Advent Calendar

Yep, I'm an atheist but, as previously documented here, I love Christmas (or should that be 'christmas'?) and love to celebrate my friends and family and create family traditions. I really want my kids to use this time of year to think about others, and to give freely of themselves, so to that end I created and advent calendar. It's a work-in-progress I started last year and I'll continue refining it, but it's based around a different activity or discussion point for each day. Last year I put the little slips, along with treats (stickers, chocolates, sweets, temporary tattoos, etc) in red envelopes and hung them on a tinsel-y string with cute mini red pegs. I did  copies for a few friends with similar age kids. The effect was somewhat amateur hour but cheerful, and the kids seemed to like it. This year, considering we are in the process of buying and selling our house, and with the various family weddings and illnesses I didn't get to create calendars for friends, I just sent them the updated 'activities' file but I made one for us, out of the little screw-together containers you can get at craft and sewing shops as storage for beads, findings, whatever.

I just used ribbon to hide the goodies and we are taking them from the bottom, so the top container is an extra specially decorated number 25. I like the simplicity, the fact that I can re-do with different ribbon next year to match my mood (or decor, if I was that organised) and also the fact that as we go through the days we get to see the proportion of days gone vs still to come. I think it helps little kids understand how far away Christmas is, considering their kooky sense of how quickly/slowly time passes.

The note book with the elephant on it is for me to record some of the things that come up in discussion - sometimes the little note asks things like what each person in the family's favourite tree decoration is and I'd love to watch how that changes (or doesn't!) over the next few years.

Today we didn't get to paint wrapping paper, but I'm not going to get worked up about it - I did manage to skip work to attend Asher's preschool Christmas Concert, drop a signed contract for the sale of our apartment off to the solicitor, do some housework, take Asher to swimming lessons AND do two sudoku...


UPDATED 20th December
I just saw this blog and really like the activities she includes! Really nice for younger kids. I might even plagiarize a little next year ;-)

Santa

There really is a plethora of Christmas posts around here, isn't there. It's funny 'coz it's really not playing that big a part in my mental life right now, but the other things that are going on are boring and involve making babysitting arrangements for Christmas parties, my work, Sanjay's work, and the minutea of daily life with a toddler. Will he go to bed OK tonight? Will there be tantrums today? Is he going to yell a perfectly enunciated 'fuck!' repeatedly in public? Will I be able to have a shower by myself today? ...and if that stuff is boring for me, then it's going to be absolutely punishing for anyone else.

So, anyway, back to my Santa story. Each Christmas so far we have had a photo taken with Santa. At 6 months old Asher was happily held by the strange guy in the freshly dry cleaned red polyester suit. Last year, at 18 months, there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell that Asher would sit anywhere near the weird guy whose face was obscured by thick spectacles and a creepy white polyester beard. In that photo I'm sitting next to Santa, holding a wriggling Asher on my lap while trying to smile appropriately. This year we talked a lot about Santa for the few days before we actually went, and Asher's mate A actually had several 'dry runs' where she was bribed to sit with Santa to desensitize her to the inherent creepiness of the situation (creepy to a toddler, mortifying embarrassing to a tweenager and, I'm finding, strangely compulsive to a mother).


To get Asher to sit with Santa we went early in the morning, as soon as David Jones opened. We promised a babycino and a trip to Wizzy World after the photo and we had treats for the kids to try and get them smiling. In the end Asher also ended up with my camera, first taking photos of Santa and then, when he was sitting next to Santa, Asher took a (terrible) photo of me, pointing to the camera:

Finally, after much negotiating, we got a picture I was happy with (I don't have a scanner, so please excuse the poor 'photo of a photo' quality:

So there was not really much point to that post. Perhaps I could end on a question: do you think I should get Asher a kids digital camera for Christmas? It could buy me much peace and quiet (and Christmas should be about peace, right?).

The Christmas Stick

I promise that after this I'll shut up about Christmas for a while, but I do want to show you my lovely Christmas stick!

There are no photos of the the annual stick hunt this year. It was raining and we forgot the camera and we ended up doing most of our stick-hunting from the car. It was lovely though - it was quiet and damp and we explained to Asher what we were doing. We had fortified ourselves beforehand at our favourite French Patisserie with lots of coffee and delicious food. I don't think Asher really 'got it' at the time but later he worked it out.

When Asher went for his sleep in the early afternoon I got Michael and his friend (who stayed with us the night before) to help with stick arrangement. It was so much easier than the last two years - I think we are getting better at choosing sticks! They pretty much fell into place this time, without the need for a pruning saw or secateurs.

When Asher woke up we decorated the tree - he wore his 'Christmas hat' and I wished quietly that we owned some Christmas music on to add to the atmosphere (ideally I would find some Christmas music that didn't make me gag!). I'm happy with how it looks, but this year I really am going to buy some Christmas baubles in the January sales. I can't for the life of me face purchasing full-price Christmas decorations and I'd rather have my 'tree' covered in an eclectic mix of home made decorations (see the letters!) and things we've picked up on our travels (you can't see the stars from India or the glass angels from Ireland and Venice in the photo). Anyhow here it is, without presents as yet, and without the sun shining in the window that I was hoping for this morning:

eat at dixiebelle's: Eco-friendly Christmas (Updated and Re-posted)

Eeat at dixiebelle's(Updated and Re-posted) does the 'Green Christmas' post that best fits in with my view of the world - love it! I'll post the story of the Christmas Stick tomorrow...

A Big Move

It appears that my little boy took another step on the road to being a big boy today. When it was time for his day sleep he told me he wanted to sleep in the spare room. As I acquiesced I thought to myself 'whatever, as soon as he gets outa that bed he's straight into the cot' but he surprised me. He did get out of bed once and came and came and told me he didn't want a sleep. I said to him that if he got out of bed again he'd have to go into his cot. A minute or two later there was a crashing noise and some crying. When I went in he was rubbing his head and the venetian blind was up. I put the blind back down lay down next to him for a minute or two then left, while he was still 'reading' his new* favourite book. Ten minutes later when I went in he was asleep cuddling the book, and he slept beautifully for over two hours (I took the photo later on when I didn't mind if the quiet click of the camera woke him).

Tonight when bedtime rolled around he told us again that he wanted to sleep in the spare room so I found a top sheet (a queen bed sheet folded in two) and tucked one of the larger cot blankets in and he went to sleep without a peep (which is in itself unusual these days). When we went in to check on him he freaked us out by being horizontal right up the top of the bed and thus invisible in the weak light of Sanjay's mobile phone. When we found him we moved him down and tucked him in tightly and I'll let you know tomorrow if he sleep all night without incident.

This all means it's definitely time to clean up the bed I got off eBay (I'm thinking of painting it but I don't know if I will get around to it quickly enough), buy a new mattress** and wash the cute monkey sheets we purchased with him a week or two ago.

* I got the Christmas decorations down from their storage spot on Sunday. The two Christmas kids books we own were there conveniently with the decorations - I felt SO super organised and I wish I remembered where I read the tip to 'store seasonal kids books with seasonal decorations' so I could credit it here.

** I'm all in a quandary about getting a mattress. I definitely don't want a second hand one (blergh!) but I don't want a new one (off gassing! environmental impact!). Does anyone have any advice on buying an environmentally responsible new mattress? What about mattress protectors with no PVC in them? Help!

Christmas - without the 'Christ'

I just want to warn you that in the next few days I am going to go Scroogy-grump with Christmas gift blog post! In preparation, so you don't think I'm the meanest mother in the world I want to post about Santa, and how the our family Christmas traditions are evolving. I am not Christian, or at all religious (in fact, I get more deeply athiest by the year), but I really love the sense of tradition that comes with doing the same things at the same times every year and the family rituals that develop around that. I also like being able to have my own personal thanksgiving (we don't have Thanksgiving in Australia!) and that means, for me, making time to celebrate the important people in my life.

Asher will be two-and-a-half this Christmas, which means, he was eighteen months last Christmas and six months the one before that. Which means, I think, that this will be the first Christmas he has any hope of remembering. That also means that we are still creating family traditions and rituals!



I have never had a Christmas tree in my own home. We always had them when I was a kid, but there's something hard-to-put-my-finger-on that I don't really like about them. I'd like to say it was purely environmental concern but I suspect there is something else to it as well. What I do like is the tradition of some seasonal decorations and so we have developed our own thing - we go for a walk and find ourselves some 'Christmas sticks' which we decorate, with varying degrees of aesthetic success. This year I'm looking for some spray glitter to jazz up the sticks we find. I wish I could find a picture of last year's stick for comparison purposes, rather than only this really blurry one!

So, all of our Christmases have involved the three of us heading up the coast to see my family at Crowdy Head. This means a four hour drive and staying in their big crazy house in a tiny town with a harbour, two beaches and a fish co-op. Crowdy Head seems to known only to yachties, keen surfers (the break isn't great but it's a stopping-point on the way north) and fishermen. We spend out time up there eating and drinking, walking around the headland or the rocks and going to the beach.

Christmas eve we put Asher's Santa sack out for Santa to fill, and then during the night Santa comes by and fills it up with goodies. So far the tradition seems to be that Santa brings

• A new outfit


• A book


• Some toys (usually of the handmade variety - last year it was a bag of wooden vegetables as well as a bouncy ball and a few other bits and bobs)


• Something good to eat (when Asher was 6 months old he brought organic rusks!)

...which I think is pretty restrained for an Australian Santa.

On Christmas morning, just like when I was a child, Santa presents are opened up, then comes breakfast, then comes family presents, followed by lunch and an afternoon of lolling around. Sanjay gets so frustrated during the opening of the family presents - they have to be opened one-by-one in turn, and everyone has to spend a bit of time ooh-ing and ah-ing over every gift, so the process takes a fair while.

So far, this is working out for our new little family. Sanjay's family don't complain to me about us not spending Christmas with them, because, to be fair, we do spend every single Hindu festival with them. I think my dad probably misses out a bit, but he will usually volunteer to work on Christmas day to allow other doctors to spend time with their families. I think he feels like he spent so much of my childhood caught up with work that he can't ask us to give up the other things that we want to do at Christmas for him - but perhaps that's just my hopeful interpretation?