christmastide, instead!  And of course, cookies fall squarely into the above category as well -- treats we usually don't eat a lot of, but it can be fun to enjoy during Christmas time.

Stories: We keep reading from our basket of Christmas books.  And, having done our Jesse Tree readings during Advent, during Christmas I like to read the gospel accounts of the nativity over and over again.  We have quite a few different children's Bible story books to choose from {thanks to my thrift store shopping habits}, so we enjoy reading lots of different versions!

Christmas music: This works especially well if you've been embracing Advent hymns throughout the season leading to Christmas, so you aren't already sick of Christmas music.  We love listening to Christmas music during the twelve days!  My girls are running around the house singing O Come All Ye Faithful, and Hark the Herald Angels Sing, and all the other good ones.  Daddy puts on all our best records and we listen to everything from Bing Crosby to King's College Choir to The Nutcracker.

Activities and Events: Speaking of the Nutcracker, we went the day after Christmas this year and I would love to make that a tradition for our family, that going to a special Christmas event like that can happen in the days following Christmas rather than the busy days leading up to it.  {For both my husband (a church musician) and myself (a violinist), the days leading up to Christmas are somewhat busy of necessity despite the fact that I try to create a slow-paced environment in our home during Advent.}

Keep Celebrating: You've probably noticed that there's a little thing called New Year's Eve that happens shortly after Christmas.  This is, in fact, within the twelve days, so why not enjoy the opportunity to eat some good food and get together with friends and make that a part of your general spirit of festivity and celebration during this time?

Puzzles/Games: I'm currently enjoying working on a 1,000 piece Christmas puzzle and the girls love working alongside me.  This is my idea of the perfect kind of Christmas activity.  If you're not a puzzle person, it could be playing with a new Christmas game or toy together, instead - so plan ahead and make a good family game or puzzle one or more of your gifts for one of the days of Christmas.

Arts & Crafts: Along with the girls' usual affinity for drawing and painting and handicrafts, during the days following Christmas we try to work in something special.  For example, this year they received unpainted wooden nutcrackers in their stockings that they get to paint themselves.

Giving Days: I came across this idea from a few different people online and we are doing it with our kids this year.  They each get their own "giving day" where they get to give the majority of whatever gifts they have selected or made for others (if they haven't already been eager to give a particular something before their "Giving Day," which would be okay, too).  They also get to do acts of giving to the family, like helping choose and make breakfast or another meal, and, since my kids are still quite young, I'll encourage them to make or draw something simple to give to family members.  {n.b.: I thought about giving myself a Giving Day as well, but I couldn't quite think of what I would do differently on that day in addition to the things I already do.  And then I realized that every day is a mama's Giving Day, ha!}

Shopping: Now if you've already "shopped til' you dropped" in the days leading up to Christmas, you probably neither want nor need to do this.  But if you happen to be like me, and skipped the malls and the busyness and even the craze of online shopping, well, it can be kind of fun to take the kids on a spin through the after-Christmas sales at Target or someplace!  Let them help choose gift wrap or gift tags for next year, or pick out a special ornament to add to the tree.  We did this last year with some good friends and had a great time.  Some of the holiday foods were also deeply discounted, and this is going to be perfect for you, because you know that Christmas isn't over and you're still celebrating!  So pick up that bag of cheddar popcorn or that tin of peppermint hot cocoa!

Follow the Star: We have one small nativity that I kept set up in its completion throughout Advent down at the kids' eye level.  I wanted them to be able to see and touch the figures and see it all together.  But then we also have a beautiful peg doll nativity set made by my talented friend Erin of My Pretty Peggy.  That nativity we set up in the wooden barn frame my parents made for us several years ago, and while the animals have been waiting in the barn since the beginning of Advent, we didn't add Mary and Joseph until Christmas Eve, and then late that night, I tucked baby Jesus into the manger so he would be there on Christmas morning.  But our wise men still aren't there!  The day after Christmas a star appeared somewhere in our house - a small glittering star I taped to the wall in a corner of our music room.  I sent the girls, with wise men in hand, on a hunt for the star.  When they found it, they got to place the wise men near it.  Each night I move the star, and as they find it, they move the wise men to follow it.  A friend shared this idea with me and I love it!  The girls are having a lot of fun, and it's a good daily reminder of Christmastide and of Epiphany approaching.

Gather with friends: You can invite good friends or new acquaintances or anyone you like to join you in many of these things.  I am hoping to incorporate more time with friends into our twelve days this year -- and hoping to grow closer relationships with others who are living somewhat liturgically, as well.  And note that this kind of gathering doesn't have to be stressful or fancy -- Christmas cookies and hot cocoa might be just the thing!  Or switch it up and have a salad night, ha, if you're all in a sugar coma and longing to eat something fresh and healthful.

Twelfth Night: This year for the first time I am planning to host a Twelfth Night party.  This is not a tradition I grew up with, but I had been pondering the idea of doing one, and then the very day I mentioned the idea to some friends, later that day I found that Leila Lawler, whom I look up to as a sort of beacon of creating a beautiful and meaningful family life, posted this: Restoring the Culture with Twelfth Night Festivities!  {She also has a post about celebrating the twelve days of Christmas, which you should read, too.}  So, I think it is meant to be that we shall do this sort of thing this year.  And Twelfth Night also falls on a Friday this year, which is an excellent time for a party.  I'm thinking we'll chalk the door and have king cakes {with a hidden bean, of course, the finder of which will become king or queen for the night}, and play games, and eat good food and drink wassail and sing carols one last time as we say goodbye to Christmastide and hello to Epiphany.  I'm excited about the idea and am hoping that some friends will want to join us.

Gifts: Of course, there are the gifts.  We have never made a hard and fast prescription for how the gifts ought to unfold, but I can tell you that it is actually not hard to have gifts that spread across twelve days, by the time you have a gift or two from grandparents, and sibling gifts to one another, and perhaps gifts from aunts and uncles as well, and of course, gifts from us, the parents {we usually do about three gifts per child, although it's flexible from year to year}.

This year I thought I wasn't really going to buy anything for the girls, as I had been storing away little treasures I found at thrift stores over the past year, hiding them in my closet.  When December rolled around, I found that I could just "shop" from my closet and I had lovely gifts I knew the girls would use and enjoy and cherish.  But then a few days before Christmas I found myself in Savers {dropping off donations, and then distracted by looking around as tends to happen to me at thrift stores!} and I ended up buying a few more things: a lovely tiny Christmas doll for Nell, wooden buildings and road signs and cars to add to Ree's collection, board books for Molly, and a pair of shoes for Nell and a dress for each girl.  They were all things I might have bought anyway, even if it weren't Christmas, but this is perfectly in keeping with my philosophy -- it's okay to make an ordinary thing such as a practical pair of shoes in perfectly beautiful condition into a special gift.  This is an essential aspect of celebrating the twelve days while keeping things simple and non-stressful!  Just like the simplest of things during Advent can become our special thing for the day with the right introduction and mood, so too can doing a jigsaw puzzle or receiving a new-to-you dress become a special Christmas thing.

{n.b.: you may want to clue in extended family that you're doing things this way, so they aren't surprised if you haven't already opened their gifts on Christmas Day.}

So between gifts, cookies and puzzles and games, a few gatherings with friends, The Nutcracker, good books and music, and a few other little things {I've promised I'll paint their toenails red tomorrow}, we really enjoying spreading Christmas out across the twelve days.

* * *

You know how that Danish word hygge has become quite popular in recent years?

Well, that's the feeling we're going for around here.

In between the naps needing to happen and the diapers needing to be changed and the laundry needing to be done... in between kids having their usual meltdowns over one thing or another and me going a little stir crazy from time to time... something as simple as keeping the Christmas candles burning and the Christmas mugs out within ready reach and the peppermint tea flowing steadily is going to give you that nice, cozy sense that it isn't over, you see.  There's more.  There's more to celebrate now, during Christmastide, and then there's more after that, too.  Because we get to observe each season of the church year, each with its own traditions and special celebrations, and we get to do it all year after year, orbiting around those most central of stories: that God became man, that he dwelled with us, that he sacrificed himself for us, that he wants to draw us to himself now, and that it isn't over.

The wonderful thing about the church calendar is that it is waiting with open arms to give you, whether as a parent or as an individual, the structure that you need to create intentional times and seasons in your life.  And I am finding that, if I do even just a little each year during these seasons to observe the things the church is calling me to observe, well, we will grow together as a family and grow in our knowledge and love of God.  It is so much easier than trying to start from scratch -- What should I read to my children? What verses should I teach them? What things should I do with them?  Do what the church is telling you to do right now.  It is the best of starting points.

{catching up}: Molly at seven months

In taking stock of my ever-expanding and never-shrinking To Do List, I realized that not only am I overdue to take some nine month photos of Molly, but I never took eight month photos of her, and I never uploaded or posted the seven month photos.  I think this would be an apropos moment for an ironic hashtag along the lines of #winning, or something like that.  

Well, at seven months she weighed in at just shy of 17 pounds, as I recall, and she had just had her first hair trim given by yours truly.  No teeth yet (although she's got a couple now!), no babbling yet, lots of army crawling / scooting around the house, her dirtied belly a constant and demoralizing reminder to me that we really ought to mop our floors.

She delights in us, and we delight in her.  Family is fun that way.

And saving possibly the cutest picture for last:

Seriously, this kid could take up baby modeling and earn a million dollars overnight.  I know, I'm biased.  But seriously.

Reflecting on our Advent

Towards the beginning of Advent this year, a friend shared with me the very freeing thought that you don't already have to have all your traditions perfectly in place when your kids are young.  You have time for things to evolve and grow and settle.

As it turned out, I needed to hear that this year, because a baby who doesn't sleep in the evenings without being held was not very conducive to finishing the set of felt Jesse Tree ornaments I began stitching last Advent.  {The set, while slightly closer to completion than last year, remains as yet uncompleted.}  In fact, there were a lot of things I might have wanted to do this Advent that simply didn't get done.

I did a lot of this.  Well, more accurately, I did a lot of pacing the house and attempting to get things done with Molly in the Lillebaby carrier.  And occasionally I got the luxury of lying down and holding her as she slept!

And yet, while we didn't do all the things, we did do some things.

We wore purple for the first Sunday of Advent, as we do every year.

We poured our own beeswax pillar candles for our Advent wreath for the first time this year, which was a successful endeavor I will repeat in future years now that I have the supplies on hand!

I filled our Advent calendar with slips of paper once again, and the girls took turns opening the door on the calendar for each day, and finding out what special thing we might be doing that day in our observance of Advent.

We brought out the basket of Christmas books, and with them, the Christmas blankets and pillows, making way for lots of cozy reading time.

We set up our stable, a small bowl of straw beside it, and the girls could put a piece of straw in the manger when I noticed them doing something particularly kind of sacrificial.

{picture from Christmas Eve when we put Mary, Joseph, and the baby into the stable}

We set up our Jesse Tree, and worked our way through a combination of stories from the Jesus Storybook Bible, the Advent Jesse Tree book, and the Bible, hanging representative ornaments on the tree to go with each day's readings.

We celebrated St. Nicholas Day, reading books about St. Nicholas and then practicing our own acts of generosity by filling gift bags with chocolates and delivering them to the doorsteps of a few local friends from church who live near us.  We had so much fun we talked about expanding our endeavors next year to include more friends!  {Actually, we did this on St. Nicholas Eve because I had to work a full day on St. Nicholas Day.  Oh well -- we made the best of it!}

We celebrated St. Lucia Day, the girls in full costume helping me make Lussekatter.  They colored pictures of St. Lucy and we talked about who she was and why her day is celebrated.  We watched YouTube videos of celebrations in Sweden, and listened to St. Lucia songs.

We decorated our house, little by little: a wreath on the front door one day, twinkle lights over the living room window another day, a garland and beautiful decorations on the mantle on another.

We brought the bin of Christmassy pajamas and clothes up from the basement and made particularly good use of all the Decembery things to wear this year.

 

We did handicrafts together -- I worked on my own knitting projects while the girls did small bits of stitching, and they filled books with their own drawings to give as gifts to their grandparents.

{Nell fondly recalled a handicraft she had done last Christmas, and asked if she could make a few more this year to give as gifts.}

Nathan directed a splendid service of Lessons and Carols (you can watch and hear the whole service at the link there!) at the church where he is music director, and I enjoyed playing in the orchestra while Nell and Ree watched from the front pew.

We read beautiful seasonal poetry as well as books, and I worked with the kids on learning some carols, including refreshing their memorization of the first verse or two of Once in Royal David's City, and memorizing some of In the Bleak Midwinter and See Amid the Winter's Snow, as well as others.

Nell learned about a dozen carols on her violin, and joined my students in playing carols at a nearby retirement facility to share cheer and music with the elderly people there.

Midway through December, we got a Christmas tree, and gradually even managed to get it decorated beautifully.

As Christmas drew nearer, we hosted our annual Christmas party and enjoyed time with friends, carol singing, and good food.

Nell sang in the children's choir for the Lessons and Carols service at our church as well as for the Christmas Eve service.

The girls wore pink for Gaudete Sunday, and we talked about joy, and the light drawing nearer but not yet being here.

{I meant to do the O Antiphons with the girls in the week leading up to Christmas, and I just didn't fit it in this year!  Note to self: do this next year!}

We had a "Shepherd's Dinner" by the starry light of the tree, picnicking on the floor, eating foods we could imagine shepherds would have eaten -- cheeses and dried fruits and such things -- as I read the shepherds' story to the girls.  We wondered aloud what it must have been like to be those shepherds abiding in the fields when the angel of the Lord appeared to them.

The girls liked it so much they asked to do it again the following night, and they brought their stuffed lambs.

All of that brought us to Christmas Eve, a day which this year was two things at once -- Advent in the morning, and Christmas Eve by evening.  It was beautiful, and contemplative, and it was finally here.

* * * 

Among many other wonderful Christmas books, we worked our way gradually through a favorite of mine throughout December.  I read the final bit of Madeline L'Engle's The Twenty-Four Days Before Christmas to the girls on Christmas Eve, as they ate dinner by the light of the Advent wreath, all five candles glowing at the center of our table.  Their eyes shone as we finally finished the story, and my own eyes filled with tears for a moment when I read the last line of a book I remember so well from my own childhood: "And the light shone right into my heart."

I felt it then, as a lump caught in my throat - the light was shining into my heart, too.  Despite all the things that were not perfect.

As I read, there was a pile of dirty laundry at the top of my stairs that is probably up to my knees.  And three hampers of clean laundry waiting to be folded.  My dining room tablecloth was dirty from the children who ate three meals at it, and the far end of the table was cluttered with wrapping paper and scissors and tape.  The dough for the pecan ring, an indispensable part of our Christmas breakfast, was rising, and the cranberry coffee cake, equally indispensable, was in the oven.  The dishes hadn't yet been washed.  Our stockings were not hung, because I was waiting for Nathan to get home from work to help me find them.  My high-needs baby was sleeping in the baby carrier on my chest, having refused with adamant screams to be transferred into either her crib or her parents' own soft bed.  On my bedside table was a neatly wrapped up dirty diaper - Merry Christmas to me?

But through the mess and the noise and the clutter, through the fusses and cries of children and in between the moments where I've been less patient than I should have been, the light has shone into my heart.  And that is what I pray for my children, for this family of mine: that the little ways we observe Advent would open a way for the light to shine right into their hearts, too.

{Scenes from our Christmas Eve}:

tired ramblings

Today the girls and I drove into Boston for Nathan's work Christmas party.  He had mentioned the words "free childcare" and I had said, "I'm in," and so in we went.  As it turned out, the child who actually requires the most care was having none of it and spent the entire time with me, which I had pretty much predicted.

At the luncheon, someone asked me which of the three Sunday church services I attend at the church where Nathan works.  I suddenly realized, as I answered him, that I no longer felt remotely apologetic about the fact that I do not, in fact, attend church there at all.  {Church work is the only field in which one might be expected to go to work with one's spouse, incidentally.}  I simply smiled and said, "We're on the four-times-yearly plan around here, I think."  I thought about inviting him to drive home with us so he could witness for himself the baby screaming for the 40-minute drive, the five-year-old wailing from the back seat that she's car sick and she doesn't know if she's going to throw up but she thinks she might, and the three-year-old punctuating it all with a few well-placed kicks on the back of my seat.  All while I try to keep myself pulled together as I drive across a bridge which has given me anxiety ever since Molly was born, because I'm now quite certain that were a bridge to collapse {highly likely, of course} and send myself and my children plummeting into the ocean, I could not save all three of them in time, and that thought strikes postpartum terror into my heart.

On that lovely drive home, I turned on the radio for some Christmas music.  As she has done every time I turn on the popular music station this season, Ree immediately declared, "THIS ISN'T REAL MUSIC! THIS IS JUST AN AD!"  I guess that when your mother is a classical musician and your father is a sacred church musician you end up thinking all popular music is just that stuff you've heard in ads on the spotify station in between the "REAL MUSIC."

As if to prove Ree's point, a song I loathe, "So this is Christmas," came on.  With all due apologies to Yoko and John, I just don't get that song.  It sounds like it could have been written by a four-year-old.  And while I get the whole war protest thing, the "without any fear" line always sounds so lame.  Maybe lame is what they were going for?  Ironic?  Avoiding all the happy sentimentality of most seasonal pop songs and filling the air with lame statements instead?  I don't know.  In the three minutes or so it took the song to play out, I thought of plenty of other options that could rhyme with "new year."

Let's hope it's a good one
not sprawled on a bier

Let's hope it's a good one
with plenty of cheer

Let's hope it's a good one
with ones we hold dear

Let's hope it's a good one
let's get things in gear

Let's hope it's a good one
with no one to jeer

Let's hope it's a good one
at the top of the tier

... You get the idea.  I'm not saying I'm a stellar poet, but really those are in keeping with the overall level of the song, in my opinion, and any of them make at least as much sense as the dumb bit about fear.

We survived the car ride home and had some good old-fashioned family fun, even with Nathan working super late tonight -- dinner in the family room while watching the old classic Rudolph!  Marie screamed in terror at the Abominable Snowman while I paced with frustration at the Abominable Baby who was exhausted and fussy but wouldn't sleep.

Molly is the currently the cutest, sweetest nine-month-old on the planet, but also fully in the throes of separation anxiety and, having discovered the joys of object permanence, it would seem, she knows I exist somewhere in space and time even in the brief moments when I am out of her sight.  She is therefore happiest only when in my arms or, occasionally, playing at or near my feet.

Also, she doesn't sleep unless she is nestled against my body.  Aside from one brief week about a month ago where she took a couple of good two hour naps, she hasn't taken a good nap in months, and will only nap in the baby carrier on my chest.  She doesn't go to bed properly at night and spends the first part of each evening in the carrier again, until I go to bed and she nestles against me.  Tonight she had been yawning and rubbing her eyes but fighting sleep, and after changing three unexpectedly poopy diapers in a row when she ought to have been sleeping instead of, ahem, eliminating, and then having her still fighting sleep tooth and nail, I declared, "Molly, don't take this the wrong way, but I need some time without you attached to my body."

She took it the wrong way, I guess.  She stayed awake for another hour.

I think she's terrified that she'll go to sleep and I'll leave.

In the meantime, while she may not be exhausted, I surely am.

I guess it should be no surprise to me that mothering is hard, since I distinctly recall my own mother saying many a time, "Being a Mom is really hard."  As it turns out, she was right.  I wake up each morning frustrated that my house is still messy and my to-do list is still long and the scale is still telling me a number I dislike.  I resolve to address all of these issues, but by evening my house is still messy, my to-do list is still long, and I really want to drink a glass of wine or a mug of peppermint hot cocoa, or both.

Someday I'll look back at pictures like this and think, "What messy house and fussy children?  Look at those adorable children with the felt holly berry hair clips I made them!  Life was perfect!"

I want my precious, cherubic children (see above) to listen to me, to cooperate quickly in all the ways that would make my own life easiest, and most of all, I want this baby to sleep.  I started out with this third baby resolved to do anything I could to create good sleep habits from the start.  Then she was colicky and screamed for several months basically only stopping for breath, and we were in complete survival mode and following the "do what works" strategy of parenting.  She outgrew the misery eventually and then for a brief while she became a magic sleeping baby!  Then the four month sleep regression happened and she forgot how to sleep.  And finally when there was a light at the end of that tunnel, she got a cold and her two bottom teeth pretty much simultaneously and all was misery and woe again.  And apparently, we haven't recovered -- and she's gotten a second bout of congestion and coughing just to keep the party going around here.  I'm torn between thinking that if I keep carrying her constantly she will just keep getting that much more used to it, and thinking that short of a "sleep training" method, what else can we do?  And I'm torn between being too tired to keep this up and being too tired to change anything.

It's not that I don't try to put her to sleep in the rocking chair or the crib, or to transfer her to her crib once she does fall asleep in the Lillebaby carrier.  Oh, I try.  And she immediately wakes up screaming and stays awake for another 1-2 hours.  This is beginning to seriously deter me from wanting to try, because while I want her to sleep without being attached to my body, what I want slightly more is just for her to sleep at all.

I know both our older girls had definite challenges in sleeping as well, and while I may not recall the specifics or details, I certainly recall the frustration and fatigue in a general sense.  These days they are both reasonably good sleepers, with Nell sleeping just fine and Ree sleeping OK with an occasional nightmare of "bad eyes in the dark" or "bad mice" or other such frightful specter.

I keep thinking how amazing it would be to get a nice two hour nap in the mornings or afternoons where I could get some housework done without a baby strapped to my chest, or read to the girls in peace and quiet, or even just put my feet up for a bit.

I'm trying hard to remind myself that these struggles, while real and challenging, are just a season of my life.  We will have future seasons to come where our children won't need me in the same constant and physical way, but those seasons too will have their struggles.  They will be different struggles, and it's probably just as well I can't see the future to know what it brings, or I would crawl right into my flannel sheets, right on top of that small soaked-in spot of baby poop from a diaper blowout in the wee hours of the morning which I've frankly been too exhausted to change and wash.  I'd breathe deeply of the dirty sheets, throw a blanket over my head, and never emerge again.

As it is, it's one day at a time.

And tomorrow is the day when I'll clean my house, tackle my to-do list, and lose ten pounds.  And wash the sheets.

the brief yet terrifying residency of the squirrel

Last night Molly decided to be very awake between the hours of 10 pm and midnight, and no amount of nursing or patting or rocking or hushing was having any effect whatsoever.

I was less frustrated than I might have otherwise been, however, because I was thanking God there wasn't a squirrel flying about my bedroom.

Because -- oh yes -- the previous night, that was what we were dealing with, and I'll take a crying baby any day over a squirrel in the house.

Wednesday evening I was practicing my violin in the music room when Nathan wandered in to say hello and listen for a minute.  Suddenly there was a flapping of wings and a bat was in the room with us, having slipped in through an indiscernibly small crack in the ceiling.  Fortunately for us, the bat soon found its way back out and Nathan sealed the crack.

Unfortunately for us, as it turned out, the bat was a mere harbinger of things to come.

Shortly before 10 pm I tucked into bed, transferring Molly (who is currently the world's worst sleeper) from the carrier I had her in into bed beside me.  I took off my glasses and closed my eyes, breathed a tired sigh, and heard... scuffle, scratch, scuffle, scurry.

Now, we have had issues with animals inside the walls of our house running about, which is less than ideal, but this sounded more distinctive.  My fears were confirmed when I saw a figure dart across Nathan's dresser and then over the window frame onto my dresser.   I reached for my glasses and my phone simultaneously and called Nathan, who was still downstairs, in a hushed voice so as not to wake Molly.  "There's an animal up here, and it's ... not inside the walls ... anymore."

He came upstairs to our attic bedroom, and it didn't take us long to discern that it was a squirrel.  It sat in a corner, on top of a few storage boxes, and looked at us with big, big eyes.  Those big eyes on that tiny body gave me cause for concern about just what kind of squirrel we were dealing with, but only time would tell.

The squirrel hopped into an empty box, and as I urged Nathan to throw a lid on it, he paused for a bit to rationally consider every eventuality of the scenario.  By the time he was moving for the lid, the squirrel was out again and on the run.  It ran from corner to corner along the knee walls of the attic, behind our shelves.  We heard it scurrying amongst wrapping paper and tissue paper, across boxes, along the walls.

Nathan headed down to the basement to get the Havahart trap we have, while I stood guard over the sleeping baby.  He set the trap with nut butter (which we've had good success with before) and set it down along the edge of the wall.  In no time at all the squirrel was sitting right on top of that trap - not going in - defying us to catch it with its beady, gleaming eyes.  We were watching all the activity with the flashlights on our phones all this time, keeping the overhead lights off, as Molly slept through the scurrying and scuffling and hushed whispers between myself and Nathan.

Then the squirrel sprung the trap!  But it wasn't inside.  Nathan re-set it.  The trap sprung again, and this time I saw the squirrel inside.  Victory was ours!

Humans = 1, Squirrel = 0!

But wait - the squirrel was gone.  Apparently small squirrels are extremely collapsible and can fit through the 1" holes in our trap.  Fabulous.  We needed another idea.

Nathan set a large rat trap, and we waited.

Along about this time, Nathan began to try to convince me that it wasn't such a big deal, and we should go to bed.  I was whispering frantically that we could not simply sleep with a squirrel on the loose who might run across our faces or scurry across the body of my sleeping babe at any moment.

"You joke that you love the patriarchy!  This is your moment!  Be the man of the house and DO SOMETHING!" I whispered.

"I haven't heard it in a while.  I think maybe it went back out however it came in."

"You think?"

"I'm pretty sure."

"What percentages are we talking?"

"70-80 percent sure."

"Maybe Molly and I will go sleep in the guest room."

"Ok.  I'm going to sleep."

"But what if the squirrel runs downstairs to Nell or Ree's room?  I won't hear things if I'm all the way on the first floor guest room.  I have to stay here to be able to hear them and keep watch over everybody!"

"Ok, babe.  Do what you gotta do.  I'm going to sleep."

"Don't go to sleep!  DO something!"

"I've set the trap.  You clearly don't understand the fine art of trapping animals.  You have to be patient.  You have to wait quietly.  Go to sleep."

{I suppose the man had a point.  He had done everything he could do and there was no way of physically catching the fellow with our bare hands, after all.}

Apparently the prominent "Sleepers, Wake!" theme woven through the first Sunday of Advent was utterly lost on some people.

I lay wide awake for a while, and after indeed not hearing any evidence of activity for quite some time, drifted off to sleep around 1:00 am.

Around 4:30 Molly woke to nurse, and as I lay there only half awake nursing her back to sleep, the most horrible thing I could imagine became a reality.

The squirrel ran across my body.  It ran over the duvet, right across my shoulders, and then back down off the bed.  I give myself infinite credit in the situation because I did not scream.  I did, however, kick Nathan and whisper, "IT JUST RAN ACROSS ME.  WAKE UP AND DO SOMETHING!"

It would be an overstatement to say that Nathan sprang into action, but eventually he awoke and got to his feet.  Somehow having him vertical made me feel better than being horizontal.  Perhaps his height would intimidate the squirrel right out of there.

It was along about now that my fears came to fruition, as the squirrel ran up a wall over a window and then flew, yes, flew, across the room over our heads.  Of course!  Having a squirrel in your house in the middle of the night wouldn't be sufficiently horrifying; of course ours had to be a flying squirrel.  I told you I had a bad feeling about those big, big eyes.

The demonic squirrel was no longer keeping to the perimeters and far corners.  It was emboldened now, flying from wall to wall, scampering straight across the floor out in the open, running across the bed once more while I sat there, paralyzed.  It moved so quickly I was afraid to grab the baby and leave the room -- what if it ran across my bare feet?  What if I stepped on it?  What if it flew on my head?  I felt frozen and staying in one place seemed like a reasonable idea, guarding the baby and supervising the husband.  Nathan opened both windows a few inches and we began to pray that the squirrel would find its way out.  It scampered up a pipe, flew across to a wall, jumped and flew onto the brick exposed chimney, and sat there, a couple of yards away from my head, looking at me with those wicked gleaming eyes.  In that moment I am not ashamed to say that I hated that squirrel and wanted destruction to rain down on its head.

The squirrel scurried across our dressers once more and ran up the wall and across the window.  "COME ON, STUPID SQUIRREL!" we both whisper-urged it, "GO OUT THE WINDOW!"  It darted up to the ceiling and flew back across the room, zooming over my head while I cowered slightly.  I must admit to a slight whimpering sound escaping my throat at one point.  I was reaching the end of my ability to cope.

After several more minutes of scampering and flying about, around 5:15 am the squirrel finally found its way out the window.  More accurately, it found its way half way out the window, at which point Nathan took a chance and ran at it, yelling "BAAAAAHHH!"  It worked -- the squirrel wriggled the rest of the way out, and Nathan slammed the window behind it.

Peace reigned at last.  Our nerves were frayed and my skin was crawling, but we had survived.

The sun rose on a new day, and despite having had a total of just a couple hours of sleep all night, I found a surge of energy to wash our bedding and any clothing not contained within a dresser drawer.

I contemplated setting fire to the attic, but doing several loads of laundry seemed a more judicious decision.

What is the weirdest part of this experience?  That our house is ridden with rodents and other vermin?  That my husband thinks an appropriate expectation is to sleep through the situation?

No, I say the strangest part of all is that nine month old Molly, who cannot sleep through her own slight coughs or burps, who cannot sleep through being transferred from arms to crib, who cannot take a nap exceeding 30 minutes in length... well, that baby slept through the whole event like a, well...

... like a baby.

{Someone else's baby.  The kind of baby who sleeps.}

Pin THIS! Vol. 2

Hope springs eternal, as they say, and it does so in particular ways in my life as a mother.  I don't just mean the way I hope my three-year-old will stop yelling at unsuspecting strangers in the grocery store, "WELL, I DON'T LIKE YOU!" or even the way I hope they don't realize her unsolicited anger was directed at them.

No, I certainly do have those kinds of hopes, but the most naive of my eternally-springing hopes come in the realm of housekeeping.

The amount of work involved in just living each day is incredible.  It really is.  The mountains of laundry around here are pretty unbelievable.  I've been reading the Little House books aloud to the girls, and I keep telling myself that if the Ingalls family could do truly everything for themselves from scratch, I ought to be able to keep a household running with a modern oven and refrigerator, a washer and dryer, even a robot vacuum at my disposal!  Shouldn't this be somehow easy?

Every morning I rise with the certainty that this will be the day.  Surely today I will get caught up on the laundry.  How hard can it be?  Today is the day I'll finally list those pairs of jeans I don't wear anymore on eBay and get them out of my house.  Today I'll tidy our master bedroom and get it looking presentable.  Today I'll really clean out the girls' closets.  Today I'll organize the sized seasonal bins of clothing in the basement and make sure everything is put away properly.  And so on and so forth.

As the day unfolds -- and I'm sure this is no great plot twist to any other mothers of young children out there -- I get approximately 25% of my lofty goals accomplished on a given day, if that.  Mostly I keep the children alive and fed and cared for, clothed and taken outside for fresh air and read to and snuggled with and all the other imperative things.

I'm lucky if I can stay on top of the basics of meals and dishes and then maybe throw one load of laundry into the washer.  I certainly don't go above and beyond with any massive organizational projects most days, much as I need to.  But even so, hope springs eternal, and I tell myself with honest fervor that tonight, tonight, when the girls are finally in bed and my hands are free and I don't have a fussy baby in a carrier strapped to my chest, well, at last I'll be able to do all those things.

And of course, five whole seconds after everyone is asleep I look around the house, assess the serious situation at hand, and can barely find the energy to do the bare minimum.  Clear the dinner table.  Do at least a majority of the dishes.  Pick up the glaringly obvious messes.  Collapse in exhaustion.

Tell myself, of course, that I'll do it all tomorrow.

* * *

I recently remembered an old blog post from about three years ago wherein I tried to make light of all the chaos that was in our home and life at the time.  Looking back at it gave me a good laugh, and inspired me to find the humor in our life in the here and now, as well.  (It was noteworthy to me that the spaces that looked so disastrous three years ago actually are all unbelievably improved, so much so that you'd never recognize them!  We've eliminated those problem areas and moved on to new ones, apparently...)

We'll start with the entryway, as any good home tour ought to do.   Welcoming you to our humble abode we have a lovely dead chrysanthemum.  It is the tangible representation of my soul, you might say, crushed and withered by the obligations and responsibilities of life.

I'll continue our home tour with a shot of Nathan's home office desk.  He's up to his eyeballs in paperwork, poor guy, particularly as I snapped this picture just as he was finishing up our taxes for the year.  But of course, you also never know when you'll need a few tubs of grout.  It may come in handy... perhaps to repair the arm of your office chair that is leaking old yellow foam?

Lest you think I'm just throwing my husband under the bus here, we'll move on to a picture of our kitchen in all its glory.  I must have made a meal or two on the day I took this lovely photo, and as you can see, everything piles up quickly.  I'd be hiding my head in shame, but what you may not realize is that there's a bright spot in this space: a new-to-us (thanks, Craigslist!) range with a double oven, which almost satisfies the desires of my heart, except that I am really tired of trying to clean around and behind my sink and I'm pining for an under mount sink someday.  Really, why aren't all sinks under mount sinks?  Are the people who design the ones like mine just morons?  Serious question.  But back to the double oven, the best part about it is that the spring that holds the door shut actually works, unlike our previous one, so the outside doesn't get heated up to dangerous temperatures just in time for my poor sweet children to burn themselves.



(In my defense, my kitchen is usually reasonably clean when I go to bed and when I first wake up in the morning.  And it rarely looks this disastrous.  Which is what made this particular moment so very photo-worthy, in a truly terrible way.)

Over here on a side kitchen counter we have a delightful display of mouth-watering Dove chocolates.  Help yourself.  If you'd like to wash them down with a swig of furniture cleaner, we do keep it handy, as you can see.  Also handy are an array of earplugs, a large flashlight, a tape measure, safety glasses, and other man items the purposes of which I cannot discern.

The children seem to take a cue from their mother's {dismal} housekeeping abilities, and their own play kitchen thereby sometimes looks like this:

Next up we have our dining room table.  Some days the chairs just stay that way after I've run the vacuum under the table.  It seems like a lot of effort to put them all back down again only to put them back up, you know?

Another day, another view of the dining room table, another scenic tablescape of tools piled on it for your viewing pleasure:

Now, did I mention the laundry is insane around here?  This is evidenced here by the fact that I've needed to expand our laundry receptacle collection, and now in addition to the three white plastic laundry hampers I use, I'm also using any empty bin I can find in the basement for the purposes of carrying and sorting laundry.

There's so much laundry the hampers can't keep it all down.

Our guest bedroom is currently home to a toilet.  Unfortunately, it's not hooked up to any plumbing (although that would be convenient for guests, wouldn't it?)... it's just perched there, waiting for its day in the sun when it can finally be reinstalled in our downstairs bath, which is currently under major renovations.  By which I mean Nathan tore it down to the studs and has been rebuilding it in its entirety!  Pretty exciting.  The toilet can hardly wait for its new home, I'm sure.  In fact, it's so excited that we have to hold it down with - you guessed it - another hamper of laundry.

Why do we have so much laundry?  I would venture a guess that it has something to do with the scenarios depicted in the following photos.

Ahhhhh yes, it would appear that certain residents of the house get dressed every morning only to promptly discard their everyday clothes in favor of ballerina tutus of every variety.  The wrinkled clothing is later found with remnants of breakfast or some other delight already on it, and is often thereby replaced with a new outfit -- in between the hours of twirling in tutus, of course.

And I suppose the laundry situation is highly influenced by this charming lady, as well.

A lot of laundry, yes, but a lot of debris in my life as well.  This is how much our robot vacuum picks up about every other day, and that's just in the downstairs.  Poor Cinderella!  She's choking up on the dirt and debris and general shame of it all!

But getting back to the guest bedroom, which is really more of a catch-all room than a guest room at the moment... 

What's a toilet without a sink to go with it? And what's a renovation project without several chests full of tools?

Oh silly me, I almost forgot a view of the bed!  So cozy and inviting:

Next we'll take a peek in the family room.  The family room was formerly our master bedroom, but early in my third pregnancy I very rationally decided that the whole house needed to be reimagined and rearranged.  We moved our master bedroom into the now-finished attic, which is quite cozy, and turned the space into a family room where kids' stuff can be stored, we can read together curled up on a comfy couch, and Nathan and I can occasionally watch TV together in the evenings.  We particularly enjoy the aesthetic of the off-center wall hangings over the television.  They were originally quite nicely centered over our master bed.  Obviously we require more than a year and a half to rectify the situation and re-center them over the current room's landscape.

Here's that comfortable family room couch I mentioned.  It's really quite perfect for relaxing, reading, or TV-watching -- well, if you can find a spot to sit.  The girls do make frequent use of this space for all their daily playing needs, as you can see.  But if you need help climbing over the rubble, Nathan has left a ladder handy in the background there, just leaning up against the curtains.  So convenient.

Meanwhile, upstairs in the baby's nursery it would appear that it's time to do laundry again.  Cloth diapers!

In the side alleyway coming toward our back stairs you can see all manner of remnants of the bathroom renovation project, so if you're looking for some valuable copper piping to steal, you know where to come.  

Naturally, we wouldn't dream of letting the side of our house steal the show, so our front yard is even more sublime.  Here we have a bin full of paint, topped with rain water and fallen leaves.  The previous homeowners left gallons and gallons of old paint in the garage, and eventually Nathan reached a level of annoyance that caused him to empty all of it into one bin so it could "dry out" and be properly disposed of.  Clearly that process is moving along swimmingly. {no pun intended}

Since I keep mentioning the bathroom renovation, I suppose I ought to show you some pictures.

Nathan started the demo the day after last Christmas, as I recall.

Here's what it looked like a couple of weeks ago...

And here's what it looks like today!

As you can see, things are moving along nicely, although the toilet isn't hooked up to any plumbing yet of course - the tile floor needs to go in first.

That's ok, because we have house guests coming next weekend, and I'm sure they'll appreciate the nice homey feeling afforded by having a toilet still sitting on the carpeted floor of the guest room.

* * *

Well, there you have it.  This concludes our home tour.  If your life is perfect and pinteresty, this may not be your style.  But if you too have a proverbial toilet - or perhaps even a real one - sitting in your guest room, welcome.  You are not alone.  This is real life, and sometimes it is quite messy.  But it can also be pretty good, even in the midst of the mess... just be careful not to trip.