Change of plans

Well, hi there! I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Ours was spent with relatives on my side of the family - my parents and all of my younger siblings and their families. It was fun, good to see everyone, and of course mildly chaotic. My daughter really enjoyed spending time with her cousins and getting to know her grandparents and aunts and uncles a bit better. As we were leaving to run errands just the other day, she called out in excitement from the back seat, "Here we go to Aunt Sarah's house!" Hm. Sorry to disappoint, kid. A kid's cocoa from Starbucks seemed to make it up to her.

And now we move to Christmas! I know this sentiment has become cliche, but this really is my favorite time of year. This week, though, I have felt decidedly overwhelmed. I have not been able to catch up, it seems, after having been gone over Thanksgiving. My house is a wreck, I have very little Christmas shopping done, and our December calendar seemed to fill up overnight. Even though I know better, I dealt with this feeling of having too much to do by telling myself that I would slow down and enjoy the season after the weekend, after I crossed x number of things off my to do list. I know better. You can't live your life thinking that you will be happy, content, relaxed, calm, etc. after you complete a certain task or achieve a certain accomplishment or acquire a certain thing. Well...you can...but you'd be wrong. Anyway. I did not come to my senses on my own. I had a little nudge. My daughter woke up sick this morning. She has a cough that is too reminiscent of the hacking cough she had just before her nasty bout of croup a couple of months ago. And, while I wouldn't have wished for her to become sick, it has definitely had the effect of slowing me down. I have spent the morning making phone calls to arrange for adjustments to our weekend schedule. Now, being involuntarily rendered homebound with a child who is content to sit quietly looking at books or watching The Berenstain Bears, I find that I can clean and work on a few handmade Christmas gifts and browse Amazon for other Christmas gifts and, best of all, sit and hold my little girl for as long as she'll let me.

I'm ready for Advent now.