The 12 days of Christmas (and it's only the 7th.....)

I’m in love with Christmas – I would marry it in a heartbeat and pop out a thousand Christmas present babies if I could. It is indeed my favourite time of year – but this year I’ve come across a new phenomenon. The Christmas Spirit of the Toddler & Infant. They like Christmas too. They have different ideas which tend to revolve around ruining mine. They want to be in charge. I say no..... but can I stop it?

On the first day of Christmas I decided yes great, exciting let’s get the kids gee’d up about Chrissie, round up the Christmas books, pop on your Santa hat, get out the photo albums, lets talk and talk some more about Christmas. When the wee ones finally calmed down and stopped with the ‘Is it tonight? is it tonight?’ they went to bed at about 10.30pm. At approximately 10.32 I made the sage decision to next year perhaps wait until the week before Christmas to begin the Gee up.

On the Second day of Christmas the tree went up and came back down and went back up, the decorations were hung all on one side and the tears began as certain individuals found it a little difficult to understand that Mummy has final say on presentation and the laws of gravity tend to prevail.

On the Third day of Christmas the Advent calendar started to wear a little thin – I really really really don’t want to get up at 5am to all stand around and marvel at the freddo frog retrieved from the little pocket. Note to self – next year no chocolate before 7am, too late for this year the precedent has been set.

On the Fourth day of Christmas I began to mentally calculate the cost of all the ‘little presents’ that have to be purchased for various Child care centre parties and secret santas and random giving trees. At this rate I’m not going to have any money left to purchase the real presents (who am I kidding you totally know I bought them all in July.....) and the kids will have ‘present burn out’ before the big day. But worse, I realise that I’m getting all these gifts back so I need to make them useful or relevant – what was I thinking buying the ‘stacks o plastic little tiny things that get everywhere’ just because they come in an awesome Christmassy box???

On the Fifth day of Christmas the indiscriminate crying attacks began. Through a fog of confuddlement I comforted the wee ones as they choked and snorted about weird and inexplicable events. It took a while for me to connect the dots back to the early morning Freddo and the over use of the Myer Christmas carol CDs. Apparently you can have too much Christmas spirit and it can overflow and become a powder keg of emotion that can easily be sparked off by the dulcid tones of some crooner belting out 'White Christmas'

On the 6th day of Christmas we took the day off.

On the 7th day of Christmas the warnings of ‘Father Christmas is watching you know...’ met their unfortunate end as the older wee one declared he did not give a feshizzle (not his exact words) – I mean he had all these gifts already from the advent calendar and the Christmas parties and the people in the supermarket handing out noise toys and balloons.... I’ve lost control! I have created a mini Grinch!

So we’re going back to basics – imagine a scene where a big wall hanging advent calendar is rolled up and poking out of the rubbish bin, the dog is using a very flat Christmas tree as a lovely bed, wrapped presents are laid out in the street for people to help themselves to.

There’ll be no turkey, there’ll be no Ham – take down the lights, fold up the cardboard Father Christmas in his sleigh scene with the alternate flashing green and red lights and shiny Rudolph nose, carefully place the bejewelled baby Jesus back in his manger special edition box – Christmas is DONE!


Oh god, I’m totally kidding, can’t wait until 5am tomorrow to see what’s in the advent calendar............


*sniff* love you Christmas......