How memorable can one Christmas be?
I was abruptly woken up at 2:51 am this morning by a five year old ready to rip into her presents. With her seven year old sister able to find the loophole in most directions, all I could muster up was that she needed to wait for her college age sister to get home this morning. Knowing her biggest sister would not be home until 6:30 am at the earliest, I knew it was going to be a difficult time for a child who had already looked to see if the jolly guy delivered the goods. The logic that I had provided brought nearly an hour of sleep when this kid decided that she was up for the day at 4:00 am and the parental figures finally caved to allowing the now two awoken daughters to watch Christmas specials. There would be no more sleeping, the holiday arrived a long time before the sun.
The coffee maker was set to 6:00 am and I refused to recognize that 4:24 am was an acceptable time. Eventually the big college sitter got home before advertised arrival time and while we were preparing to distribute presents, the big bad stomach bug attacked one of my girls while lead to changing all of her clothes below the waist prior to opening presents. Once presents were done, my middle daughter quickly discovered that one of her toy sets was missing a car which lead into an unsuccessful search of my husband’s sedan, wrapping area, living room and the garbage bag that only had wrapping paper. By the time I threw in the towel on the missing toy, I began to make lunch.
Just when I thought the ship might have been corrected, I realized that I forgot to put eggs in the corn muffins. I quickly accepted the fact and tried a corn muffin that was not as bad as I feared. The unwelcomed stomach guest that one of my daughters had reappeared, everywhere as I was putting the Christmas meal on the table. Both of us surrendered our meals, enjoyed crackers and electrolyte juice before accepting a long needed nap. When we woke up, the toys had graduated from in their packages to on the living room floor. Only five needed repairs and after using a needle with thread on the one and a hot glue gun on the other four, everyone had survived for another day.
Someday we’ll laugh about this holiday, but for one child with the stomach bug and my husband as well as another daughter with a cold, we’ll accept survival today. I sure had fun with disinfectant wipes and sprays. Hope you all had a wonderful holiday!
