Christmas Gets Off To A Rocky Start

It's been crazy having the kids home from school... well E from school because that's the only one that goes to school. E has and probably always be the instigator. Suddenly they go from being reasonable little beings to wild terrors racing around the house to pushing her little brother so hard he hits his head on the door frame. By the end of day 1, Monday, I had had it. To top off K was late. That never makes it easier and when I am forewarned that it may happen I'm better prepared for it. So by the time he got home I had to run out for an errand and told him I might just not come back. He thought I was joking. I wasn't. I took off to my mother's and stayed long enough for him to have to call me to see where I was. It may have been petty but I was hoping it gave him a taste of what it's like to expect someone to come home and have them call up after they are already late and say they are going to be another hour. Course it almost backfired on me because we had planned on putting the Minivan express into play that night, which I had forgotten.

What did they do that was so terrible? Well, even though I tried to keep them busy with crafts and cookie baking, they decided to climb the dressers taking money down, E got a time out for yelling bloody frikin hell at her siblings, then she picked two holes into the drywall because she was "mad", then O and E decided to use markers on the floor in the kitchen and stick their Santa stickers onto the floor. Of course I wiped the markers up first so it made the stickers wet which made it harder to just lift them off the floor. I ended up having to pick at them for 10 minutes with my nails. Where was I? folding laundry on the couch. If I'm in the kitchen they terrorize the living room, if I'm in the living room they destroy the kitchen. I just can't win. Plus that was also the day I dropped my cookie dough bowl.

So through some trial and errors and much needed deep breaths and attempts to keep them busy on my part we made it to Wednesday, My grandmother's birthday. We went to my mom's house to wish her a happy Birthday where everybody kept asking the kids "who's coming to your house tomorrow?"

Now we all know that well meaning adults understand that they mean after the kid's go to sleep. But my dear children somehow got it into their head that meant that Santa was coming tomorrow, being Christmas Eve, morning. We weren't aware of this because we kept making sure to tell them after they went to bed. So it was three very disappointed children that woke up on Thursday to find Santa didn't come. Of course, it wasn't too hard for them to get over it because they now knew that Santa was still coming the following day.

All in all though, we had a pretty nice Christmas. Much better than last year. It wasn't perfect, we still yelled once or twice when they weren't listening but in generally we seem to have handled it better this year and I didn't have any emotional breakdowns like last year. That alone marks it as a good thing. Well.... aside from Monday. *LOL*

And I got some pretty nice presents. If it wasn't for my mom, it would have been a dull Christmas present wise for us. I mean I know Christmas really is for the kids, but it still is nice to get something under the tree. I lucked out this year because everything my mom picked out for me this year, I really liked. Some years it doesn't go so well. Not to be ungrateful but there's always a matter of a difference in taste. ;)

Well, I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas.