It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

“Gifts of time and love are surely the basic ingredients of a truly merry Christmas.”  ~Peg Bracken

This weekend was Christmas Kick-Off Weekend for the J-Ms. Saturday we put up our Christmas tree. It was, by far, the most successful and “truly merry” Christmas-Tree-Decorating-Event on record in the J-M household. K & O are suddenly so capable of doing these things without causing a major ruckus or catastrophe parental-breakdown. How did that happen? I don’t know. I just know that somewhere between age 5 and 6 they began to mellow just enough to make these sorts of things suddenly feasible. They are not mellow, by any stretch of the imagination… just a bit more mellow… and a little mellowing is a good thing, believe me. Meera (Miss Mellow) was absolutely thrilled with the whole entire experience. She loved putting the ornaments on the tree and she kept saying “oooooh! prettttttttttty!” over and over again. Each ornament has a memory attached. Many have a good story. Some are profoundly meaningful. The boys are starting to remember the ornaments and delight in the re-telling of the stories. The traditions –and all the work it takes to create and re-create them each and every year— are all starting to take firm hold, and it is a gorgeous thing to see. It makes it feel like maybe all of this is worth it. We still have huge clumps of ornaments in certain places, and we still have big blank parts on the tree, but it is, to us, The Most Beautiful Christmas Tree in the whole entire world. Saturday evening we had our first fire of the season. And we drank our first eggnog of the season by the fire (even though some of us don’t even like eggnog). “What is eggnog?,” Kyle and Owen always ask. “It is the nog of the egg,” we always say, authoritatively. “What is the nog of the egg?,” they ask. “It is eggnog,” we say. They might be six, they might be slightly more mellow, but they still have no clue how to get out of circular reasoning. So, they say back, completely earnestly, “Oh. So, what is eggnog?,” and we say, “The nog of the egg.” And by that time their attention span is maxed out and they run off to play. And this goes on and on and on throughout the holiday season, with Braydon and I running into the next room to laugh hysterically in secret. The advent calendar is up and running on the fridge. Every day is a big deal. Sunday morning we had a Holiday-Season-Kick-Off-Brunch in the playroom. There were cheese omelets, smoked ham, waffles, salad, cherry tomatoes, and sliced oranges. We ate on the floor next to Fire #2 Of The Season. It was special. That afternoon we headed off to Holiday Party #1 Of The Season. Not much delights me more than dressing up my children. Seriously. I love it. And I savor these days because I know it won’t be long until they don’t wear whatever I lay out for them anymore. In the meantime, I’ll dress them however I choose. And relish in the absolute adorableness of them all. Of course I’m biased, but I honestly believe that I have the three cutest children on the planet. I also happen to believe that I have the three most-fun-to-spend-the-holidays-with children on the planet.

And so, we start The Christmas That They Were Six and Two. And we pour out the “gifts of time and love” all season long, because surely they are “the basic ingredients of a truly merry Christmas.” A truly merry Christmas not just for our adorable three, but for their two adoring parents as well.