Dear Santa

I really just want to take a nap.  My daughter is at a friend's house, and my son is occupied on the computer with his World of Warcraft (his most recent obsession).  The house is fairly tidy (ehem, okay... it's passable), the dog is curled up on the couch next to me, it's cold outside and I am very, very tired.

Why am I so tired?  Many reasons... but here's what I figured out.  It's the holiday season.  Now, it's not the holiday season itself that exhausts me.  I love Christmas music, baking, gathering with friends and family, finding the perfect gift for my loved ones.  I love the snow, and sitting around the hearth while a fire blazes in the fireplace, lighting up our faces with a warm orange glow.  I love all of those things about this season, and it never seemed to exhaust me before.

But this year is different.  I have thirty-five fewer available hours in my "work-week" than I had last year.  When my kids were in school, I spent those seven hours a day for those first few weeks of December shopping, baking, planning, cleaning, mailing, shipping, writing, candy-coating, wrapping, drinking Bailey's and cocoa curled up with a good book...  Now, I'm not whining.  I know that working mothers/fathers whose children go to school have the same kinds of time constraints, as do parents with small children still at home.  I'm not comparing myself to those people.  I am simply comparing my 2010 Holiday Season Self to my 2009 Holiday Season Self.  This year, I have less time to complete more tasks.

Now, in an ideal world my wonderfully well-behaved children would accompany me to the post office, the craft store, the mall, the market.  They would joyfully don an apron, baking cookies and making caramel corn while laughing at each other's floury faces and frosting-fingers.  We would do this while listening to Christmas carols and drinking home made egg-nog, and afterward they would willingly (nay, eagerly) help mom polish off the dishes and sweep the last sprinkles off the floor.  In the evening, they would be snuggled in bed by 8:30pm, their cheeks rosy from an afternoon of sledding, dreaming of sugar-plums while mom wrapped gifts and placed them under the tree.

What?  WHOSE life is THAT? 

I ditch my kids at my neighbor's house so I can run out for an hour, stop at the bank, run to the grocery store, and pick up a last minute gift.  I barely get the floor swept and the dishwasher unloaded before it's time to cook another meal, and it's trashed again.  My kids are up until after eleven.  They don't feel like baking, they want me to take them sledding and skating before we're even out of our pajamas, they can't even get their rooms clean let alone help with dishes...

Now here I sit, Christmas a few short days away.  All the goodies we've already baked are eaten or given away, none of my gifts are wrapped, I have seven loads of laundry to finish, the winter sunlight draws undue attention to my streaky windows and the dust on the mantel, our Christmas cards are now New Year's Greetings (even though they've been on the counter since Thanksgiving), we have no outdoor lights up, who said you need to get a gift for the garbage man?, and there is a bathroom sink in my dining room.

Santa... if you're out there, reading this... all I want for Christmas this year is a clean, organized house.  Just for a month.  A week?  Just a weekend?  I think I've been very good.  It's not too much to ask, is it?  Practical.  Inexpensive.  Home-made (kind of).  So, Santa... or Mrs. Clause... if you're out there in the blogosphere... never mind the acoustic guitar.  I'd like this instead. -Thanks

I'm sure I will get this under control, the time-management thing, maybe by next holiday season. In the meantime, where's the Bailey's and Cocoa?

Coffee: You can sleep when you're dead.

Sleep... or blog.  Sleep... or blog. 

Lately my blog posts have been sparse because I'm racking up some good sleep hours.  You'd think after ten years of parenting, we'd have bed time down to a science.  Unfortunately, science has never been one of my strong points.  Bed time is more like a theatrical production at our house, complete with trapeze and flying monkeys.

I think my children were trained by Pavlov to start salivating when they hear the words "bed time!"  They are suddenly starving, even if they just wolfed down an entire bucket full of home made kettle corn during the family movie that got started thirty minutes later then intended.  Somehow we are always out of bananas... and string cheese... or anything healthy that can be consumed in under five minutes.

Is a doughnut a good bed time snack?  What if they have it with milk?

If showers happen, add another thirty minutes to the process.  What can possibly take a child that long to wash?  I have to wonder what they do in there (for twenty or thirty minutes) when they get out and they still have a pudding-cup goatee and the hair around the ears is still dry.

We are lucky if teeth are brushed and the children are sufficiently rinsed off by 9:30pm.  At that point, we usually gather in our meditation room with books or knitting.  I know I could ship them off to bed at this point, but it is seriously my favorite part of the day.  The room is cozy.  Dad, kids, Mom... all cuddled under blankets with good books.  Ahhh.  I know, how selfish of me.

I absolutely know that we could push the whole process back (I do actually have a rational side of my brain), starting them with their fourth-meals at 7:30pm, so they could be sawing sustainably-harvested-timber before midnight!  It just doesn't seem to work out that way. 

This is one reason I must choose between writing and sleep. 

Another reason is that I can't seem to wake up early, even when I go to bed before eleven.  I have every good intention, but end up turning my alarm off and drifting back into dreamland until Cady wakes me up!  Wait... that's not absolutely true... if I sleep in the meditation room (there's a comfy foldout couch) the sun wakes me naturally.  It's really wonderful.  But then Jay thinks I'm mad at him!

The last reason is that I can't seem to carve out enough quiet time during the day.  I am still married to the idea that I have to be doing things WITH the children all the time.  My loving hub has desperately tried to get me to insist on an hour of independent, quiet time for us all during the day.  That hasn't worked because as soon as my children are unsupervised (even if I just go to the bathroom) there is a cataclysmic event, World War III right there in my living room... or sometimes it's more like a scene from "Scream," depending on who started it. 

How will we ever accomplish anything this way?  I am looking forward to the structured classes coming up in the new year... Guitar lessons for Asher, Co-op on Fridays, breakdancing, theatre.  Of course there will still be dance for Cady, but that's on Saturday mornings, during which time Asher will be taking his Video Game Design class through the local college's community ed program.

I don't think this first few months of Home Schooling has been a fair trial.  I wanted to take it easy, so I didn't sign up for all of these extras, not anticipating their necessity in breaking up the time my children are exposed to one another.  I think next semester will be a better gauge.  I'll let ya know.

In the meantime, if you see my writing become more prolific, it means one of three things... we have bedtime down, my kids are getting along well enough to be unsupervised for an hour a day, or I am consuming ungodly amounts of coffee.

Couples Counseling?

Judging by the nice, quiet evening we had last night while my daughter was away at a friend's house for a sleepover... I'm wondering if my children need couples counseling.  With each other.

Asher and I went to watch his friend in a play... but not until Asher helped his dad shovel the driveway, then staying outside to make a huge snow fort with his friend.  When we got home after the performance, braving the ice and snow, we all sat down to a hot meal from the crock pot.  Asher set the table and cleared some of the dishes.  Dinner was calm... not one person fell out of their seat.  Not one. Then Asher and his dad played a new found love, World of Warcraft, for a few minutes. 

Finally, we had an hour long discussion about screen time, gaming, movies... and how ADhD brains work.  My son has never been so articulate.  He was quoting phrases from the book he is reading, "Career Building Through Interactive Gaming."  He was looking us in the eyes, straight back and clear language.  No baby talk, not even a hint.  He was also making surprisingly sound points, and was the one who finally said that the discussion had gone on long enough.  It really was incredible.

This conversation would not have happened with Cady around.  I know, she's seven, younger, very very active.  But she also pushes Asher's buttons.  He pushes hers, too... but I'm starting to wonder if it's more her than him.  Each on their own, they are joys.  Together, it gets a little nutty around here. Even teeth brushing becomes a fiasco.  As much as I know they completely love each other, and can be best of friends, they also get under each other's skin.  They bring out the worst in each other.  Is that what siblings are supposed to do?

And where did I sign up to be a therapist?