Finding Home at Our House for the Holidays

Christmas tree with colored lights shining on wall.When I close my eyes during Christmastime, I see my parents’ house, with its fresh tree with white twinkling lights, ornaments from my childhood dangling off it. My dad has classic rock on in the background, either from an ancient speaker system or the TV, depending on what memory I’m drawing from. In the kitchen, my mom is making a gingerbread house with my older son, placing marshmallows just-so.

Closing them again, I see my in-laws’ house, all singing animatronics, baskets of candy, and holiday music. I’m lounging with my husband’s family on their brown plaid couch, gazing at the multi-colored lights. It’s not quite as familiar as my own parents’ house, but is still embedded in my heart and mind.

But when I open my eyes, none of that is present. It’s not even accessible – neither my parents or my in-laws live in those houses anymore.

Yet, despite that loss, it feels like we’re finally home for Christmas. That’s because this is the first year my husband and I have celebrated Christmas with our kids in our own house.

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Why Santa Will Never Lose His Magic in Our Household

Why Santa Will Never Lose His Magic in Our Household (Photo: Photo of a traditional-looking Santa Claus, tipping his hood)

“Do you want to go see Santa?” I asked my kids, standing outside the mall Christmas display. My one-and-a-half year old shook his head vigorously, while my four-year-old (nicknamed Sprout) just said, “No” in the same tone he gives me at bedtime. But that doesn’t mean they dislike Santa – just the mall version. And that’s just fine with me. Instead of forcing my kids to sit on some dude’s lap, we’re finding deeper ways to maintain Santa’s beauty and magic.

In our household, Santa is a complicated person.

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Fantastic Ways to Teach Kids How to Serve Others at Christmas

Want your kids to focus less on “stuff” and more on people? Try these six ways to serve others at Christmas with them!

“Did they have a home?” my three-year-old asked as I finished telling him the Christmas story.

“Yes, they had a home,” I said, skipping the whole “escaping into Egypt” bit. While his question surprised me, it wasn’t out of nowhere. We’ve been talking about how not everyone has the same privileges we do, including homes.

Cartoon of a Christmas tree

These discussions are important all year round, but I find them especially important at the holidays. It’s easy for kids to get wrapped up in the Christmas’s surface-level magic, from twinkling lights to presents. Instead, as both a Christian and someone who’s concerned with our society’s inequality, I want to teach my kids how to serve others during Christmas.

Here are some ways to turn away from consumerism and towards serving others at Christmas:

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A Holiday Gift Guide for Outdoor Families

Text: "Holiday Gift Guide for Outdoor Families, We'll Eat You Up, We Love You So" Photos of a plastic watering can for children, a board book called Hello, National Parks, a rain jacket, and a blue headlamp.
Getting kids outside has a whole host of benefits, from stronger immune systems to the sheer joy of play. While sometimes all that’s needed is a stick and a bit of imagination, having certain gear can help bringing kids outside easier, safer and more fun. Whether you’re in the mountains or your own backyard, this gift guide – which is mainly focused on kids in preschool and elementary school – should provide a few helpful suggestions. (Note – none of these are affiliate or sponsored links, just products and/or companies I personally like.)

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Highs and Lows of Christmas Vacation

Our Christmas this year involved two whole weeks with extended family. With annual leave I had to use by the end of the year, Chris, Sprout and I visited upstate New York from the weekend before Christmas to the one following New Years. My parents and Chris’s parents live within five minutes of each other, making it easy to visit both in a single trip. They also know each other quite well, so they enjoy doing things together. But while we had a wonderful time, not everything went holiday perfect.

High: Having lots of time to participate in holiday activities around the region. From riding on the Polar Express to visiting the train display at a local museum, we got out of the house quite a bit.
Low: The fact that my dad was stuck on the couch most of the trip. Three weeks ago, he stepped forward while playing Pickleball (aka old folks tennis) and felt a pop in his ankle. A visit to the doctor revealed that he had partially tore his ACL, a devastating injury even if you aren’t a professional athlete. To recover, he had to be completely off his feet for two weeks and then have another two months in a stabilizing boot. So he was totally out-of-commission for most of our trip. While my dad is a quiet person, he nonetheless has a calming, light-hearted presence that was sorely missed on our outings. Even when things don’t go as planned, a well-timed, ridiculous comment from him can make me laugh. Plus, I hated that Sprout couldn’t spend that quality time with his grandfather. The one upside was that Sprout was remarkably understanding of the situation. He loved snuggling up on the couch to read books with his Pop and was great about not touching his ankle.

High: Cutting down the Christmas tree. One of Chris’s family’s long-standing traditions is to cut down their own Christmas tree at Bob’s Trees. As we didn’t get a tree for our house this year, I wanted to bring Sprout there to carry on the experience. Because my dad was out of commission, Chris’s parents were kind enough to come with us. We tromped out to the woods, the ground barely coated in snow. My parents had picked out and marked the tree weeks before, so we didn’t need to walk to kingdom-come to find a decent one. After chopping down the tree, we walked back to the car singing Christmas carols, child and adulReindeert alike garbling most of the lyrics. In the farm’s indoor snack bar, we sipped hot chocolate, gazed at their Christmas tree and checked out their igloo made of recycled plastic bottles. Back outside, we said hello and waved to their two reindeer, who looked bored and sleepy. That night, Sprout declared that seeing the reindeer was his favorite part of the day.
Low: I left some key details out of the above description. While everyone else was cutting down the tree, I had to go to the bathroom. By the time I caught up, they were dragging it to the car. About halfway back, Sprout declared he wanted to carry the tree. He then immediately rejected every branch we offered for him, instead screaming like he was possessed and flailing all of his limbs. Any attempt to connect with or console him was met with further flailage. We finally picked him up, deposited him in his car seat, and restrained him enough to snap him in. Thankfully, changing the scenery and situation gave him enough space to calm down.

Christmas tree 2015High: Decorating the tree. My parents have a wonderful collection of Christmas orn
aments, each of which have personal meaning. Pulling them out and recalling how or why we got them always brings back a slew of memories, from the Baby’s First Christmas ornament from the winter before I was born (my grandmother got it on sale) to a crab ornament from Ocean City this year. Because my mom used to call my dad Pooh Bear, we have a large collection of Winnie the Pooh ornaments that Sprout adored.

Low: Scrambling to ensure Sprout couldn’t touch the delicate ornaments and repeating “Don’t pull ornaments off the tree” a million times.

High: Having Sprout be incredibly well-behaved at the surprisingly long Christmas Eve Mass at Chris’s parents’ church. He actually said “the big church!” was his favorite part of Christmas Eve that night.
Low: It was a long service, topped by a heavy dose of Catholic guilt in the priest’s homily.

High: The joy of Christmas morning. Our family is pretty non-materialistic, but Christmas is the one time of year we buy each other things. Chris loves the “cornucopia” of piles of presents spilling out from under the tree and both sets of grandparents go a little over the top. Sprout was also much more aware of the idea of getting presents this year than last year and reacted with a new enthusiasm. At the same time, he doesn’t have overblown expectations, so he actually appreciated everything and didn’t show disappointment the way older kids sometimes do.
Low: There were so many presents that Sprout actually got a bit bored about opening them by the time we got to my in-laws’ house. Instead, we opened the rest of ours while he played with some of his new toys. I also ended up with a ridiculous number of hand towels as presents. That’s what I get for mentioning that we needed more of them.

High: Playing with all of our presents. The presents we bought Sprout enabled lots of new experiences: we played Sprout’s first game together (the Sneaky Snacky Squirrel Game), put on a show with his new puppet theater, and watched him “ride” his new stick horse around the house. The adults even got to enjoy our presents – we listened to the soundtrack to Hamilton, the rap musical about the Founding Fathers, and played games we gave each other, including Love Letter and Tokaido.
Low: Fitting all of the presents in the car was like a version of Tetris inside Tetris where you crammed smaller shapes into bigger ones and then all of the big ones into a giant box that’s a really weird shape. Priuses aren’t meant to carry this much stuff.

High: So much wonderful food. Both my mom and mother-in-law make way too much delicious food for holidays, leaving us with days after days of left-overs. My mother-in-law also decorates with candy; her living room houses several bowls of dark chocolate and M&Ms throughout December.
Low: The fact that I kept eating all of said food way past the point where I should have stopped.

High: Incredible amounts of time with our family. Chris and I are both very close to our families and of course, our parents love spending time with their only grandchild. Sprout also loves spending time with them – he runs to their front doors and greets them with huge hugs. Quality time was at an all-time high, especially with baking. He helped Chris’s mom make apple pie and sugar cookies, rolling out the dough, placing the apples in the pie, and cutting out the cookies. He and my mom made a gingerbread house, which he was particularly keen on after the tenth or twentieth time they read the Gingerbread Man and Jan Brett’s Gingerbread Baby. While he loved rolling out the dough, he was surprisingly uninterested in decorating the house itself. While my mom was encouraging him to stick Frosted Mini-Wheats on the roof as shingles, he was much more interested in eating Reeces Pieces instead. Gingerbread houseOther unintended consquences of said quality time was him learning the Beans, Beans The Musical Fruit song from my mom. Thanks, Mom.
Low: I’m a bit of an introvert at heart, so constantly being around people was kind of exhausting. Shuttling Sprout between the two houses and managing all of the necessary logistics (bedding for naps, cups/utensils for meals, etc.) further exacerbated that issue. I was so preoccupied with fulfilling everyone else’s plans that I completely forgot about a lunch with a former boss that I hadn’t seen in years. In addition, all of the attention made Sprout a little spoiled in the short term. Between mid-day cookie snacks and infinite affection, he reacted much more poorly than usual to the times he needed to do something that he didn’t want to. “Nope!” was his favorite phrase for the last few days of the trip.

High: Dancing together at my in-laws house. As mentioned previously, my mother-in-law has a large collection of singing Christmas decorations. Sprout’s favorite ones this year were a set of Disney characters that play different instruments. He’d say, “Mommy and Daddy (or Grandma and Grandad or Aunt Melissa and Uncle Steve) dance to Mickey,” then drag us over to the table and then press one of the characters. We’d then join hands and trot around in a circle, like a weird version of square dancing. At the end, he’d yell “freeze!” and we’d stand still with jazz hands or something equally absurd. It was the sort of thing you’d only do with a child, but be so glad that you were. His smile was enough to keep me dancing for a long time.
Low: We did end up listening to the Disney characters at least 50 times.

High: Having lunch with a number of our high school friends. Chris and I were high school sweethearts and are still close to a number of our friends from that time. Fortunately, we were able to get a number of them together, including one we haven’t seen in nearly a decade and has almost no online presence! True to character, he announced an absolutely outrageous plan – setting the world record for sailing across the Atlantic Ocean in the smallest sailboat ever. Even our friends with less over-the-top ambitions had much of their lives to share that just aren’t the same discussed over social media. We enjoyed each other’s company so much that we stood outside the restaurant for a half-hour after they closed. It was one of those times you reconnect with people in a way that has instant intimacy. We still trust each other with the deepest parts of our lives, no matter how physically far apart we are.
Low: The only disappointing thing was that we eventually had to leave. Also, we couldn’t bring Sprout along because it was in the middle of his nap. (Considering our friends’ propensity for swearing and Sprout’s mimicry, that probably wasn’t all bad.)

High: Being able to sleep in because I didn’t have to go to work.
Low: There was nothing bad about this at all. I did stay up too late, but that was fun in its own way.

High: We got snow a few days after Christmas! It actually accumulated on the ground and everything. Not a White Christmas, but close.
Low: It was sleeting that morning, making it way too slushy to play in. We also forgot that Sprout’s snow boots from last winter don’t fit anymore and there was no way he could go tromp around in the snow in sneakers.

High: Seeing a weirdly elaborate holiday light display put on by a local business. My father-in-law said it attracts so much attention that there have been a number of accidents from people slowing down too much or pulling onto the shoulder. To avoid that fate, we pulled into their driveway and walked around. Seriously, this thing rivals ZooLights for the sheer amount of lights. This photo is just a fraction of the display.Lights display
Low: Man, it was really cold out.

I hope you and your families had a great holiday, whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or just New Years Day!

A Single Bell: The Saratoga and North Creek Railway’s Polar Express

There’s just something about little kids and trains. When you put Santa in the mix, it’s a guarantee for Christmas magic. So it was a lovely gift for our in-laws to give Sprout a ride on the Polar Express run by the Saratoga and North Creek Railway as his big Christmas present.

The Polar Express is an actual train ride modeled on the famous book that was made into a movie. Both are about a little boy waiting on Christmas Eve to hear Santa’s sleigh despite his friend telling him it isn’t real. A magical train picks him up, along with a number of other children, and brings them to the North Pole. When the boy is picked to receive the first gift of Christmas, he requests a bell off of Santa’s sleigh. On Christmas morning, he discovers it makes beautiful music, but his parents think it’s broken. As time goes on, his friends and sister lose the ability to hear it, but his belief in the magic of Christmas allows him to always hear it.

While I had read the book ages ago, my father-in-law adores the movie. With a local train company offering a “Polar Express” package, he wanted to bring Sprout on the real-life version.

We boarded the train at night in our pajamas, just like the children in the story. I chose pajama pants and a sweater, but my in-laws decided to go all-out in full-body one-piece fleece jammies. Instead of the train picking us up at our house, we had to drive out to the station, pay $5 for parking, and trudge through the parking lot in the rain.

Not the most magical, but they did a lovely job once you actually got in the station. A huge Christmas tree took up most of the entranceway, flanked by a Polar Express themed gift shop and murals.

Polar Express Christmas tree

The train further built upon the plot and themes of the story, decorated in its holiday best. Pine garland wrapped around the overhead luggage storage, bright presents stored there instead of suitcases. Once the train started, “chefs” and waitstaff pranced down the aisles, skipping and kicking up their feet. As they didn’t do anything “waiterly” except pass out styrofoam cups of hot chocolate and sugar cookies, their main job was to be hilariously enthusiastic, which they did quite well. Sprout slurped down his hot chocolate, which was little kid friendly lukewarm. In addition to distributing goodies – just like in the book – the waitstaff also sang Christmas carols and showed children the pages of the book as the narration played over the loudspeaker. The conductor even made his rounds and stamped our “golden ticket.”

After a very slow 30 minute ride, the train arrived at the North Pole itself. I’m not sure if it was on purpose or coincidental, but the cell service was so poor that there was no way to figure out its location. It did preserve the magic a bit! As we approached, we gazed out the window at a “village” bright with multi-colored lights staffed by “elves” dressed in red and green. The combination of the dark and the train slowing down created the illusion of it seeming quite large. As we approached, Sprout stared out the window, transfixed by the fantastical sight.

North Pole Polar Express

Unlike in the book, no one got out of the train. Considering it took 20 minutes to get everyone on the train in the first place and the weather was crummy, it was very much for the best.

Instead, the elves and Santa came to us! They boarded the train, elves in the lead. Although I asked the elves to take a photo with Sprout, I didn’t expect one of them to pick him up. Considering his earlier skepticism about sitting on Santa’s lap, I winced, but he didn’t cry. But in the one decent photo we have, he doesn’t look super-thrilled. Then Santa made his way down the train car, stopping at each family to take photos and bestow a single (not real) silver bell to each child. As he entered, Sprout cried, “Santa!” While he was excited to get the bell, there was also no way in heck he was allowing Santa to pick him up.

The only critique I have of the trip was the presence of one character who isn’t even in the book. As the book is just over 30 pages, they obviously had to add quite a bit to the movie to pad it out to a reasonable length. One of those additions was a hobo, who in the “real life” version yelled a lot and simply didn’t make a lot of sense. He was vaguely scary, confusing if you hadn’t seen the movie, and generally didn’t fit in with the whole aesthetic.

Overall, the Saratoga and North Creek’s Polar Express was a lovely concept come to life. The full-sized train was a delight and was the first time Sprout had been on a non-subway train. I can’t say it will be a holiday tradition – this may be the last Christmas for us in upstate New York – but I can see why it could become one for many families.

What I Gave Up for Christmas

I already have one of my main New Years’ Resolutions – to simplify. I am quite sick of feeling overwhelmed and exhausted and for a variety of reasons, life will become even busier in the next year. While it isn’t even January yet, I’ve already started applying this philosophy to my life, starting with Christmas. I love Christmas traditions, but I’ve decided that these just aren’t worth the effort – at least not this year.

Merry Christmas!

1) Baking cookies for my co-workers. I like giving my co-workers gifts for the holidays, but between federal ethics requirements and my own cheapness, baked goods are the best bet. However, with only two weekends that we’re actually in town, both filled with other holiday activities, finding the time to do this just wasn’t happening. Ideally, baking cookies is a lovely activity to do with your child, but I’m not giving away anything a two-year-old has helped bake. And cramming it into the three hours between Sprout goes to bed and I do just sounds rushed and unpleasant. While I know my boss likes snickerdoodles, he’ll just need to make them himself this year.

2) Sending out Christmas cards. I always feel like a crappy friend when I start getting Christmas cards and haven’t sent any out myself. I was going to do a photo collage this year, but after both CVS and Walgreens totally screwed up our orders last year, even that seemed like too much work. As we’ll be home for two weeks with grandparents eager to babysit, maybe I’ll send out New Years cards. Or maybe not.

3) Being obsessive about buying local/ethically. I am a huge proponent and fan of buying ethically, especially toys and gifts. But as the mother of a young child who doesn’t have unlimited time or energy to flit around in local boutiques (many of whom don’t want a two-year-old pawing their stuff anyway), I just did the best I could. I tried looking in our local Barnes and Noble and at Powell’s Books online for the specific books I wanted, but neither of them had them. So Amazon it was for those items, as much as I hate their lack of corporate responsibility. I reassured myself that 1) at least I tried, 2) individual actions aren’t the end-all and be-all, and 3) by buying thoughtful gifts, there will be less waste altogether.

4) Not buying all of the gifts myself. I still was the one to pick out the large majority of the gifts, but I actually sent Chris out to purchase at least a couple of them. After all, he’s the one home during the week! It’s a pain to drag a toddler around a store, but it’s still less impossible than me doing it during my work day.

5) Not seeing Santa at the mall. Sprout got to see Santa twice – once at the mall with Chris’s parents without us and at Sesame Place with my parents – which is really enough. Instead, we waved to him as we passed by; he even waved back. It’s all about teaching the kid small pleasures.

6) Elaborate decorations. I’ve never been an elaborate decorator, but I’ve always wished I could be. (Albeit never like my mom, who actually made all of the Christmas ornaments for the entire tree one year.) This year, I stuck some of Sprout’s Christmas books on the coffee table, put Elmo in a mini Santa suit (which is actually for a wine bottle!), and pulled out our wooden nativity. It’s got some holiday cheer and some religious aspect. That’s enough for me.

7) An intolerance for singing stuffed animals. I generally forbid singing toys in my household for their lack of educational value and high level of personal annoyance. But my mother-in-law adores singing animatronics and gifted Sprout a Christmas tree that croons “Rocking Around the Christmas Tree” last Christmas. Both of them absolutely love the ridiculous thing. So out it came with the rest of the decorations, along with a piece of my sanity. Sprout’s enthusiasm thankfully dwindled after the first 30 times or so playing it in a row.

8) Feeling guilty for these things. I’m still working on this – as you can see from all of my justifications above – but this is probably the most important one of all. There’s far too much guilt and shame in my life for not living up to my own unrealistic expectations. Like everything else in life, the holidays are exactly what you choose to make them. I’m at least trying to choose peace, hope and joy.

All Aglitter: ZooLights at the National Zoo

My son’s eyes and mouth went wide when he spotted the blue tree. Festooned in lights, it was far from anything natural, but it was sure pretty. This past Sunday, we attended ZooLights, an annual month-long event at the National Zoo that turns it into a winter wonderland.

ZooLights1

Trudging up the big hill to the Zoo from the Metro station, I yelled, “The lights! We’re almost there!” We were greeted with a wall of sparkling blue, transforming into a melange of additional colors as we got closer. A sign proclaiming ZooLights featured a red panda wagging its tail, a likeness of the naughty animal that escaped the Zoo last year.

Anteater Zoolights

While most of the real animals were sleeping, a whole menagerie awaited us in lights. Hummingbirds flapped their wings, snakes swayed, lizards smacked flies with their tongues and an eagle joined its mate in a high-up nest. My favorites were the surreal ocean animals and the quirky naked mole rats. Sprout seemed to like the anteater slurping up ants as they came out of their hill, although he shied away from the snake.

Zoolights hummingbird

We did see one animal, although it was sleeping. We received a stuffed bison from my uncle for Christmas, so I wanted to show Sprout a real one. Unfortunately, as Sprout said, he was “a little scared” by its size. While he had nothing to be afraid of at the zoo, that will serve him well if he ever visits out West at least.

IMG_2630

But Sprout’s favorite part wasn’t even inside anyway – it was the model train display inside the main visitor’s center. Thomas and Friends, along with a Lego train, chugged by zoo animals, miniature town halls, storefronts, fishermen crabbing, and even chefs breaking down the seafood on the beach. Sprout could have stood there all night if we’d let him. Judging by the crowd of kids against the fence separating them from the trains, he wasn’t the only one.

The Visitor’s Center wasn’t the only busy place – the whole zoo was pretty full. While the event is normally very popular, the 60-plus degree weather really drew out the crowds. I’d imagine there were long lines to get food or go on the rides (like carousel or slide), but it was fine if you just wanted to see the lights. We only noticed it when there was a bottleneck.

We ended up seeing a little less and leaving a little earlier than expected because Sprout was falling asleep in his stroller. While he usually likes to get out and walk around a bit, he just responded with a sigh and “no” whenever we asked. His eyes were fluttering when we got back to the Visitor’s Center, where we planned to change him into pajamas in the hope he’d sleep on the train ride home. Of course, that was invigorating and he didn’t come even close to falling asleep until we put him in his crib.

However, his newfound energy did come in handy when he and Chris caught sight of “Panda Claus,” a person in a panda bear outfit with a Santa hat. Sprout thought high-fiving the panda was just fantastic and mentioned it several times on the way home. I suspect he was a bit disappointed when I showed him the actual, cute but kind of boring pandas on the Zoo’s PandaCam yesterday morning.

Besides the lights themselves, one of the things I like best about ZooLights is the price -free!  It’s easier on my wallet, which is nice, but it also opens it up to a lot of families who might not be able to participate. A lot of Christmas activities are astoundingly expensive – looking at you, Ice at the National Harbor – so it’s great that this is open to everyone.

While we don’t have too many Christmas traditions yet, visiting the ZooLights is very likely to become one of them. In fact, we’ve already promised Sprout that we’ll be back again next year.