Denouement

Christmas is over for another year, peeps. Now we are at that point in the story where you wish that the whole festive holiday thing would keep going, but really? It’s over.

I was bummed as I got ready for bed on Christmas Day. Damn. It’s over again. All that planning and excitement and preparation and whoosh — it’s done.

Christmas was good. Quiet in one sense; we had just us this year, and the phone didn’t ring and no one came to the door and we didn’t go anywhere. But in another sense it was a frigging madhouse.

You know how everybody says to you, when you have young children, “Oh, you must be SO excited” or “Oh, you’re going to have SO MUCH fun” as Christmas nears? Because everybody does. And you believe it too.

And then comes the reality of Christmas morning with a toddler. And holy hell, can a day BE more EXHAUSTING?  I don’t think so.

At 20 months, Stinkerbelle is still too young to “get” Christmas. Children at this age obviously can’t grasp the idea of Christmas, and when faced with all the presents and the sparkling lights and parental excitement and anticipation, they just wig out. There’s just too much excitement, too much to see, too many toys to play with. TOO MUCH STIMULATION.

Christmas Eve kicked off the festival of frantic in fine style. We did a webcam Christmas Eve with BDH’s family back home, which was really fun. Stinkerbelle loved being a part of it, of singing and dancing along to everyone singing Christmas carols, and chatting with Grammy and her aunties and Autumn and her bestest pal Madd Dawn. It was JUST! SO! EXCITING!

But then it was supper and bedtime, and we started to gear things down for the night. We got her some milk and got her ready for bed, and then BDH took her into her room for a couple of stories and bedtime.

And then she barfed all over her daddy, herself, and the floor.

Okay. So maybe this was our clue that Christmas was going to be a bit TOO exciting.

We bathed her and put her to bed (again) and put the toys and presents under the tree and settled down to enjoy Christmas Eve by watching “White Christmas”. However, it soon became evident that we were too tired to even do that after all the excitement and preparation, so we called it a night and went to bed early.

Christmas morning we stuck to routine. Bath and breakfast as normal — well, as normal as a massive Christmas breakfast allows, but in terms of routine, things for That Baby were pretty much the same as every day. And once we had eaten and I had partaken of a GIANT bucket of coffee, we went to open presents.

And that is when That Baby just EXPLODED.

TOO! MANY! TOYS! TOO! MANY! PRESENTS!

Looking back, it seems fairly obvious. Small children just don’t need a lot of gifts. What were we thinking? Holy sensory overload, Batman! Stinkerbelle ran from toy to toy, from book to book, waving sleepers like war flags, shrieking like a… well, like a kid at Christmas, I guess. She could not focus on any one thing for more than about 10 seconds at a time.

And it didn’t make things much easier that we were so excited to see HER excitement, so we tried to show her everything and help her play with her new toys and unwrap her many presents. So we got tired and frustrated — and, to be honest, probably just a little disappointed that things were not how we imagined they’d be.

Looking back, we kinda set ourselves up a bit.

That’s not to say it was not a great day. It was. We had a wonderful Christmas, the first of many where That Baby shares in the excitement. But probably, we should have been a little more realistic. Oh well. It was a really good day, and all the excitement meant for really good naps mid-afternoon. So THAT was a big bonus.

And then, it was over. And I was just kind of… meh. BDH kept insisting, “But it’s still the holidays! There’s no saying we can’t watch our Christmas movies and listen to Christmas music and all that stuff this week.” But really? I’m just not feeling it anymore. It feels kind of silly to listen to Christmas music now. And we watched a few more Christmas movies, but the only one I usually watch after Christmas is Bernard and the Genie, which is my traditional Boxing Day movie.

We’re also not big on New Year’s Eve, so there’s no anticipation of that to ride until then. So… it’s all kind of over.

At least we had Boxing Day, which fell on a Saturday and so it was observed yesterday. So we had a good long vacation, and BDH was home from work for a bunch of days.

And we still have a fridge full of food, and a bunch of DVDs and books that Santa brought us to enjoy, and it’s too cold for man or beast outside, so perhaps we’ll have to take comfort in the fact that it’ll be a short work week and there’s another long weekend to come.