Christmas 2018

Christmas Day 2018

So, Christmas 2018 has been and gone. I’m happy to report that we’ve all had a good one, even R. To be honest Christmas does bring lots of going out, interacting with people, and breaks to routine. These can be tricky for lots of people, especially when mental health issues are around, but although I worried about how B was going to cope with things she’s been amazing. She managed X’s School Christmas Fayre, his Nativity Play, went out seeing relatives over Christmas, helped me host Christmas Day at our place, and we gave X a really good Christmas!

X had a Christmas Jumper Day on his last day of term, which was good because he was very much into wearing his Father Christmas jumper this year. When we arrived at school, one of his friends ran up to him shouting that he had “Santa on my jumper”, X got a massive grin on face, unzipped his coat and ripped it open in full on Superman mode to reveal his Christmas Jumper shouting “I got Santa too!”. I mentally wished the teachers good luck looking after about 30 4-5 years old when they were all that hyper! On my walk home I passed one of X’s friends who was wearing exactly the same jumper as X and I could only imagine the reaction when they realised! I figured it would either be a mass of grins, or tears… which it would seem children generally swing between for the entire duration of Christmas. I can’t really complain too much about X being excited about Christmas, he’s 4, and he should be excited. Plus, I used to get so excited I was physically sick at some stage, and my parents had to ban me from talking about Christmas until after the end of October.

We had 4 main Christmas things to do this year, one visit to my sisters on the Saturday before Christmas, Christmas Lunch at our house with my parents and visits to each set of B’s parents after Christmas. Yes, that’s right, I have two complete sets of in-laws. I could follow this up with loads of gags, but to be honest given some of the stories I heard, all 4 of mine are generally great to be honest (Although I do get the classic calls regarding computers).

Our first Christmas visit was to my sisters house for nibbles and present swapping. She only lives about 25 minutes away, so it’s not really a travel event… parking can sometimes take just as long as the drive though! It was a little bit chaotic as they have a 2 year old, but given it was just a few days before Christmas they weren’t actually that bad. No major injuries, for the children… My Dad managed to get his finger sliced open by the cat when he decided to say “hello” in the kitchen, it all worked out well though because he got little pink rainbow plaster!

Then we were properly into the wait for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. X has been staying up quite late recently and generally messing around when we’ve been putting him to bed. However, Christmas Eve we’d been telling him all day that Father Christmas was coming that night, and we’d even taken a look at the Santa Tracker. Quite tricky though as Santa was in Russia and X has only been about an hour away in the car so I’m not sure he really appreciated the distances involved! That night we got all set up for Father Christmas’s visit with a doughnut and class of milk for him (We don’t eat mince pies, so had none in the house), and some oats for the reindeer. It should be noted however that X didn’t even notice the missing doughnut and milk, or the missing / spilled oats that had been left behind!

Then X went up to the toilet by himself, came out and said “Bed now” at about 7:30, this made a massive change from messing around until after 9:00! And then to be fair, he followed through with it too and went straight into bed. We had a quick bedtime read of “The night before Christmas” and he laid down and went to sleep! This gave me and B some nice chill time… although we were also prepping for doing a roast the next day, getting presents sorted under the tree and all the other things parents do Christmas Eve.

X Bedtime Mummy Questions

B and I woke at 8:30 and went downstairs thinking X would be out of his room any moment… for all my complaining about him going to bed, he does usually stay there until his clock shows “Mr Sunshine”. I went straight down to the kitchen and started getting the camcorder set up. We’d charged it overnight as we’re always forgetting to actually use it so wanted to make sure we had it all ready. B got set up in the living room with some nappy wipes in order to fix any bed wetting issues. Not that we were trying to film the next big blockbuster, but as wet nights have been quite a theme lately we thought filming him with a big wet patch didn’t sound great. However, after 10 minutes we figured we were going to have to go and open his door and wake him up! I’d already texted my sister to say Merry Christmas and that we were up, but we were waiting for X. She replied with “We’re all done here!”… it would seem her youngest had woken them at about 5am!

X finally woke up about ten minutes later and was very excited that Father Christmas has been and that he also had lots of presents from Mummy and Daddy. We then set about opening the presents in his stocking, which are the ones from Father Christmas. He opened one of his first presents and it was a new DVD. Which is half for us as watching the same repeated Paw Patrol and Blaze episodes it may start making us go a bit strange. He ripped all the paper off said “Ooh, new disc for me!”, and put it straight away in the cupboard with the others… that was pretty much the last moment of complete tidiness over the last week! We have tried to keep the levels under control by sorting wrapper paper, and tidying toys / presents away as the days have gone on. And by “We”, I really mean B as I like to leave the new things out to look at… because I revert to a mental age of 8 for Christmas!

Once we’d opened stocking presents we were starting to prepare lunch and were waiting for my Dad to arrive, we did then have X suddenly say, “Is it Christmas Day Day Today?”, “Err, yes mate, that’s why we are opening all the presents”. Funny that he was happy to open loads without checking this little fact!

We hosted Christmas Lunch this year, we actually love doing it, and to be honest B finds it a lot less stressful for us to do it, than to go anywhere else. We ended up getting lunch ready really early to the extent we were worried we’d dry everything out, but luckily my parents turned up just as we were discussing options and my mum even said “I hope it’s nearly ready? I’m really hungry!” so we were saved! X was quite naughty during lunch and have several warnings that he wouldn’t get to open any more presents… However, he did start to behave a little when I asked him which of two new things I should give away!

Christmas Day 2018

Boxing day was our visit to B’s mum’s house, this was B’s mum, step dad her two younger sisters and one of their partners. We went round for lunch, but there was no double roast scenario though as they had a lovely poached Salmon for us. X opened his presents from everyone there, which we find better than having everything at ours as they can see his expression when he opens them, and he has several present opening sessions instead of finished it all by Christmas Day afternoon. He got Jenga as a present from one of his aunt’s as we’d asked for games we can play. The trouble is, I do actually own a Jenga that I had when I was little which X uses the blocks from for building. Before we could say anything to X about being tactful, X suddenly comes out with “I’ve got 2 now”, so we had to admit we did actually already have it. To be honest my old one is getting on a bit, and B and I also figured out with the good blocks from the old one we can do an even taller tower!

Boxing Day 2018

We actually did our Boxing Day visit to B’s mum a little earlier than usual this year as B wanted to pop in to see her other sister and her husband. We saw them last year and said we’d meet up during the year but actually never managed to arrange to do so. Trying to get out and do things this year has generally been quite tricky, but B (And I) are hoping we’ll be able to get out and do a bit more next year. We popped into her sister’s quite early as they were entertaining about 20 later in the evening and they’d therefore need quite a lot of time to get sorted. B’s brother in law’s parents arrived towards the end and we made a quick exit before we thought we were in the way.

When we got home that evening, X wandered up to the Christmas Tree and said we should take it down as it was “Not Christmas Day now”. So much for keeping it up longer and telling everyone we’ve left it up for him!

We went out and brought a new sideboard/cupboard unit for the kitchen the following day. Which seems a bit odd, but doing things, reorganising the house and having less clutter around can make B feel a bit better when she is down and she’s not been great lately. So, most of the day was spent pulling things out of existing cupboards and deciding whether to keep them or ditch them… we had 2 years worth of pre-school art from X that we had to go through… I say art… most of it was pretty much a scribble on a bit of paper. We figured the odds of him being famous enough that they would be worth millions on the future was slim enough for most of them to go!

I’ve been a bit wobbly myself the last few weeks to be honest and have even decided to cut my hours down at work when I get back after the new year. The fact I’m still not 100% was proved when I broke down when B suggested we chuck out an old broken ceramic snake that was originally hers. I have no idea why it upset me so much, but I’ve now glued the tail back on and put it into the cupboard with the glasses and mugs!

On the 28th we visited B’s dad’s house, it was touch and go whether we would get there as we were running behind a bit in morning and B was feeling quite fragile. She wasn’t sure if she’d be able to cope with seeing quite a few people at once. We had B’s dad, his partner, two of her grown up children and partners, together with some of their children, plus B’s older sister and her partner too. So, 10 adults and 5 children which is a lot more than B is used to seeing at once, but it was nice for both of us to see everyone. It was really nice for us to see X playing with his cousins too… even though they were very loud and they’d trashed the living room within minutes (Good job Nanny and Granddad are fairly used to it!). We’d forgotten to take a change of clothes for X though, so there was lots of “Do you need a wee?”, “Are you sure?” as he was laughing and giggling a lot… and much credit to X he did two “Standy up wees” in the toilet and there were no accidents!

B's Dad Christmas 2018

They’d cooked up loads of food for us all to eat, to the extent there was a table full of sausage rolls, nuts, crisps etc. just to start us off whilst everything else had filled both of their ovens. Sausages, HUGE joint of pork, pasta with cheese sauce, more pasta with cheese sauce with bacon in. It was a proper good feast, and all things that B and I love, even though we’re quite fussy! We’d actually brought loads of cakes, brownies and biscuits to take with us but with all the other food we ended up bringing most of them back (On their insistence)… I think our January Diets might have to wait for March when our stash of goodies finishes!

On the drive home X did come out with “How many sleeps until Christmas?” “It’s about 360 sleeps X, everything is before Christmas at this point… okay, except boxing day!” Let’s just hope he doesn’t ask us every day for the next 360 sleeps… it could test my patience to be honest!

So, overall we’ve had a really good Christmas! B’s had a few wobbles, I’ve had a few wobbles, but we’ve still managed to do what we wanted to do, celebrate and give X a really good Christmas!

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