I've Got my Love to Keep Me Warm ...

Holy Cow Moment#:  I hate the idea of leaving my kids and it's worse on those cold winter days. 

It’s snowing and all I want to do is crawl into bed holding my little girl and ignore the world and it’s problems.  Okay – my husband can cuddle too.  The point is I don’t want to leave.  Snow days are made for hot cocoa and Christmas movies.  Cuddling under blankets and snuggling with loved ones.  But, alas, instead I am at work.  Trudging through the snow was not my idea of a good way to spend two hours this morning.

The one thing that I never expected was the fear of my own death.  Not the fear of dying, but the fear of accidentally leaving my child.  This new fear has made driving seem more treacherous and worse yet it has made me realize why I have such a hard time with leaving my child to anyone else. 

It isn’t because there aren’t people that I trust.  There are a select few – you know who you are.  But rather, it’s because I don’t want to let her down.  I hate the idea of not being there when she needs me.  I almost think I have a fear of abandonment myself and therefore I can’t leave her alone more than necessary.  Does this make me a bad parent?  I guess it depends on who you ask.  My child does go to daycare so it isn’t as if she will never get away from me. But after I get her, why would I waste time by sending her off to someone else instead of being a mommy and interacting with my kid if I have the choice?

Everyone has their own parenting strategies and no one is really wrong.  So don’t judge me and I won’t judge you. 

Child Donation

 Holy Cow Moment #?: I survived!!!

Last night was one of THOSE nights. The nights where you really consider child donation or even putting them up on ebay.
 
It was one of those nights where I had too much to do and not enough me to go around.  The second we got home was supposed to be for dinner and baking.  Instead the cookies didn’t turn out – anyone know why cookies go paper thin straight from the fridge to the oven??  Anyway from there it was cranky baby central.  I figured I was lucky that she ended up going down for a nap – for 20 minutes.  Then it was go time while I still had to come up with a cookie recipe for one of those awful cookie exchanges.
 
Let me just say that I normally love everything holiday until someone says “please bake 7 dozen cookies” and you barely know them as it is.  Yeah. 
 
From there my little wonder wanted to dance to the musical ornaments on the tree.  Cute right? Well unless you want to bake – I use the term want loosely. After coaxing her to allow me to leave the tree party I attempted to get her to eat and maybe watch a movie.  That worked for about… oh 10 minutes.  Dinner ended up on the floor mostly.  Now she is going to help me.  Oh goody.
 
Pulling out the stool so she can climb to counter height seemed like a great option, except she wanted to be held.  Have you ever cracked an egg with a baby in one arm?  About twenty minutes later the new dough is ready to go so I force my child to stand on her own two feet – I know I am awful.  I heard all about it. 
 
From here it is a balancing act of getting cookie balls onto cookie-sheets while holding her back to get them in the oven.  After that I have 8 minutes to get another batch ready – or I can clean up the yogurt that was just sprayed around the kitchen. Choices, choices.  After that I have to again restrain child from hot oven and then remove her from the stool that she has now gotten her head stuck in. The night just continues like this for two more hours.
 
By 10 cookies are baked, I am beat, and my child is still running circles around the dogs – who by the way are exhausted even.
 
Merry freaking Christmas days.

Death to a Pony – 'My little Pony'

      

Tis a sad day that we send off our first pony to the great beyond.  It’s official that our annual “Christmas Ornament Massacre” has arrive nearly six months early.

Holy Cow moment ?:  How do I explain the death of a toy?  

How do you explain to a toddler that her toy is, for all intensive purposes, dead.  How do I explain why the dog is not getting yelled at, or well he was but he is not being punished.  How can you explain why she must apologize and the dog does not, not over her toy’s death but in general?  Well lucky for me I have a little bit of time to get these answers.  As of right now, my child didn’t care except for the fact I had to remove the remains of the pony from her grasp.

My dog, the dear, annoying, horse that he is, eats anything with legs.  The first year it was only the left leg.  I lost Rudolph, several Santa’s, a care bear or two and in the end I decided it was simply time for new ornaments.  The next year there was no leg discrimination. Left or right, arm’s had to go too.  Finally I got smart and the dogs no longer get to be near the tree – but now what?  My daughters legged toys are no longer safe. 

We have tried showing him love, giving him treats, letting him have new toys and removing her toys from his sight but to no avail. Somehow the dog finds the legged toys.  Our house at Christmas is a grave yard of paraplegic ornaments; oh I would love to keep this from happening year round, I hope we find our solution soon.

Holy Cow am I amazed at what my dog will do for attention, but worse yet I am amazed that no matter what we do dog of toddler will always find what you missed.

Jolly old Fat Man

Please make sure your children under the age of …well whatever the age is when Santa is no longer part of their lives.   I don’t want to ruin anyone’s Christmas.

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Let me just say that I love Christmas first and foremost.  Christmas music is blaring in my car whenever I am in it, still not helping with the road range thanks to the “SPEICAL” drivers out there. Christmas music plays on my radio at home, ABC’s 25 days of Christmas is usually running unless Lifetime has a better – usually a little depressing Christmas Special (I do see why my husband has threatened to ban this channel for women.) I am excited, I live for the holidays, I live for the cold weather where I can nestle into the couch with a cup of hot cocoa (for roughly 10 minutes until afore mentioned child wants to do something else).  I love my Christmas village and my Christmas Tree and even love my lights outside-which pale in comparison to the Griswold’s down the street. I really should post a picture of the house that lights up the ENTIRE street.  Who knew there were so many varieties of decorations one could cram into a tiny little yard and not blow a circuit.

Did I mention I love my Christmas village? I love pretending that I live there…dare I admit I have an ongoing virtual town running in my head.  When no one is looking my village has a life – IN MY HEAD – so I can’t be too nuts since it is in my head.  But I am dying to know weather or not Lizzy Price and Homer Wilson get married (my two little characters that sit on the bench year after year have a thing going I just know it).  I know someone is judging me right now – well you know what I DON”T CARE because once you have a kid people just stop saying anything, people just look at you with that smile “Oh she has a child so its okay, we will let it go”. 

IN FACT – When you have a kid it suddenly makes sense why it was ok for your mother or grandmother to wear those UGLY holiday sweatshirts and sweaters.  Suddenly it doesn’t seem so tacky – no I am not going to start wearing them but honestly you can get away with it when you are a parent, no one judges you anymore.  Holy Cow have a kid and you literally can walk around in sweatpants and a shirt that could make any pre child fashonista (which according to Microsoft is not a word) cringe and go running for the nearest mall.  Lets be honest there are days when I think some people could make a homeless person look like they have better fashion sense then a parent.  So now down to what brought on my holiday excitement -

My holiday rant.  So what is the deal – “Lying is bad” except for Santa and the Easter Bunny and … well anything around the holidays. Don’t get me wrong my children will grow up with the same old farce as everyone else but why?  Why is this ok?  Why do we think that its ok to teach our children that a Jolly old fat man is delivering toys, heck some gifts are so good I want the credit for crying out loud?  Why do we say its bad to break and enter except for said Jolly Old Fat man.  Why do we teach them that obesity is the cause of all that is bad in our lives – except for the Jolly Old Fat man who really should have a bunch of heart issues since he is so “Jolly” aka Fat.  I just don’t know when it became ok to lie to our youth about this, strange and creepy really.  How dumb do we think our children are – when do we actually admit that we lied to them for the past so many years.  They either start to realize the man doesn’t exist or they start to think the fat guy discriminates since “Joe whoever” got an Ipad and they only got a book –yeah yeah I know who gives books anymore but you get the picture. Like I said I am just curious why these lies – in our parenting minds are fine- and when do we admit to our children that we have-GASP-been lying to them.  I realize that sometimes breaching the subject earlier then later is forced on us since there is no parental agreement that everyone should lie to their kids and that you always wait until age whatever before telling your child there is not Jolly Fat man, unless Grandpa happens to be sitting in the lazy boy then I guess you have to change your wording for fear of a disastrous miscommunication.

So Holy Cow Moment #:  Parents no longer are held at the same standards as the rest of society when it comes to fashion.  I suddenly understand the ugly sweater/sweatshirt for the holidays my mother/grandmother/aunt wore.  And we outwardly lie to our children knowing at some point we will get caught.  Ahh how the holidays just break the rules.