Getting Ready for Christmas

As the children have gotten older, there are a few things we want to teach them about Christmas.
1. Santa is not real. If you know us in real life, and your child goes home to tell you that Aidan said Santa is not real, you can blame us. He has always been told that Santa is fake.
2. Just as we look forward to the birth of Christ, we also wait expectantly to open our earthly Christmas presents. This, is a hard one to master. They like to go shake their presents (forbidden), touch them (again, forbidden), and move them around (definitely forbidden.)
3. Christmas is about sacrifice- actually, if I can have it my way, every lesson would be about sacrificial love. Thus, we are encouraging the children to buy each other a little present. Aidan was SO happy to go on a special expedition with me last Friday. He was absolutely giddy. For some reason, he really wanted to get Zoe some PetShop goodies. Then, on Saturday, we too the children to the mall to finish their Christmas shopping. Let's just say that it is weird to go to the mall together and keep exchanging children. Zoe really wanted some pink scissors from the Sanrio store, and took off running back to the store with tears streaming down her chubby cheeks when she realized her bag was empty. At least the girl has a built-in compass- she ran in the right direction. So I forked over the goodie.


As for me, I am realizing a few things about myself.
1. Gift wrapping is just not my forte. Every year, I make the resolution to be like Martha Stewart in my packaging of goodies. I buy the ribbons, the papers, the tissues. But when it comes down to it, I lose all steam. I think: "This is SO NOT green, all this beautiful paper to be ripped apart, and the beautiful satin ribbons, to be thrown away, WHY bother?" I also tend to wrap my gifts too early, then they sit under the tree and gather dust and sap...
2. We have this delusional idea that our friends and family will appreciate us postponing our annual photo card until Easter- we do it because we are too busy in December, and then, well, we forget to do it in the spring, and thus, I think we have been written off by most of our friends. Only the faithful few have continued to send cards to the Great Abyss, I mean, our household.
3. I don't understand this: Nearly everyone I know is baking something for Christmas. I have heard about these 'cookie exchanges' a few of my patients have mentioned to me recently. These people bake 15 DOZENS of cookies, go to some gathering, and come home with 15 DOZENS of different kind of cookies. WHO can humanly eat 15 dozens of cookies? Seriously. If we don't eat like that January through November, why would we want to in December?! (So that we can go buy exercise gear in January? Seriously.)

Nonetheless, our tree is lit, the gifts are wrapped (and the children are getting equal number of gifts- I triple checked), mostly with ribbons. And I have grand plans of doing some baking of my own. To my credit, I will be making bread, because, bread can be whole wheat, and thus, SO much better for you. Let's see if my relatives actually will eat the bread I plan on making. =)