The post title says it all, doesn’t it? Even though I used our dining room table to stage our decorations and we went low key this year with a baby and a preschooler in the house, glitter mysteriously shows up everywhere- our couch, in Babygirl’s ears, on our socks... it’s pervasive. We’ll spend six months picking it up and washing it off. And no matter how much cleaning we do, more just appears in our home, caused mainly by the influx of glitter laden crafts coming home and by 2 year old C constantly pulling ornaments off the tree. This year I splurged and bought a dozen shatterproof ornaments and a dozen wood and metal ornaments and that’s all that’s on our tree. The whole bottom two feet of the tree is unadorned but still- ornaments on the floor and glitter everywhere.
A did not grow up with Christmas trees or holiday traditions. His family did not celebrate holidays. But he saw it all on tv. Which had given him a somewhat skewed vision of what an average holiday season looks like for an average family. He always wants a designer tree and decorations, a huge family dinner, cocoa, cookies, snow, the works. The first few years he scoffed at my mismatched ornaments and window clings. But now that we have 13 years of memory making behind us he sees the emotions behind the mismatched ornaments and the kid’s excitement at being able to decorate their windows themselves.
I do like to have coordinating gift wraps under the tree and since I’m the one who buys the wrap, it usually works out favorably. Until we mix in presents given to us by other people... we don’t have a lot of presents, but it’s enough. Our kids have plenty of stuff as it is. Our budget is usually $150 to $200 per person. A conducted an informal poll of his copilots and found that the large majority of people he asked spent about $1000 per person. Both our minds were blown. Completely. I guess if we bought big ticket items every year then maybe, but for the life of me I can’t imagine spending that much money on each kid every year.
We are in luck this year, maybe for the last year, in that A will be home for Christmas. He is actually going to be home for the next three weeks straight which leaves him to do all the errands and running around we need done. And be here to celebrate the season with us. And constantly brush the glitter off his ass.
