Eight more days. That’s what the chain says. I have yet to break out the spreadsheet where I plan what I will be gifting this year. I haven’t locked my bedroom door and set out everything I’ve already bought/made and arranged them into little piles on the floor so that I may see what gaps need to be filled. We haven’t put up the tree. The list of things I haven’t done is really long!
But this is what happens every year. I spend the first two weeks of December tying up loose ends business-wise, and getting a flurry of packages out the door. When that is finally done (as it was 10 minutes ago when the mail man came and picked up the last of the packages) I am free to cram all of the Christmassing I can into roughly eight days.
Most years, my home is still sporting pumpkin motifs at this point, and I truly only begin the festivities after the work is done. But this year, I’ve had two little boys taking a keen interest in putting up the tree. It hasn’t been possible to do that yet, but I’ve realized it doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing prospect, and I’ve been doing little bits of decorating as the opportunities present themselves.
Today I went looking around the house for all of the various Christmas books we have. A few special ones were tucked away, but most were just mixed in among the regular books. I’m sure I’ve missed a handful, since our books are anything but organized at the moment, but this little pile should do. I like the way some of the crafty mom bloggers I read have baskets with seasonally-appropriate reading materials left out in the living room for the children to take advantage of. So I got around to making a little pile of seasonal reading myself. Already it’s gotten some use.
[This is the point where I stopped blogging because Aidan’s bus was due home. Luckily you didn’t have to wait out in the freezing cold for it and can just pick up exactly where I left off 1.5 hours ago: talking about books…
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Eamonn and I read the two board books together this afternoon. Aidan came home from school, and while he drank some hot chocolate stirred with a candy cane, I read him a few Scholastic books: There Was a Cold Lady Who Swallowed Some Snow, What Star is This, and Moosletoe. Then he requested Santa’s Twin by Dean Koontz. That one took about 1/2-hour to finish, and the room grew dark around us until we were reading only by the light of Tacky Santa.
Twas the week before Christmas and all thoughts were calm.
Not a creature was stressing. Not even the Mom. 
Well, not yet, anyway…
