Christmas Spirit

It’s easy to get caught up in the pre-Christmas stress where everything becomes a chore: putting up the tree, buying presents for family and trying to fit in all those social occasions.

All year I look forward to this season and then, last week, I wondered why I was feeling so glum. When I scrutinized this feeling it came down to letting everything get on top of me and turning what should have been a fun time of year, into a martyrish occasion.

I decided to change my attitude and lap it all up.

Here is what I love about this season:

# Decorating the tree together while rocking the carols;

# Decking out the rest of the house in bling;

# Dusting off my favourite recipes for neighbours, teachers and friends – watching the kids delightedly skip back from the neighbours, having experienced the joy of giving and not just receiving;

# Watching the kids’ faces as they see their personalised messages from Santa – even my non-believer is still rather taken with this - (www.portablenorthpole.com);

# Attending Christmas in the Park – always a fantastic evening in Whangarei;

# Doing the lights trail on the way home;

# Making Christmas lanterns with the kids’ class;

# Hosting a pot-luck dinner with friends chez moi where we wear and serve only our finest – this is girls-only with Miss Seven waitress and chief photographer;

# Our annual girls night out on the town where you are likely to catch up with people you haven’t seen since the last one;

# Realising I have lots of Fly Buys points from my second home at New World to spend on fun stocking fillers to balance the practical stuff I have already put aside;

# Recycling the kids’ unwanted toys and giving to children who will appreciate them;

# The final, crazy supermarket shop where there is delicious food-galore and catching snippets of fellow shoppers conversations excitedly planning their menus for the big day;

# ‘Accidentally’ being a little heavy-handed with the top-shelf while making the egg-nogg;

# Watching the riveting season finale of Shortland Street as the fairy lights twinkle;

# The town a mass of rouge as the Pohutukawa trees bloom on cue;

# The communal generosity of giving as the Christmas spirit comes to the fore;

# Playing Santa;

# Lapping up the kids’ excitement Christmas morning;

# Drinking the egg nogg;

# Relaxing and unwinding in the company of all the family who have congregated and being thankful they are still with us.

Shattered Illusions

“Why does the queen get all the money?!” Miss Seven asked one day, studying the royal profile on a $2 coin. “It’s not fair, what about the King? He doesn’t get any.”

“Well I don’t think the King is as important as the queen,” I responded.

“But that’s not very nice. They should both be important.”

Ah yes, she was quite right but how does one explain monarchy?

I thought we’d left the whole “Why is the sky blue?” behind in the toddler years but, in actual fact, the questions just keep coming.

This will be Master nine’s first Christmas as a non-Santa believer and the twin’s last. 

When Master Nine put his theory to me halfway up Mt Manaia mid-year, I knew by the look in his eyes there was to be no bluffing this time. But he was told if he wanted to continue awakening to a filled stocking on Christmas morning, then he wasn’t to spoil it for the twins.

He’s kept his mouth shut.

However, Master Seven is starting to get suspicious.

“Mum, how can Santa fit down our chimney – he’s way too fat?!” he asked the other day.

Looking at our tapered chimney, I had to agree it was a ridiculous notion.

“He just climbs through our window,” chimed in Miss Seven.

There are safety latches on all our windows, rendering the gap as small as the chimney so I had to play along and point this out.

“Well then how does he get in?!” demanded Master Seven.

“Maybe I left the door open that night.”

A sharp intake of breath: “What?! But then the baddies will come in and rob us!”

Yes, it will be their last as believers and therefore the last year I can play the “Santa’s little elves are watching you” card when they are misbehaving.

“But where are they Mummy,” asks Miss Seven, looking all around. “And why do they have such funny ears and why would they just come into your house?!”

It will be bittersweet to finally come clean. Enough of the lies but the innocent joy that magical fantasy brings will be lost forever. I can feel the disappointment already. Only last week I had to shatter an illusion to my boys.

Every week while their sister is at Brownies, we do the loop together. The boys had scootered ahead and were enthusiastically carrying out a work-out on the gym equipment by the time I got there.

“When do we get our hot dog anyway?” I heard one of them asking as I approached.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“It says there, if you do enough exercise, you get a hot dog.”

I looked where they were pointing at the signs behind the gym equipment. It had a Health Guide stating that one hot dog equals approximately 40 minutes of moderate exercise. The word hot dog was illustrated with a tantalising picture of an American hot dog.

I had to break it to them that a hot dog doesn’t magically appear out of thin air if they do enough exercise. Their enthusiasm waned a little after that.

Blast from the Past

The girl sat alone, on the bench seat at the school watching the other kids playing around her and hoping. Hoping someone would ask her to play.

This was new to her – only weeks earlier she’d had two best friends but, cruelly, they had both moved town within weeks of each other. So now she found herself alone.

That girl was me, back in the 80s. I don’t know how many lunch times I sat there alone hoping the kids in front of me would ask me to join in their elastics but I remember the feeling. Everyone already had their cliquey groups but luckily it was nearly the end of the year. In the New Year I would be starting intermediate where I would make new friends.

We’d been a tight team – me Teressa and Julie, having sleepovers at each other’s houses, talking long into the night, then getting up the next morning and drinking cold milos in front of the cartoons. Julie and I would walk to school together and talk about … life. There was the occasional spat – three’s a crowd after-all – but we would always make up.

And then they moved away. I didn’t believe it when they each delivered the news. How could life be that cruel?

I never did hear from them again. But enter Facebook. Teressa and I got in touch straight away back in 2007, and although we still haven’t met up in person, keep in touch. Julie was harder to find.

Until she found me last week. She had seen a post on Facebook of my childhood home which is now for sale and it had stirred memories. “I recently saw an article about your 20-plus-year family home being up for sale and this also led me to believe you were she as the Jodi I knew lived a few doors down the road from my aunty and uncle. I was sure it was the house but was confused because I’ve a memory of it having a pool?!”

We spent many hours frolicking in the oval Para pool, purposefully capsizing out of the rubber inflatable dingy. The pool was removed years ago.

It was interesting to hear, as an adult, the reason why Julie left town and, after 28 years of no contact with some of her family back here, she had got back in touch, which lead her to think about her old friends and that long ago but not forgotten past she left behind.

She was rapped that I had thought about her for all these years and was able to share memories she had forgotten. Sometimes we leave chapters of our life unfinished but the places and characters are still there waiting to pick up.

We’re hoping to plan a get-together on our old stomping ground – a bit hard when two out of three live half the distance of the country away. But when it happens, there will be a follow-up. Watch this space.

Needle and Thread

All was quiet on the kiddy front – it was just me and the cat on the couch. In my new state of home-making bliss, I had decided to pick up a needle and thread and, shock-horror, do some mending. 

Now this only occurs out of necessity, due to the fails I’ve had on this front in the past dating back to form two’s home economics’ stuffed pig attempt. Then there was the embroidery.

“Wow, how clever are youuuu …” the observer would trail off as they turned the piece over and clapped eyes on the pig sty at the back.

But this time it was my large black velvet cushions which had been coming undone at the seams for the last year due to the kids using them as play fighting weapons. Unless the cushions suffered the same fate as Master Seven’s beloved stuffed rabbit, ie the rubbish bin after I ran out of both sticking plasters and rabbit to patch him up, then I couldn’t procrastinate any longer.

I picked up the needle and thread with the cat washing herself busily on my lap and eventually managed to thread the needle through the eye. Due to both my poor sight and light I had used a huge needle which made this task somewhat easier. So as not to have to repeat this, I used around a meter-long double strand of black cotton. I stabbed the needle into the couch so it wouldn’t get lost while I picked up the cushion and assessed the task ahead.

It didn’t look too hard – just some sewing in a straight line and, with the thick velvet, one would never see my messy handywork.

I reached over for the needle and thread but it was gone! Baffled as to how it could have come out of the couch and disappeared, I looked around. It must have fallen down the couch. Not wanting to disturb the cat and quite comfy myself, I eventually went about re-threading another. It was then the cat started retching.

Surely not.

She stopped and carried on washing herself. Phew. But then it started again. She was frothing at the mouth and it was then I caught a flash of silver.

My first thought was ‘Can the heimlich manoeuvre be performed on a cat?’ and ‘Would 111 respond to an emergency for a cat?’ CPR? Argh – don’t go there. Then my pony club days kicked into gear. To get a horse to open its mouth, you press your thumb into the side of the mouth.

I did this on my now-convulsing cat. Her mouth opened and I pulled out the giant needle just before it made its descent. A trail of meter-long soggy black thread followed making her gag as it came up her throat.

The cat went back to her washing like nothing had happened while I sat there with my two threaded needles wondering if that really had just happened. 

Eventually I followed suit and nonchalantly patched up my cushions in the usual hap-hazard fashion.

Reconnecting

“Mum, can you please play Lego with me?”

“No, I’m too busy,” came my standard stressed-out answer.

I am noticing many stressed-out mummies around me lately and I am also noticing a lot of the stress seems to be brought on by ourselves. We take on too much and it’s ultimately our kids who suffer.

You know, all they want is a present mummy, not her retreating back and half a listening ear to their chitter-chatter. They also, unselfishly, want the best for their mummy, which is to be happy and healthy.

Until recently, my own stress culminated in a big life change. I was running myself ragged and then wondering why I couldn’t sleep. Adrenaline had a lot to do with this and four hours sleep over a 24-hour period night after night cannot be good for you. Sleeping pills and Panadol featured regularly where exercise had long gone out the window. I hadn’t seen my friends for months, despite their proximity to me, and found myself shunting the kids off to bed at the earliest possible moment without spending any quality time with them. Where did the two most important things - whanau and health - fit in?

We think we’re invincible but my body began telling me otherwise. Strange things were happening and, after no longer being able to ignore it, I finally listened to the signals and, making the mistake of Googling extensively, was convinced I had a serious illness.

With this in mind, my life flashed before my eyes. A series of tests and a few hundred dollars later, and after a tormenting wait, the answer turned up: stress.

Well I could do something about stress. I felt like I’d been given a second chance and so began my new life.

This meant the hard decision of leaving my job. I explained to the kids that we were going to be very poor from now on but that mummy would have a lot more time for them and wouldn’t be so grumpy. They voted unanimously for a stay-at-home non-grumpy, albeit poor, mum.

The first thing I did was write a list of all the things I love doing. I was shocked to find not a single item featured in my life.

As a result, I now make the time to exercise, attend the kids’ events, re-establish idle friendships, make future plans, write, keep on top of my home and gardens and am averaging five or six hours sleep. That one’s still a work in progress. But more importantly, every day I make a point of spending one-on-one time with my kids. It may mean dinner is an hour late but the look in their eyes and change in behaviour is worth it.

I now refer to this list every day to keep myself on track and remind myself why I did this.

Christmas this year will be far from extravagant and the kids have been forewarned. They seemed fine with it. And someone reminded me the other day that it’s not the materialistic things they will look back on, but the experiences.

So any stressed out mummies reading this, I recommend writing a similar list and see if the items feature in your life. If so, well done – I’ve re-joined your club. 

Now I must be off, I have a date to play Lego with my son.

Spring Cleaning and Birthday Parties

As the sun slows its decent below the horizon, evaporating the chill of winter, many of us are gripped by the urge to spring clean.

Usually this would begin around September but, if you’re a little OCD like me in the house cleaning department, by the time the annual spring clean rolls around, it’s far too late. Therefore, the first following year, I did it in August, the next, July until, heck, I was spring cleaning in June when there was nothing springy about it.

This year, however, I was snowed under with other stuff and had to watch my house transform before my eyes. Entering the ensuite would send a small shudder of horror at the site of the rapidly darkening ceiling as something grew across it.

Finally, around rolled the holidays and I pushed up my sleeves and got stuck in. The warm weather enabled the entire family’s bedding, including duvet and pillow inners, to be washed and dried in one day. I was on such a roll one day, I ran out of washing powder and Googled if using dish washing detergent would suffice. (It does, although check if it contains bleach first).

It’s a good feeling ticking off each room but, in order to achieve this – especially in the kids’ rooms, I needed to cheat a little. You see my kids are like magpies and accumulate a lot of things.

This year, Master Nine was ruthless and decided he’d outgrown most of his toys, much to the twin’s delight but there was no space in their room for new things – it took a whole six hours in itself to tidy and sort all the tiny bits and pieces that a little girl, especially, likes to collect. It was during this, I had the idea of recycling these small toys as prizes at their approaching birthday party so I put two bags aside. But there was a whole heap more.

Imagine a flurry of surplus ‘stuff’ being thrown out of each room into a rapidly growing pile in the hall and snow balling its way up (with great force) the stairs, culminating in a grand heap in the lounge. The idea was to spend my evenings sorting through this pile while watching tv. However, such was my cleaning frenzy still taking place elsewhere, this didn’t happen. The lounge had become a treasure trove and my deadline had arrived.

Games of statues, pass the parcel and musical cushions needed to be carried out here and, after I tucked my excited soon-to-be seven-year-olds into bed, I stood looking at the chaos before me in despair. I may have had a sparkling clean junk-free house but the lounge was a tip.

There was nothing for it but to transfer the pile to the garage. I loaded up the washing basket, filled rubbish sacks and made the trip down three flights of stairs, dumped it and returned. Up-down, up-down. Finally after around 15 trips and giving the lounge a jolly good hoover, I was done.

The next day the guests descended and my pristine house was soon turned upside-down. When it came to the game prizes, I wasn’t sure how it would go down but, judging by the kids’ reactions as they rifled through the selection, they thought it was Christmas. In fact their enthusiasm must’ve been contagious for I had to stop my two from reclaiming their own toys.

It’s hard to keep an eye on what everyone is up to and it wasn’t until after they’d left and I’d followed the trail of chips to the twin’s room, I discovered the Fanta spilt through Miss Seven’s bed. By then I was totally over spring cleaning and not at all enthused about re-washing the bedding, albeit with proper washing powder this time.

They may’ve trashed my house but the ceilings were still white and, hey, I recon I’ve got the family’s entire Christmas shopping in my garage just waiting to be sorted and re-gifted.